It doesn't have to be bundled with the emulator. The user could provide it.

Yes but the software is useless without it. And I believe that violates one of the other App Store rules.

Even if it doesn’t I imagine Apple would see this as promoting piracy of their software (the ROM and MacOS classic) and refuse to let it in under any reason they could try to justify.

Basically I don’t think it would ever get on the store period.

Apple could supply those ROMS perhaps. They won't, but it seems a shame to ignore their own heritage.

Now, from Apple's point of view? That's old news, and the future is more compelling. Totally get it.

But it is stuff like this which keeps the iPad in the catagory of "toddlers toy" for me personally. It's really nice hardware too.

I own one. Was given to me. It really did end up being used as an excellent toddler toy!! The various touch games I found were really good and did promote some key skills.

In the past Apple made old versions of their classic system available for free. Notably that included 7.5.3 which is what I use https://web.archive.org/web/19991002011823/http://download.i...

I would have to check about ROM files!

I did not know. Spiffy!

When Steve came back to Apple he had ALL lab prototypes destroyed. ALL.

No surprise there.

Not never. For the original Mac ROMs, we’re just over halfway the 75 year for copyright expiration (in the US). ‘Only’ 37 years to go.

(If I’m not mistaken, the first software for the ENIAC is out of copyright. I don’t know whether any of it still exists, though)

Isn't it "75 years after the death of the author?" (Although I have no idea who the "author" would be in this case.)

Nit: There was no “software” for the ENIAC, programming was done with plugboards and cables. The very concept of software would require a stored-program computer, which ENIAC was not.

American copyright law before 1976 was radically different from the current situation (which was largely implemented with the Copyright Act of 1976). Probably most importantly, unpublished works, and works without an explicit copyright mark (on paper!) were not under copyright. This is why nearly every single bit of software IBM wrote and provided to customers and users in the 50s to mid 70s is public domain; it was never copyright to begin with.

Anyway, the copyright term in the USA and elsewhere too, have been repeatedly extended. I say it's a distinct possibility that some works under copyright now, will still being under copyright another 100 or even 1000 years from now. That is, assuming anyone is still around to sue and be sued over such things.

I suspect that AI generated content is (eventually, not the current versions) going to destroy copyright as a concept.

The generally-stated reason for copyright is to incentivise the creation of more works, but when those works can be made for less than the cost of the food needed to feed a human for long enough to ask a machine to make it[0], the economic value disappears and only tradition remains.

However, that's assuming it's purely economics; if art is humanity's version of peacock tails, then the effort is the point, and even an uploaded brain will be dismissed as "not capable of real art".

[0] I don't know how much power a genuinely human level creative AI would consume, but let's compare one of the current image generators:

For the human, 10 seconds to type in a prompt * minimum cost of keeping a human alive ($1.90 abject poverty threshold) = $0.00022

For the AI, maximum power draw of Mac mini M1 * 90 seconds to create an image = 3,510 joules; at $0.1/kWh[1] that's $0.0001

The cost of the AI doing the thing is about half the minimum possible cost of getting a human to ask the AI to do the thing.

[1] Close enough: https://www.energybot.com/electricity-rates-by-state.html