[the_gipsy]

That's for reasons of disallowing VMs or any kind of program interpreter, officially.

In reality it suppresses web apps from gaining capabilities of native apps, like notifications.

[scarface74]

There in fact is at least one VM in the App Store.

https://ish.app/

It emulates x86. The only thing I have tried with it is downloading the x86 version of the aws cli.

[saagarjha]

iSH is more an emulator than an actual VM.

[scarface74]

What’s the difference between an emulator and a VM? You run applications for other platforms on both.

You can actually run GUI apps on it.

[saagarjha]

VMs generally use hardware virtualization features; iSH is just an interpreter.

[scarface74]

There is no requirement for a VM to use hardware virtualization features. It’s more efficient. But not a requirement.

[saagarjha]

Usually VMs for real hardware (as opposed to VMs for runtimes, such as “Java VM” or “JavaScript VM”) are defined by the Popek and Goldberg virtualization requirements, which require efficient hardware virtualization.