M4 Macs can't virtualise older macOS

Come on, Apple. What are you doing? I was thinking just the other day that Apple should virtualize older iPhones within the latest iPhone system software, so you could seamlessly open old apps and games (32-bit, anyone?) in their own containerized environments. I can't think why they haven't added this feature for any reason other than money grubbing.

You could even customize the containers to be completely closed off from the rest of the iPhone—no contacts, no Internet access (or high security Internet access), etc.

Come on, Apple. Do something good for once. Oh and bring back the headphone jack.

-Mark

> Apple should virtualize older iPhones within the latest iPhone system software, so you could seamlessly open old apps and games (32-bit, anyone?) in their own containerized environments

What is the practical, broad use case for this? (And can't you virtualize older iOS version on a Mac?)

> bring back the headphone jack

The article is about Macs. If you want a headphone jack, get a 3.5mm:USB-C converter.

Speaking of headphone adapters. It’s crazy to me that something like an iPod released in 2005 will output better audio when playing a lossless file than the most state of the art $2,000 iPhone with Apple’s most state of the art $549 headphones in 2024.

The remarkable thing is that 90% of listeners don’t seem to notice.

Their reference point is a lossy 128kb/s file from a streaming service double transcoded over bluetooth so that must be what music sounds like. Who would have thought technology would progress backwards.

Of course to make this strawman argument you have to ignore the previous comment that says you can do wired connections just over a different port type.

Let’s also ignore any understanding of the DAC quality between older iPods and newer iPhones, where even the dongle Apple sell are considered a high quality DAC.

Let’s also ignore any advances in Codecs in that time, or advances in audio hardware itself.

Let’s also ignore that most iPod users would have bought low quality MP3s or medium quality AACs at the time. Not to mention that most customers use streaming today so wouldn’t even be able to take advantage of the higher quality codecs today.

Finally let’s ignore customer preferences and what niche set of customers would have bought high end enough audio equipment and have the hearing to appreciate and also not want wires today to even fall into your narrow band description.

Who would have thought that if you ignore all aspects that are inconvenient to an argument that you could make any argument you want?

And they’re listening on AirPods or whatever stuck on their ear. I have AirPods 2 Pro and sure, they sound nice. Less sweaty on the treadmill. But even a $100 DJ headset from a $200 streamer blows it away.