iDOS Emulator Still Alive Via Cydia

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The tech blog darling for today has been iDOS, an iOS app that very stylishly recreates an aging old school computer terminal running an awesome emulation of DOS. Geeks have managed to get old school Sierra games, Windows 3.1, and other programs up and running in the emulator, but it was abruptly pulled by Apple from the App Store this morning. Don’t worry. iDOS lives on as DOSPAD in Cydia for jailbroken phones.

iDOS is the same thing as DOSPAD, don’t worry. According to the developer who goes by “litichie”, they had to change the name to iDOS for the App Store because Apple doesn’t want any kind of “pad” in app names (god forbid they think there’s any sort of implicit endorsement of the app, god forbid!).

And although litchie has offered the app via Cydia for some time. According to statements made by him in the forums though, he was quite surprised when Apple accepted the app into the App Store. Unfortunately, it wasn’t up long before tech blog Gizmodo discovered it and featured it, causing it to be thrust into the public spotlight where some uptight Apple suit found out about it and had it pulled.

Great news is that you’ll still be able to get your hands on it, if your iOS device is jailbroken. Unfortunately, I know some of you don’t like to jailbreak things, so for those of you, you’re probably out of luck. The reasons for why it was pulled have varied. Some suggest it’s because “Microsoft actually still owns DOS” (they don’t, they own MS-DOS), and some suggest it’s because some free (unlicensed) games like Pac-Man were included. Whatever the case, I wouldn’t expect it to reappear anytime soon.