Jailbroken iOS can't run macOS apps. I spent a week to find out why.
I ran command line macOS tools, such as Bash and Geekbench, on a jailbroken iPhone by replacing iOS’s dyld shared cache (all of iOS’s code) with macOS’s. However, graphical apps will never work: macOS’s WindowServer won’t start, since iOS’s drivers are too different.
On the eve of another WWDC, it’s time to reflect on the theme that has linked the past 3 WWDCs: convergence between Apple’s mobile and desktop lines.
With this unification, many were wondering: if the exact same processor can run macOS and iOS, what’s stopping jailbreakers from running macOS apps on iOS?
Steve Jobs famously announced that the iPhone “ran OS X”. After a week’s work, we determined: that was a lie. While iOS and macOS share a foundation, their driver are different enough to be incompatible.
Some part of the iOS kernel/drivers are shared with macOS. For example, both use the same kernel with the same Unix/Darwin foundation.
