iDOS Emulator Hits Apple App Store, Gets Yanked In Rapid Fashion [Irony Meters Shatter As iPhone Briefly Gets DOS Emulator]

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I don’t even know what to say about this. I truly don’t. But you know I’m going to struggle through and find the words anyway as I try to fathom how the universe managed to keep from imploding at the very existence of DOS for iPad and iPhone.

It’s called the iDOS emulator, and it basically operates just like DOS, but for your Apple gear. Some even managed to get it to run old Sierra adventure games (Space Quest, for example) and Windows 3.0, which basically turned Apple hardware into old PCs for a while there.

It didn’t take long, as you might expect, for the Apple folks to realize the universe-rending horror that had been spawned in the midst of their app store, and pull the app. But while it was there, it made for plenty of fun for some folks who got a sweet dose of classic computing life, including the group who managed to pull out their old DOS games and play them on their iPads and iPhones, which probably had more than sufficient processor power and memory to tackle the games, and you probably never would have had to adjust your config.sys and autoexec.bat files either like you had to back in the day, either.

The word is that the app even included a user interface that looked like a grimy keyboard, complete with sticky notes and a coffee-stained notepad. It was available for $.99 before the universe decided to reassert logic (I say all this because there was formerly some controversy that Windows had emulated a lot of Apple’s original design in its creation, a matter of public record now) and pull the app from their store.

Frankly, I consider it sad that they’d remove the app–I cut my teeth on DOS, so it was a welcome surprise to see it back if only for a little while. That and it’d make an interesting way to get die-hard Windows buffs working with Apple gear in a fairly familiar environment.

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