Developer of GBA4iOS, Riley Testut, recently updated his blog with some information that some of us have been wondering about for a few days now - what happens to GBA4iOS after 8.1?

In case you weren’t aware, iOS 8.1 — the upcoming iOS updated rumored to come in late October — has once and for all patched the exploitation of a very popular loophole famously known as the ‘date trick.’ As I mentioned in a past post, the 'date trick’ is what essentially fuels the emulator communities nowadays. In this regard, Riley — as owner of one of the most popular non-jailbroken emulators out there — had some words to say on the subject.

Past

In his latest blog post, Riley writes about the process it took to get his original emulator to sideload (a process to install applications outside the App Store) and how fast his little hobby lead to a full-rewrite of the whole application now famously known as GBA4iOS 2.0.

All this was accomplished because even though Apple would certainly revoke the certificate Riley used to distribute this app, the fallback was that the soon-to-be-obsolete 'date trick’ would still allow the app to install and be used. This motivated him to work as hard as he could and take the app as far as it was possible but now, thanks to iOS 8.1, things have drastically changed.

Is Riley’s seventeen month journey filled with sleepless nights in front of a bright screen coding his fingers off finally coming to a close?

Present

So is GBA4iOS 2.0 considered dead now?

Short answer: no. Riley is definitely not abandoning the project (not for now at least) but he will have to adjust to a new environment and try certain things he originally never intended. As I’ve come to learn, great change must inevitably be followed by adaptability or else you will perish.

Unless there is a way to effectively prevent iOS 8.1 from completely killing off the 'date trick’ (unlikely as of now), Riley has now announced that he has changed his original stance of not hosting his emulator up on Cydia for jailbroken devices. By hosting it there, this guarantees that the app isn’t completely killed off and continued maintenance won’t be for naught now that a group of users will be able to take advantage and enjoy some nostalgic and classic games on their phones.

What about us non-jailbreakers?

A great question with a kind of complicated answer. Riley has always, from the very beginning, intended his apps to be available without jailbreaking. Just like me personally, Riley finds jailbreaking a little too tedious and bothersome. Now, however, it’s a little harder to be picky — he wants his emulator to survive and it will definitely continue on through jailbreaking and Cydia. Riley cannot do anything but try and adapt to these obstacles and so must you, the user. Non-jailbreakers may soon find themselves with limited choices in this matter. Of course there’s always the option not to install the new iOS update and find yourself perpetually bound to an outdated software without any hope of ever moving forward; it’s not for everyone, but might work for some of you.

Not all hope is lost, though; not completely at least. There still exists certain methods where you will be able to play GBA4iOS on 8.1 (I still do) without jailbreaking and that’s by building and signing your own version of the app using the open-source code found on BitBucket. This, of course, requires you to be a developer in Apple’s paid program (i.e. not free).

The days of simply rolling the date back to install an emulator will be over come iOS 8.1, that’s for certain. Although this signing method requires a little bit more knowledge, time and money, you can find yourself with a fully-working version of GBA4iOS without ever needing the date trick again - of course, this isn’t for everyone and Riley understands this but cannot do too much but wait for one day when Apple may change their stance on their own limitations and give him their blessing to host the emulator (which remains legal in the U.S.), or when a new method of non-jailbreak installation like the 'date trick’ surfaces again — but who knows when that’ll be!

Future

What about 2.1 and multiplayer support?

There’s some good news to all this, at least! Riley is not giving up in releasing his upcoming version update which is said to bring multiple new features and the most anticipated multiplayer support. He is, however, running out of time to perfect the app as he envisioned it and thus has now prompted GBA4iOS 2.1 to arrive earlier than originally intended.

In his blog post, Riley states that he has changed his mind in regards to releasing a “beta” version of Multiplayer in version 2.1 that currently seems to work but at very slow speeds with potential connectivity issues. Riley would normally take all the time he could to polish this and release only when it was up to his standards, however, there is no time now with iOS 8.1 slowly creeping in.

Tomorrow, October 9, Riley is releasing the open-source code for GBA4iOS 2.1 so that developers will be able to build and beta test (sans Multiplayer which is coming in a later update). This won’t be like the beta we had for GBA4iOS 2.0 where Riley pushed updates and we simply installed, this requires some computer skills and, of course, a developer account — although there could be other options…

I’ll definitely be installing the new beta version and writing all my findings on here just like the good old days, so stay tuned for some updates. Remember, GBA4iOS’s reign is not dead just yet so the GBA4iOS Blog must continue!