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)

Can you give some examples of where it matters? I'm genuinely curious.

Testing AR apps, or any app that relies on hardware you can't simulate easily.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T43b5ywnYpo

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.

> 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…

Last I checked, VPN network extensions wouldn't run in the simulator.

Is the simulator faster than this? I would suspect so.

I have had instances where the app runs fine on the simulator but crashes on the device. This might solve that.