Is this not your work? If you didn't make it, you should email hn@ycombinator.com so the mods can remove Show HN from the title. This is a great submission, just not a Show HN.
dang 12 hours ago [-]
Ok, we've un-show-hn'd it and will leave the submission otherwise intact.
jeswin 10 hours ago [-]
This is incredible work. Thanks for letting us know. The really cool thing about this is that it actually works on phones.
TrungNguyen1909's reverse engineering of A13 bionic booted up modern iOS on non apple hardware for the first time. This opened up a viable path to Apple Silicon hackintoshes as well (eventually), and is just inspiring work. That itself was supported by by the work of Martijn de Vos (devos50) on emulating the 1st-gen iPod Touch, winocm on the early 2010s iEmu project for the Apple A4, and the alephsecurity team on the xnu-qemu-arm64 project for virtualizing 64-bit XNU kernels.
I think it continues as Chefkiss inferno and they seem to be close to getting recent iOS to work [3]. I suppose they could make rapid progress with AI now.
I'm surprised Camera works. Even postmarketOS has difficulty with camera on most devices.
simlevesque 18 hours ago [-]
Thank you.
sanid 19 hours ago [-]
This is going to be fun. There are already replica phones for the flagship phones that are running a shitty android version that has been customized to look like iOS. People need to tripple check now when buying older used iPhone models.
gruez 19 hours ago [-]
>Does not work (yet):
>App Store content and Apple ID sign-in (no Secure Enclave; FairPlay daemon exits)
That seems like a huge roadblock, even if were able to resolve all the driver/OS issues.
driverdan 12 hours ago [-]
Sounds like a huge win to me. Neither of those should be required. Replace Apple's walled garden with open login and open stores.
alex7o 2 hours ago [-]
Just use the jailbroken store and you get all apps from free from there
mshish 18 hours ago [-]
I imagine official support for 3rd party app stores might open up some options for easily installing apps. However, that might require the store adding support for this type of iOS install or a newer version of iOS with 3rd party app store support.
gruez 18 hours ago [-]
>I imagine official support for 3rd party app stores might open up some options for easily installing apps
Given you own the OS, that's not an issue. You can make it pre-jailbroken and load whatever third party app store if you want. The bigger issue is that no app store = no "normie" apps like uber or google maps. I suspect most of the stock apps won't work either because they enforce device attestation on the backend endpoints, so it'll be miserable to use. Note in the maps screenshot, there's nothing behind the modal. It's just blank, suggesting it can't load the map tiles. You'd be better off using an android skinned as ios (possibly vibedcoded) than using this mess.
hard_times 25 minutes ago [-]
There's several PoCs showcasing Apple Maps loading just fine on X
numpad0 14 hours ago [-]
Someone is going to set up an unofficial app store for this and fill it with pirated and malware-ridden apps. Then some companies will be convinced into releasing .ipsw files for "debug and research" purposes and starts taking subscription through those installs. Then Apple will lose choices but to support randomly downloaded .ipsw files on regular iOS devices to avoid becoming the lesser option against those, and we could slowly crawl back to the code freedom we had in 2006. Or this gets DMCA'd in 3 hours and nothing will come of it.
iSnow 2 hours ago [-]
I doubt it, tbh. How many people will install such a HackIOS in the best case, 1000? 10000? There have to be a billion or more iOS users out there, so the pressure on app vendors or Apple will be negligible.
boston_clone 17 hours ago [-]
also,
>Does not work (yet)
>- Cellular, Bluetooth
>- Charging under our kernel (the phone only discharges)
fennecbutt 13 hours ago [-]
I mean in theory Apple are a company of humans using services offered by other humans to make hardware used by other humans.
What I mean by that is if someone can create a near perfect replica with all the software keys needed and then clone a known serial number or range of serial numbers, when it comes to apple pushing out an OS update, how are they to know which the real devices are and which aren't?
rickdeckard 1 hours ago [-]
> "[..] if someone can create a near perfect replica with all the software keys needed and then clone a known serial number or range of serial numbers [..]"
I think you would need to hack and emulate the whole security enclave, which contains quite a bit of factory-provisioned data IIRC.
dylan604 13 hours ago [-]
Didn't the legal battle between Apple and Samsung show that Apple would not be very open to a iPhone clone?
fennecbutt 13 hours ago [-]
Are you trying to say that phone clone companies are beholden to laws? Because I can assure you that they are not.
Just like you can still buy fakes rolexes etc lmao.
Even if you disclose to the buyer that it's counterfeit, it's _still_ illegal. You can't just use someone else's name, logo, or protected designs without authorization.
In fact, it's so severe, you can face >= 10 yrs in Federal PMIA prison and owe fines up to $2M — just for the first offense.
dylan604 13 hours ago [-]
I'd venture the legal forces that Apple can bring to bear are not in the same ballpark as Rolex. I'd expect Apple to use their influence with US govt to get Customs to stop shipments from coming in. It's not like these devices would be made in the US.
DaSHacka 13 hours ago [-]
But they also don't have to be bought exclusively in the US.
fennecbutt 13 hours ago [-]
Clones/knock offs are already illegal. Doesn't really stop em. Only technology solutions can, until they're broken as well.
varispeed 13 hours ago [-]
They could implement Grapple Store and then clone most popular apps.
jeswin 1 hours ago [-]
Looking at the comments, I get the feeling that HN has no idea how big this is going to get.
Agents are going to move this project into acceptable usability and performance in 6-12 months, across a broad set of Android phones. You're going to see people loading iOS on $299 phones, with grey zone marketplaces for app packages (like Android has had for ever).
Hackintosh was a small hobbyist community. Phones will be 100x that. There's going to be very little money in it, but I'll be surprised if this doesn't explode.
rickdeckard 1 hours ago [-]
Even if this takes off in some way, the most meaningful result for an end-user would still be to recreate the experience on Android, instead of trying to keep iOS running on foreign hardware.
Reason: Android is a OS designed to run on as much hardware as possible, iOS is designed to support only a VERY limited set of components, and is increasingly wrapped into a per-component security architecture.
jeswin 60 minutes ago [-]
I'm saying the hobbyist community for phones is massive - this is not for regular phone users. And they all have older (but fast enough) phones lying around to try something like this on.
rickdeckard 45 minutes ago [-]
Yes, I got that.
And I'm saying that it's not trivial to run an OS on any hardware. Android is designed for this and well-documented, which makes it look easier. iOS is neither of those.
jeswin 16 minutes ago [-]
I know, but looking at how quickly people got it running on a few other phones (I've seen pixel 1, 4 and 6, a samsung, and another), I'm thinking that codex or claude code is exceptionally good at this class of work.
Guillaume86 12 hours ago [-]
Can’t wait until someone's decide to tackle
Garmin firmwares updates (porting to older or cheaper models what is purely market segmentation and not hardware limitations).
numlock86 2 hours ago [-]
I don't own any Garmin stuff, but it's just been yesterday that I overheard someone in the office ranting about them, and how they are making a custom firmware for it with Claude right now. Are they really this bad?
fxtentacle 2 hours ago [-]
I’m hoping that someone will tackle Garmin entirely by releasing open source replacement devices ..
josteink 11 minutes ago [-]
Looking back on those screenshots, iOS 16 looks so much better than these modern liquid glass versions.
A nice clean UI, and a very consistent and clean visual hierarchy.
SoKamil 14 hours ago [-]
> It is a research bench, not a ROM: a session lasts a given number of seconds, then the kernel returns to the loader and hands over its log.
I wonder if it is here because Claude would deploy safeguards and not proceed with the project otherwise.
bitpush 14 hours ago [-]
> a session lasts a given number of seconds, then the kernel returns to the loader and hands over its log.
What does this? You can only 'use the device' for x seconds before ..shutting down?
ChocolateGod 9 hours ago [-]
Sometimes a watch dog, if you don't poke the correct thing regularly the system can think there's been a crash.
zahirbmirza 16 hours ago [-]
There was a time that I would have liked iOS to run on other hardware. These days, it is so clunkly, that the the desire is not there.
leoedin 8 minutes ago [-]
Yeah, give me the iPhone's hardware running Android please. I switched to iPhone because my Android phones kept dying due to hardware issues. Android has a far better keyboard and notification system. Give me it any day.
nullpoint420 19 hours ago [-]
I'm doing the same thing with my Oneplus 6T, I have Claude piloting my phone over adb booting new candidate kernels and checking the results
What a time to be alive!
hard_times 23 minutes ago [-]
adb runs in userspace Android. It's not a serial protocol/stack. Maybe fastboot.
dmcrespo 16 hours ago [-]
It seems a bit crazy to me, plus now it opens the door to many iPhone copies... we'll have to be very careful
teaearlgraycold 15 hours ago [-]
No. We should be very bold.
yangm97 14 hours ago [-]
But I wanted to be italic.
tolerance 13 hours ago [-]
Heavy is the head.
schrodinger 6 hours ago [-]
Wrong thread, Rolexes are discussed above.
realusername 14 hours ago [-]
IPhones copies didn't wait this project, some people already have a full iOS reskin of Android which is very close unless you really know what to look for.
ksicmecidkci 14 hours ago [-]
> unless you really know what to look for
I have yet to see a “full iOS reskin of Android” that actually fools anyone with at least one working eye and a normal amount of common sense. These “reskins” are just slightly fancier launchers and they in no conceivable way provide an experience anywhere near close to actual iOS.
realusername 6 hours ago [-]
They absolutely aren't "fancier launchers", they changed absolutely everything, they have the iOS settings, a fake appstore.. have a look on youtube on fake iphones.
nsbdhciebsbdhc 4 hours ago [-]
They qouldnt convincethe average HN user, bur your saying they wouldn't convince my grandma?
torben-friis 19 hours ago [-]
I wonder, why 16.5? (That would be 2023's versión).
Not to detract from how awesome this is, just curious.
MBCook 18 hours ago [-]
They crank up security every release. Perhaps ones after that were somehow drastically harder?
drnick1 17 hours ago [-]
It's interesting that this can be done, but why would anyone want to run iOS on Android devices? A more desirable outcome would be running a free Android distro like Graphene on Apple hardware. Or indeed just liberating phones controlled by Google by hacking the bootloader and replacing the OS.
Wowfunhappy 16 hours ago [-]
One thing that occurs to me is this project is a way to get a fully jailbroken iOS. You can tweak the kernel and go nuts. Can't do that on an iPhone.
UqWBcuFx6NV4r 15 hours ago [-]
You know damn well that different people like different things. Very Brian Griffin comment.
SOLAR_FIELDS 14 hours ago [-]
It’s the quintessential Apple forum response on anything Apple related. Someone posts a legitimate question on some Apple related forum and the stereotypical response from any Apple fanboy is “why would you want to do that? It’s not the Apple (tm) way”
orf 13 hours ago [-]
Having been given an android work phone, I can’t understand why anyone would use this willingly.
The desirable outcome for most people doesn’t seem to be the ability to run android on an iPhone, let’s put it that way.
drnick1 13 hours ago [-]
> Having been given an android work phone, I can’t understand why anyone would use this willingly.
This is probably a commercial Android distro like Samsung's or Google's, filled with OEM crapware. Pure Android is far better than that and is free (freedom to install apps, inspect the source code, etc.) It's basically a Linux distro for smart phones.
8 hours ago [-]
orf 13 hours ago [-]
It’s crap, sorry. It’s an inconsistent mess. Having come from iOS it’s as clear as night and day.
It doesn’t really matter to me if there’s some other specific version of Android that fixes some issues if I install it. As a user that’s not something I care about.
drnick1 12 hours ago [-]
> Having come from iOS it’s as clear as night and day.
It's odd because, as someone who daily drives a Pixel with GrapheneOS and also owns an iPhone, my experience is the opposite. You could not pay be to go back to a device controlled by a corporation, and on which I am not allowed to run programs without Apple's blessing. The UI is largely a matter of taste, by now all mobile operating systems have converged to a broadly identical design and similar gestures etc.
genxy 12 hours ago [-]
You guys are talking about different things.
myaccountonhn 4 hours ago [-]
As a user too, android works far better for me and I was an Apple user for a few years.
Not having the ugly frosted glass thing is a very big plus.
cromka 12 hours ago [-]
I use both, iOS for past 10 years and now Android again.
Both are inconsistent mess.
silon42 2 hours ago [-]
Yes, Android is worse in some ways that it was 10 versions ago.
wwweston 11 hours ago [-]
The most desirable outcome with iPhones is to be able to run an up to date fully-patched iOS on them with up to date apps for as long as the device will function.
The next most desirable outcome is to be able to run another solid/secure/up-to-date mobile OS on them, and it gets more relatively desirable once iOS stops supporting the device.
Klonoar 10 hours ago [-]
They don’t come across as an Apple fanboy; they’re just stating they’d rather have the more private OS on the better hardware.
ChrisMarshallNY 17 hours ago [-]
For that warm feeling you get, when Apple turns their legal lasers on you.
hkt 4 hours ago [-]
The cheapest way to heat your home this winter is to accrue so many cease and desist letters you can use them as fuel!
bijowo1676 17 hours ago [-]
to finally have a Blue iMessage bubble in your group texts
gruez 17 hours ago [-]
That likely doesn't work because they require device attestation to access imessage. It's what killed beeper mini too.
howunfortunate 14 hours ago [-]
Stolen valor!
jeswin 10 hours ago [-]
You're on a website called "hacker" news. Inclined to downvote so that this doesn't take up conversation space.
mrheosuper 8 hours ago [-]
It's not about we should or not, it's about we could or not
carlosjobim 15 hours ago [-]
iOS is the best part of an iPhone, just like MacOS is the best part of a Mac. Android phones are cheaper than iPhones, so why not? The Android hardware is quite nice many times.
dylan604 13 hours ago [-]
Is that really true? When Apple came out with the original 2006 MacPro, it was the best computer to run Windows. When the TrashCan came out, there was a specific issue with Resolve that disappeared when booted into Windows. Apple blamed DaVinci, DaVinci blamed Nvidia, Nvidia blamed Apple.
I'm not suggesting I like Windows or anything nonsensical like that, but I'm just suggesting that their hardware is much better than their software.
lloeki 11 hours ago [-]
The Mac Pro 2013 carried an AMD D300/500/700 GPU, not Nvidia.
dylan604 9 hours ago [-]
doh! I so don't think about AMD that I even forget when they are actually used and forget they even exist. But of course it should have felt weird using Apple/Nvidea in the same breath
lloeki 55 minutes ago [-]
There were quite a few: the Mac Pro before it (which is why you may be confused) til 2012, iMacs and MacBooks til 2014.
And before that, PowerMacs and PowerBooks.
Then Nvidia got into a feud over Samsung, Qualcomm, and indirectly Apple via PowerVR making their own GPUs so Apple ragequit and gave them the finger, culminating in refusing to sign third-party Nvidia drivers.
swiftcoder 1 hours ago [-]
> iOS is the best part of an iPhone, just like MacOS is the best part of a Mac.
This is a very hot take. I think you'll find quite a lot of people are unhappy with the state of the two OSes, while still regarding the hardware as best-in-class
mayli 13 hours ago [-]
Not really, the hw from apple is much better than android hw, like A18 compare with SG8 or M1 vs x86. the software itself is mostly worst than android.
carlosjobim 12 hours ago [-]
I can give you that, but the fact remains that there are no cheap iPhones you can buy, but there are cheap Android phones. If it becomes possible to easily upgrade your cheap Android phone to iOS, then that would be very pleasant for a lot of people.
ezst 2 hours ago [-]
Can't disagree more, but heh :-)
pmkary 19 hours ago [-]
Someone finally did this, wow! 2026 just keeps getting more crazy.
ivanjermakov 13 hours ago [-]
Maybe tomorrow we get Android running on the iPhone (and Linux on the iPad please).
UTM was almost good enough but the procedure to enable JIT every time you run it was extremely clunky.
HaloZero 9 hours ago [-]
If you can get iOS 16.5 to run on Android, how much more is a stretch to move it to Linux?
1f60c 18 hours ago [-]
There is one, uh, minor drawback:
> Does not work (yet)
>
> Charging under our kernel (the phone only discharges)
xandrius 18 hours ago [-]
Single use OS
matneyx 17 hours ago [-]
The burningest of burners
lemoncucumber 15 hours ago [-]
That would be if "the phone only discharges, all at once"
ttul 18 hours ago [-]
Pack it up and go home, everyone. The alpha-release doesn't chart. Time to throw in the towel. /s
ksicmecidkci 14 hours ago [-]
Not even /s can save this one, mate. Poor form.
jgbuddy 18 hours ago [-]
Next; IOS will be decompiled and open source
xp84 18 hours ago [-]
I hope that continued advancements in AI make it impossible for outfits like Apple to maintain closed systems that lock the device owner out of having any control over their own hardware. We're obviously not there yet -- I'm sure 1000 things won't work on a device with this running, but it's going to be a game of cat and mouse, and mouse is moving a lot faster than cat can now.
iSnow 1 hours ago [-]
I have my reservations. The cats can also use AI to make their software less buggy or even formally verified.
If I had to venture a guess it would be that this is the last stand for hackers that are able to root all kinds of older devices, but companies like Apple will shell out the money to prevent this for their next-gen devices.
It's likely that low-cost device makers will not do that, so maybe rooting will still persist for cheap stuff.
mschuster91 18 hours ago [-]
> I hope that continued advancements in AI make it impossible for outfits like Apple to maintain closed systems that lock the device owner out of having any control over their own hardware.
Formally verified bootloaders and Secure Boot will make this all but impossible without hardware mods that do voltage glitching. It took 8 years for the checkm8 and usbliter8 exploits to be found, and I think that especially Apple has invested so much money, time and resources into securing their boot chain that the "best" thing we can hope for is a tethered jailbreak allowing a boot into another kernel.
cromka 12 hours ago [-]
It's only a matter of finding exploitative bugs, this already happened before in Apple devices precisely.
j16sdiz 9 hours ago [-]
one click exploit is fun when you trying to jailbreak your phone; it is a nightmare when a random website do that
mschuster91 3 hours ago [-]
Bugs yes, sure, there will always be bugs. But it already is really, really difficult to get non-privileged code execution access, even harder to achieve tethered root access (i.e. root access that holds until a reboot), and all but impossible to get untethered root access that survives reboots.
compiler-guy 18 hours ago [-]
Decompiled and easily available if you know where to look? Sure. Seems likely.
But "Open Source" is a description of the licensing terms, and it ain't gonna be that. Apple will sue hosters into oblivion. It will only be available on pirate sites.
redwall_hp 8 hours ago [-]
It's going to be great, between this and the Adobe totally-not-using-any-decompiled-code-wink clones: people are going to get sued into the ground and LLM code is going to become radioactive to corporate lawyers. Especially when they find out that they also routinely spit out GPL code verbatim.
It's going to be hilarious.
cromka 12 hours ago [-]
You can use debugger all you want, legally, then write the spec, then reimplement. You just can't look at the code.
We already have nearly a dozen of Adobe and Autodesk knock off apps.
compiler-guy 12 hours ago [-]
Yes. Those are clones or clonish. Not originals. So saying "Autodesk is opensource" isn't correct.
A clone of autodesk may be open source however.
jrmg 17 hours ago [-]
It has an, uh, interesting funding model: “$HACKIOS ON BNB CHAIN
The project has its own community token, live on flap.sh. Each trade carries a 1% fee that supports the team and funds development.”
katzenq 9 minutes ago [-]
Is this just accepting crypto donations but with bonus gambling?
therepanic 16 hours ago [-]
I suppose Anthropic has relaxed its safety checks to such an extent that Claude now agrees to port iOS to Android phones?
Geof25 16 hours ago [-]
ISA - iOS subsystem for Android
nickorlow 16 hours ago [-]
You mean the Android subsystem for iOS?
hollowonepl 19 hours ago [-]
Wow, do I smell the opportunity to have IOS analogy to Graphene OS built on top of such concept?
gruez 19 hours ago [-]
No, because iPhones still have locked bootloader, and on an Android phone this Frankenstein of an OS is likely to have worse security than just grapheneos.
lunar_rover 14 hours ago [-]
GrapheneOS relies on either having access to full upstream support or being the upstream themselves. You get neither with an unofficial port of iOS. So no there isn't an opportunity here unless your threat model has Apple as the sole attacker.
dj_io 18 hours ago [-]
Great work. This is neat kind of like age old there used to be hackintosh for macs. Now for ios. With this do you have access to app store. I think there is a unique identifier that android will lack for it to work.
hard_times 20 minutes ago [-]
> kind of like age old there used to be hackintosh for macs
Have you checked out the hackintosh community lately? They have a near fully functional port to Snapdragon now.
hmm, if only the reverse could be done. i.e. running android on apple devices. i got an Ipad 8th gen and would love to install lineageOs on it
bigwheels 18 hours ago [-]
Why do these demonstrations all stop at iOS 16? What changed with iOS 17?
LoganDark 17 hours ago [-]
Secure Page Table Monitor and Trusted Execution Monitor
runjake 16 hours ago [-]
Important to note that a large percentage of the current versions of A and B-tier iOS apps won't run on an iOS this old.
But this is still a big step for research purposes.
aziaziazi 16 hours ago [-]
Happy user of 15.8.8 (05/2026) here. Confirm the lack of many apps but still enough for some users:
- maps, google maps, osm clients...
- whatsapp, discord, telegram...
- bank, raintoday, spotify...
- all iOS default apps!
nickorlow 16 hours ago [-]
I wonder how they landed on 16.5
busymom0 7 hours ago [-]
iOS developer here. The oldest iOS Apple lets us currently submit apps for is iOS 15. So yea, this version is pretty old for most apps.
raybb 9 hours ago [-]
Counting down the days until someone gets full linux on old ipads!
tamimio 16 hours ago [-]
Should be called phockintosh! I don’t see a use case for it but cool concept
occoder 11 hours ago [-]
Maybe iPhake or iPhack?
xchip 16 hours ago [-]
The guy who did it is a genius
jgbuddy 19 hours ago [-]
amazing, but who is OO SEX GANG
freedomben 19 hours ago [-]
my guess is a lot of Java people who refuse to get on the functional train
pyaamb 14 hours ago [-]
This is great. Running a virtual OS on your phone is a great way to explore apps without worrying about excess data collection and permissions if done correctly. And iOS apps on android? Brilliant. A few platforms target iOS exclusively or initially due to strategic budgeting.
ksicmecidkci 14 hours ago [-]
That’s… not what’s happening here.
pyaamb 10 hours ago [-]
ah fair enough. Didn't look close enough. Oh well.
westurner 19 hours ago [-]
Does this make it possible to quality control iOS apps without MacOS runners with xcodebuild in CI like GitHub Actions?
Q: Do the iServices like iCloud, App Store, etc work?
A: No, at least not yet. They possibly require something iOS refers to as the “Legacy FairPlay Key Descrambler” AES (hardware) command.
Extremely subtle hint. Well played.
westurner 12 hours ago [-]
Is there something like MicroG for Android for iOS?
saagarjha 18 hours ago [-]
Hmm. Maybe small iPhone might be easier to revive than we thought!
Velocifyer 18 hours ago [-]
Can you make a GSI to run on any Android Phone?
embedding-shape 19 hours ago [-]
What, no, why?! Joking but kind of also not, Apple is terrible at software, amazing at hardware, what the people (me) want is the opposite, Android running on Apple hardware :)
cosmic_cheese 18 hours ago [-]
Opinions vary quite a bit on that. I imagine the appeal of this is similar to that of hackintoshing: Apple software with the diversity of generic hardware.
Personally speaking as someone who's had to use both platforms in varying capacities in the past decade I do not find myself fond of Android, particularly modern Android. When I booted up an old Android 9 device a few months back I was struck with how much more appeal that version held compared to its contemporary counterpart.
rjh29 4 hours ago [-]
I don't like iOS but you're practically forced to use it for music production - music apps tends to be iOS-only. Being able to run it on a cheap Android tablet would be great.
voidUpdate 60 minutes ago [-]
I imagine performance would be spectacularly awful if you tried to run ios music production apps on a cheap android tablet
rjh29 29 minutes ago [-]
Many of them are not doing anything complicated, it's just a walled garden. Animoog is from 2011 and Moog Model D is from 2018 for example - iOS-exclusive but any modern Android tablet is going to smoke an iPad from that era.
Fair point iPads have decent specs for the price, but if you already have an Android tablet, it would be nice to not have to buy an extra device.
voidUpdate 12 minutes ago [-]
You might be overestimating "cheap" android tablets. A lot of the actually cheap ones I've seen even kind of struggle to run android
simlevesque 18 hours ago [-]
Blue bubbles.
TheSkyHasEyes 19 hours ago [-]
Not with a locked bootloader, not yet anyway.
wiseowise 16 hours ago [-]
> Apple is terrible at software
You can’t write something like that and then follow up with
> what the people (me) want is the opposite, Android running on Apple hardware :)
sheepscreek 19 hours ago [-]
Madness. I love it.
Grombobulous 19 hours ago [-]
My “AI is ending the world” feelings are definitely going in another direction in the past few weeks with the reverse engineering, jailbreaking, and porting scene.
Microsoft, Google, Oracle, etc, just invested all their money into a technology that will make their software worthless. As Ronald McDonald once said, I’m lovin’ it.
anthk 18 hours ago [-]
If you think about it, home users will get free MIT licensed clones for Adobe/Autodesk/Solidworks and Microsoft. The companies will just get trained people in their homes for almost free and they will happily pay for support for Adobe/MS et all.
- Optimized and ultra-hardened Office for macros and features? Pay.
- CUDA optimized PS -with inline assembly maybe even from Rust- and more, 24/7 support with a huge Adobe asset pack to start with? Pay.
nullpoint420 17 hours ago [-]
Bold of you to assume we'll still be using Office and Adobe in a few years. What happens when all the MIT solutions here are just a MCP?
anthk 15 hours ago [-]
Ironically these tools have MCP support and there's the whole Artcraft independent tool (yes, equally named) doing almost magic blending everything.
The are similar tools with the same philosophy on reimplementation and design. Oh, and written in Rust too.
So the MIT tools are pretty much ahead.
They can be commanded from either an script done from an user (similar to AppleScript or VBA but for anything) or an MCP.
add-sub-mul-div 19 hours ago [-]
Was your prior feeling about AI based on the sum total of its negative externalities for society, or its not having produced enough gimmick software projects?
Grombobulous 18 hours ago [-]
My comment as a whole is not meant to be taken this seriously.
sohrob 6 hours ago [-]
Now do NixOS on an old iPhone or Android device.
ghm2180 12 hours ago [-]
> It is a research bench, not a ROM: a session lasts a given number of seconds, then the kernel returns to the loader and hands over its log.
I am "disappointed". no AI OS in the boot sector? It should be taking That log and AFKing the next fix man. Also "sorely missing" is a motorized rig controlling any hardkey presses for reboot and volume etc, because its not real AFK without that.
CmmonCommon 2026!
croes 17 hours ago [-]
I wonder how many if these AI projects have malware?
dmcrespo 16 hours ago [-]
That's exactly what I was analyzing. They go viral very quickly, and there's no way to verify if they contain viruses or steal information.
prmoustache 14 hours ago [-]
Like viral that everyone browse quickly at the project page, put their most inspired comment on hn, the go to the next news and forget about it.
I don't think there is a lot of people who actually clone the repos and try the stuff.
17 hours ago [-]
diimdeep 18 hours ago [-]
Hardware is so powerful, that soon we will be able to run anything using anything, if you have access to whatever you need to run, and access is lacking only if it is streaming content from cloud or hardware encrypted.
ost-ing 17 hours ago [-]
Wow
mossgate 16 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
akung8x8 17 hours ago [-]
[dead]
zarmin 17 hours ago [-]
Amazing. On par with cutting off my leg before playing soccer.
unatechie 14 hours ago [-]
cool, but probably better to place your time and energy into a more applicable use.
LetsGetTechnicl 16 hours ago [-]
I'm getting exhausted from all these AI vibe coded projects. Like this is cool, sure, but it's less cool than if someone had figured out how to do it themselves instead of having Claude do it. It's like chasing the dragon but for coding projects.
dudisubekti 16 hours ago [-]
You are free to become "more cool" yourself
esseph 16 hours ago [-]
Different goals and motivations.
You chase the dragon by figuring out the problems over potentially a long period of time.
They are figuring out the problems and releasing various levels of POCs in a fraction of the time. It may not all be correct, but with how quick it is, there is plenty of time for refactoring if necessary.
bigyabai 16 hours ago [-]
> it's less cool than if someone had figured out how to do it themselves
Those people had 4 years to reverse-engineer iOS 16 on their own terms. I don't think there was any overwhelming technical motivation to spend time on a project like this.
But it's quite impressive that it works on QEMU, POCO X5 Pro 5G and some Xiaomi devices too.
Website is here: https://hackios-web.vercel.app/en
Source Code: https://github.com/oosexgang/hackios-xnu-kernel
TrungNguyen1909's reverse engineering of A13 bionic booted up modern iOS on non apple hardware for the first time. This opened up a viable path to Apple Silicon hackintoshes as well (eventually), and is just inspiring work. That itself was supported by by the work of Martijn de Vos (devos50) on emulating the 1st-gen iPod Touch, winocm on the early 2010s iEmu project for the Apple A4, and the alephsecurity team on the xnu-qemu-arm64 project for virtualizing 64-bit XNU kernels.
I think it continues as Chefkiss inferno and they seem to be close to getting recent iOS to work [3]. I suppose they could make rapid progress with AI now.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBeIW2PDFVk&t=286s
[2]: https://github.com/TrungNguyen1909/qemu-t8030
[3] https://github.com/ChefKissInc/Inferno
>App Store content and Apple ID sign-in (no Secure Enclave; FairPlay daemon exits)
That seems like a huge roadblock, even if were able to resolve all the driver/OS issues.
Given you own the OS, that's not an issue. You can make it pre-jailbroken and load whatever third party app store if you want. The bigger issue is that no app store = no "normie" apps like uber or google maps. I suspect most of the stock apps won't work either because they enforce device attestation on the backend endpoints, so it'll be miserable to use. Note in the maps screenshot, there's nothing behind the modal. It's just blank, suggesting it can't load the map tiles. You'd be better off using an android skinned as ios (possibly vibedcoded) than using this mess.
>Does not work (yet)
>- Cellular, Bluetooth
>- Charging under our kernel (the phone only discharges)
What I mean by that is if someone can create a near perfect replica with all the software keys needed and then clone a known serial number or range of serial numbers, when it comes to apple pushing out an OS update, how are they to know which the real devices are and which aren't?
I think you would need to hack and emulate the whole security enclave, which contains quite a bit of factory-provisioned data IIRC.
Just like you can still buy fakes rolexes etc lmao.
Even if you disclose to the buyer that it's counterfeit, it's _still_ illegal. You can't just use someone else's name, logo, or protected designs without authorization.
In fact, it's so severe, you can face >= 10 yrs in Federal PMIA prison and owe fines up to $2M — just for the first offense.
Agents are going to move this project into acceptable usability and performance in 6-12 months, across a broad set of Android phones. You're going to see people loading iOS on $299 phones, with grey zone marketplaces for app packages (like Android has had for ever).
Hackintosh was a small hobbyist community. Phones will be 100x that. There's going to be very little money in it, but I'll be surprised if this doesn't explode.
Reason: Android is a OS designed to run on as much hardware as possible, iOS is designed to support only a VERY limited set of components, and is increasingly wrapped into a per-component security architecture.
And I'm saying that it's not trivial to run an OS on any hardware. Android is designed for this and well-documented, which makes it look easier. iOS is neither of those.
A nice clean UI, and a very consistent and clean visual hierarchy.
I wonder if it is here because Claude would deploy safeguards and not proceed with the project otherwise.
What does this? You can only 'use the device' for x seconds before ..shutting down?
What a time to be alive!
I have yet to see a “full iOS reskin of Android” that actually fools anyone with at least one working eye and a normal amount of common sense. These “reskins” are just slightly fancier launchers and they in no conceivable way provide an experience anywhere near close to actual iOS.
Not to detract from how awesome this is, just curious.
The desirable outcome for most people doesn’t seem to be the ability to run android on an iPhone, let’s put it that way.
This is probably a commercial Android distro like Samsung's or Google's, filled with OEM crapware. Pure Android is far better than that and is free (freedom to install apps, inspect the source code, etc.) It's basically a Linux distro for smart phones.
It doesn’t really matter to me if there’s some other specific version of Android that fixes some issues if I install it. As a user that’s not something I care about.
It's odd because, as someone who daily drives a Pixel with GrapheneOS and also owns an iPhone, my experience is the opposite. You could not pay be to go back to a device controlled by a corporation, and on which I am not allowed to run programs without Apple's blessing. The UI is largely a matter of taste, by now all mobile operating systems have converged to a broadly identical design and similar gestures etc.
Not having the ugly frosted glass thing is a very big plus.
Both are inconsistent mess.
The next most desirable outcome is to be able to run another solid/secure/up-to-date mobile OS on them, and it gets more relatively desirable once iOS stops supporting the device.
I'm not suggesting I like Windows or anything nonsensical like that, but I'm just suggesting that their hardware is much better than their software.
And before that, PowerMacs and PowerBooks.
Then Nvidia got into a feud over Samsung, Qualcomm, and indirectly Apple via PowerVR making their own GPUs so Apple ragequit and gave them the finger, culminating in refusing to sign third-party Nvidia drivers.
This is a very hot take. I think you'll find quite a lot of people are unhappy with the state of the two OSes, while still regarding the hardware as best-in-class
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25172883
If I had to venture a guess it would be that this is the last stand for hackers that are able to root all kinds of older devices, but companies like Apple will shell out the money to prevent this for their next-gen devices.
It's likely that low-cost device makers will not do that, so maybe rooting will still persist for cheap stuff.
Formally verified bootloaders and Secure Boot will make this all but impossible without hardware mods that do voltage glitching. It took 8 years for the checkm8 and usbliter8 exploits to be found, and I think that especially Apple has invested so much money, time and resources into securing their boot chain that the "best" thing we can hope for is a tethered jailbreak allowing a boot into another kernel.
But "Open Source" is a description of the licensing terms, and it ain't gonna be that. Apple will sue hosters into oblivion. It will only be available on pirate sites.
It's going to be hilarious.
We already have nearly a dozen of Adobe and Autodesk knock off apps.
A clone of autodesk may be open source however.
Have you checked out the hackintosh community lately? They have a near fully functional port to Snapdragon now.
https://github.com/Snapintosh/Snapintosh
But this is still a big step for research purposes.
Q: Do the iServices like iCloud, App Store, etc work? A: No, at least not yet. They possibly require something iOS refers to as the “Legacy FairPlay Key Descrambler” AES (hardware) command.
Extremely subtle hint. Well played.
Personally speaking as someone who's had to use both platforms in varying capacities in the past decade I do not find myself fond of Android, particularly modern Android. When I booted up an old Android 9 device a few months back I was struck with how much more appeal that version held compared to its contemporary counterpart.
Fair point iPads have decent specs for the price, but if you already have an Android tablet, it would be nice to not have to buy an extra device.
You can’t write something like that and then follow up with
> what the people (me) want is the opposite, Android running on Apple hardware :)
Microsoft, Google, Oracle, etc, just invested all their money into a technology that will make their software worthless. As Ronald McDonald once said, I’m lovin’ it.
- Optimized and ultra-hardened Office for macros and features? Pay.
- CUDA optimized PS -with inline assembly maybe even from Rust- and more, 24/7 support with a huge Adobe asset pack to start with? Pay.
The are similar tools with the same philosophy on reimplementation and design. Oh, and written in Rust too. So the MIT tools are pretty much ahead.
They can be commanded from either an script done from an user (similar to AppleScript or VBA but for anything) or an MCP.
I am "disappointed". no AI OS in the boot sector? It should be taking That log and AFKing the next fix man. Also "sorely missing" is a motorized rig controlling any hardkey presses for reboot and volume etc, because its not real AFK without that.
CmmonCommon 2026!
I don't think there is a lot of people who actually clone the repos and try the stuff.
You chase the dragon by figuring out the problems over potentially a long period of time.
They are figuring out the problems and releasing various levels of POCs in a fraction of the time. It may not all be correct, but with how quick it is, there is plenty of time for refactoring if necessary.
Those people had 4 years to reverse-engineer iOS 16 on their own terms. I don't think there was any overwhelming technical motivation to spend time on a project like this.