Its worth adding to this, to set expectations - I have been testing on an iPhone 13 pro (so a few years old) and an iPad Pro 2nd Gen (from about the same time period).
While the iPad has more CPU cores, the A15 bionic chip of the iPhone does run this better, and its a bit sluggish on the ipad and a bit nippier on the iPhone. If I change the Color Theme from the startup screen, both devices will pause for 15seconds or more while they process that - however things like code lookup or evaluating factorial, or dragging windows all are acceptable.
An iPad 6 is 30-70% slower than my iPad pro, so I suspect it will work but be quite laggy without the jitter. Still its a worth a shot.
I think that modern M series ipads will probably work quite well - and the lack of a jitter might not be a big impediment.
It worth a shot, and maybe Claude might spot some interesting optimisations - its kind of amazing how its churning through my feedback to Aaron so far.
Today its added useful toolbar icons and its starting to look like a viable part time coding environment - i'm quite stunned.
The motion code is not released yet. Probably tomorrow
can you reasearch the earliest iPad and or iOS this will run on. a user writes ...
Here's the research summary:
iPad 6 (A1893) ��� Yes, it will work.
- iPad 6 has an A10 Fusion (arm64) and supports up to iPadOS 17
- Our deployment target is iOS/iPadOS 15.0, so it's well within range
- It won't get iPadOS 18+, but iPadOS 17 is fine for us
Minimum supported devices (iOS 15.0 deployment target):
iPads: iPad 5th gen (2017) and newer, iPad Air 2 (2014), iPad mini 4 (2015)
iPhones: iPhone 6s / 6s Plus (2015), iPhone SE 1st gen (2016)
Storage requirements:
App itself (debug build): ~15 MB
Pharo 13 image: ~56 MB
Pharo sources file: ~43 MB
Changes file: ~20 KB
TestFlight app: ~30 MB (from App Store)
Total: ~150 MB for everything
So even a 32 GB iPad 6 has plenty of room.
Re: TestFlight instructions ��� that's a good idea for the README. Re: Core Motion binding ��� that would be a fun Pharo FFI
project (accelerometer, gyroscope, compass on iPad).
Want me to update the README with TestFlight install instructions?
...
Added the following:
| data | ���
��� "Start motion updates" ���
��� <primitive:
'primitiveMotionStart' module:
'CoreMotionPlugin'>.
��� ��� ���
��� "Read latest sample ��� Float64Array of 13 elements" ���
��� data := <primitive:
'primitiveMotionData' module:
'CoreMotionPlugin'>.
��� ��� "Elements: accelX,Y,Z (1-3), gyroX,Y,Z (4-6), magX,Y,Z (7-9), ���
��� roll,pitch,yaw (10-12), timestamp (13)" ���
��� ���
��� "Stop updates" ���
��� <primitive:
'primitiveMotionStop' module:
'CoreMotionPlugin'>.
���
----- Original message -----
Subject: Re: [Pharo-users] iPad Pharo test release
Date: Sunday, March 01, 2026 7:10 PM
I have an iPad 6 (model A1893 if anyone cares).
Will Pharo run on that device?
How much storage do I need to install Pharo on this iPad?
(And TestFlight itself.)
I've never heard of the test store before; could the README in GitHub
be extended with instructions about how to install the beta?
If you had infinite time and I had money to pay for it ...
it would be nice to have a binding for Core Motion.
But having Pharo on the iPad? Huge thanks.
Pharo 13 for iPad in the test Apple Store (open in the Apple TestFlight app);
Due to Apple���s no JIT, it's not snappy. But maybe it's still useful?
This is my first venture into using Pharo. I could use advice on where this project fits in Pharo/Smalltalk land. In the early 80s, I used the Xerox Parc Alto at Carnegie Mellon to run Smalltalk. I got laid off, went on a cruise, sat down in a beach chair with LEARN PHARO and an iPad. But, no Pharo for iPad. So I did the natural thing and told Claude Code to port Pharo to iPad. 54 days and 1347 commits later, out popped a usable iPad app. I do have a background in compilers, working on the Production Quality Compiler project at CMU in the early 1980s, mostly on lexers. But I didn���t write any code for this. I mostly told CLAUDE a few times a day stop doing workarounds, do what the real VM does, and that���s a workaround. CLAUDE would never have succeeded I think if I hadn���t started insisting a focus on getting the test suite to pass rather than the app to work.
The main snag using the real VM was encoding the encoding of type info in the high bits of pointers for immediate types. It seemed simple to me to shift the type info to the low 3 bits. But Claude could not get the real VM to stop looking in the high bits; perhaps I should have pushed harder on that. But I had always heard how easy it was to port Smalltalk, so I just went with a new VM with the type info in the low bits. Loading a standard image translates the addresses.
The other issue was that Apple forbids JIT on iPad. So this new VM has no JIT.
Issues:
- Should this be a separate VM? Should I push harder on getting the standard VM to work with type info in the low bits and no JIT? Even if that would be better, is it worth the bother now that this works?
- I don���t want to suck up the PharoSmalltalk name in the Apple stores if it causes offense. I can call it VibeTalk or something to leave the name free for a hand-coded version. Or move off the name if a real contender ever shows.
- Without JIT, is it too slow to bother releasing? Is there some other optimization that could bridge the gap if it is too slow?
- Are there any users who can give the iPad version a really good workout in real work? The VM passes the test suite. But it just started working on the iPad today. There will be UI issues.
- On the iphone the menu bar is cut off, and the welcome window is mostly off the screen. The menu bar layout is in the image, not the VM. I am not sure the VM should work around it. Should these be fixed in the image to have a multi-line menu bar as needed, and reshape initial window layouts on phones? If so is anyone willing to do the Smalltalk side or help me do it (I have written mostly other languages)