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This seams neat, but I'm not sure I understand the purpose/difference between this and using the iOS simulator.
by hamandcheese 1mo ago
This seams neat, but I'm not sure I understand the purpose/difference between this and using the iOS simulator.
- restes 1mo agoThe iOS Simulator consists of (some of) the userspace components of iOS compiled to run on macOS. This would be a full iPhone image running as-is via virtualization.
- RussianCow 1mo agoThat explains the difference, but what's the purpose?
- a012 1mo agoYou can test your application, game, website without a physical phone?
- leoh 1mo agoCan do that with the simulator too
- refulgentis 1mo agoRunning 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 1mo agoCan you give some examples of where it matters? I'm genuinely curious.
- bradfitz 1mo agoLast I checked, VPN network extensions wouldn't run in the simulator.
- afavour 1mo agoIt’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 1mo ago> 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…
- DonHopkins 1mo agoTesting AR apps, or any app that relies on hardware you can't simulate easily. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T43b5ywnYpo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T43b5ywnYpo
- dingdongditchme 1mo agoIs the simulator faster than this? I would suspect so.
- cfn 1mo agoI have had instances where the app runs fine on the simulator but crashes on the device. This might solve that.
- leoh 1mo agoIf 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
- Sajarin 1mo agoLooks like apple services compatibility is not currently supported for this [0] [0] https://github.com/Lakr233/vphone-cli/discussions/175 https://github.com/Lakr233/vphone-cli/discussions/175
- discordance 1mo agoIf you read a bit further, there's a jailbroken variant that has Sileo and Trollstore installed, so you can run whatever IPAs
- QuantumNomad_ 1mo agoWhere? Edit: ah now I see, in the main readme under heading Firmware Variants. https://github.com/Lakr233/vphone-cli#firmware-variants https://github.com/Lakr233/vphone-cli#firmware-variants
- rvz 1mo agoExactly. It means it cannot download apps from the App Store or use Apple services and Apple knows this deliberate limitation.
- VladVladikoff 1mo agoSpam. Click farms. Etc.
- trollbridge 1mo agoIt 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 1mo agooh. is this why icloud spam texts are running wild now
- greggsy 1mo agoNo, it’s just trivial to generate iCloud email addresses that won’t get picked up by spam filter.
- whynotmaybe 1mo agoThe 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?
- gcampos 1mo agoYou cannot run Network Extensions on the simulator
- landr0id 1mo agoIt'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.
- ChrisMarshallNY 1mo agoThe simulator is a completely different OS. It may even still be using Intel. I always figured that Apple never set up a true emulator (like what Android does), because they didn't want people exploring their OS with a debugger.
- kridsdale1 1mo agoIncorrect. The iOS simulator is and always has been, simply iOS frameworks running fully natively on macOS. It’s best to think of it as an alternative window managers but the apps are native Mac processes. They can be seen and debugged via the terminal using top and ps and lldb alongside all other processes. They just present gui via the Simulator Mac app container. They do not live in a VM and are certainly not emulated at an instruction set level. They are Mac apps.
- ChrisMarshallNY 1mo agoAh. That makes sense. I would think that "Mac apps," means that they are, actually, a different OS (I actually already knew that, which was why I said what I said. The Intel thing was a spitball). But one of the few joys geeks get, these days, is telling other geeks they are wrong, so I feel as if I’ve done my bit to make this a happier place.
- speedyapoc 1mo agoLooks like this tool can provide a jailbroken environment for the latest iOS versions whereas one does not exist on iOS simulator or a real device
- zffr 1mo agoHere are some reasons to use this instead of the simulator: security research, testing, automation
- dagmx 1mo agoThe simulator is a different SDK target than iOS itself. You have to compile completely independently for it, and depending on your dependencies they may not compile for the simulator. Additionally the simulator runs a really ancient and feature restricted version of Metal. That means you can’t test a lot of graphical things that the hardware actually supports. I’m not sure if this supports GPU passthrough but the macOS VMs do, so that alone would be a huge improvement if possible.
- sjtgraham 1mo ago> You have to compile completely independently for it This isn't true. You can easily patch App Store apps to run in the simulator.
- dagmx 1mo agoSure, you can also have iOS binaries forward relevant iOS SDK symbols to macOS. That doesn’t mean they’re not different SDKs with different limitations, and not everything that is on the store can be patched to run in the simulator because there are legitimately symbols missing or with stubbed functionality. It’s literally a different toolchain and SDK.
- sjtgraham 28d agoYou're not forwarding to a macOS SDK. It's the iOS SDK. Enough works for most apps to run almost perfectly.