| ▲ | RussianCow a day ago |
| That explains the difference, but what's the purpose? |
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| ▲ | whynotmaybe a day ago | parent | next [-] |
| The simulator doesn't have a camera. The android emulator allows to configure the camera and use a picture, it's very handy to test your qr/barcode reader without needing to use a physical device. Maybe this also allows to use an image as camera? |
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| ▲ | landr0id a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| It's useful for security research since you can do kernel debugging and inspection of the device not possible in the simulator. As others pointed out it's also useful for e.g. click/spam farms which need a "real" iPhone. |
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| ▲ | a012 a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| You can test your application, game, website without a physical phone? |
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| ▲ | leoh a day ago | parent [-] | | Can do that with the simulator too | | |
| ▲ | cfn a day ago | parent | next [-] | | I have had instances where the app runs fine on the simulator but crashes on the device. This might solve that. | |
| ▲ | refulgentis a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | Running on ported userspace components, with a shim, isn't the same as running on the OS in itself. That really matters, sometimes. But not the vast majority of the time. (source: been coding iOS since pre-SDK iPhone OS 1.0) | | |
| ▲ | RussianCow a day ago | parent | next [-] | | Can you give some examples of where it matters? I'm genuinely curious. | | |
| ▲ | afavour a day ago | parent | next [-] | | It’s been years but I ran into a problem with a notification extension years ago. Worked fine on simulator, not on device. Turned out it was because I was using a HEIF image and (I think) the on-device extension was trying to use hardware decoding and didn’t have access to it. Meanwhile the simulator had no such sandboxing restrictions. The difference doesn’t matter until it does, and then it’s infuriating to work out what’s going on. | | |
| ▲ | gitgud 10 hours ago | parent [-] | | > The difference doesn’t matter until it does, and then it’s infuriating to work out what’s going on. I love this quote, reminds me how annoying it can be when something isn’t reproducible locally… only in production… |
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| ▲ | bradfitz a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Last I checked, VPN network extensions wouldn't run in the simulator. | |
| ▲ | DonHopkins a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | Testing AR apps, or any app that relies on hardware you can't simulate easily. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T43b5ywnYpo |
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| ▲ | dingdongditchme a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | Is the simulator faster than this? I would suspect so. |
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| ▲ | gcampos a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| You cannot run Network Extensions on the simulator |
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| ▲ | VladVladikoff a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Spam. Click farms. Etc. |
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| ▲ | trollbridge a day ago | parent | next [-] | | It would also make testing far easier. I got bit with something that failed on real life iPhones with language set to es_US that worked fine on the simulator. | |
| ▲ | trueno a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | oh. is this why icloud spam texts are running wild now | | |
| ▲ | greggsy a day ago | parent [-] | | No, it’s just trivial to generate iCloud email addresses that won’t get picked up by spam filter. |
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| ▲ | leoh a day ago | parent | prev [-] |
| If functional, you can download apps from the App Store, sign in to iCloud.. probably do a bunch of agentic stuff as if you had a real device |
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