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Comment by RussianCow

4 hours ago

That explains the difference, but what's the purpose?

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?

You can test your application, game, website without a physical phone?

  • Can do that with the simulator too

    • 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)

      3 replies →

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