Mac OS X Speciality level out of ten: 0 Jan 13, 2013 7:32 AM in response to Amen Lui In response to Amen Lui You will possibly want to look into the iOS software development kit (part of XCode) but that is really for developing your own apps, not playing other developers apps on a Mac. Installing the iOS Simulator on Your Mac. Right click on the Xcode icon in the Applications folder and select Show Package Contents, as shown below. Open the iPhone Simulator application. You can find the alias in Contents → Applications, as shown below. For easy access to the iOS simulator in the future, drag and drop the iOS Simulator alias on to your Desktop or the Applications folder.
With technology advancing ever more by the day more and more of us want to spring to life our creative side by developing websites and applications. However one of the huge challenges that you’ll come across if you want to develop your own application is potentially not having the hardware and machines that you need in order to fully develop or optimise your product. For example you may be running on a Windows 10 Operating System but the application you’re creating might need to be supported on other systems including mobile OS’s such as android and iOS.
Now it might seem like it’s all over before it’s began however this is far from the case. There are a range of ways that you can develop an app compatible with iOS on your Windows platform and today we are going to look the solutions that allow you to do just that. The solution is called an iOS Emulator for Windows, essentially this allows you to run an emulated version of an authentic iOS operating system directly from your Windows Host PC.
If you want to take your app development seriously when it comes to iOS one of the best suites you can download to help you along with this is XCode 10. This suite of software development tools can be used directly on a Mac OS system or through an iOS Emulator that can be downloaded for your PC. The way XCode is laid out is intended for it to make the end-user easily understand any changes that are made to the code alongside any conflicts or issues.
XCode is a form of IDE or Integrated Development Environment which contains in a neat little package everything you need to develop your app for iOS which includes:
- Code Editor
- Graphical User Interface (GUI)
- Debugger
- Object and data modelling (optional)
- iOS Emulator
As we have mentioned you can emulator a Mac-styled environment on your Windows PC in order to get developing with XCode. This can be through solutions such as Virtual Machines or Rent a Mac in Cloud, which will use your Windows PC as a host and run your Mac OS in a separate instance. Once you have the emulator running your Mac OS this is then when you can go on to install XCode that is absolutely free of charge. There is a wide range of user tutorials in order to get you to grips with how it works. So let us have a look at the different ways you can develop an app for iOS using a PC.
Option 1: Rent a Mac in Cloud
With the introduction of cloud-based support for emerging technologies one of the solutions to being able to develop your application for iOS is to literally rent a Mac System to use online using the Cloud. Providers of this technology allow you to simulate various environments including the latest Mac OS and iOS variants. Many people use these services for many different purposes such as game development, software development as well as for coding using visual basic.
Two of the biggest providers of Mac Rental are called Mac-InCloud and MacStadium. The difference between these and the other solutions is that you are collecting to a real life Mac through Remote Software. Using the environment on the live machine you can build and test your app as well as sending the results and finished work back to your local machine. Both of these providers also allow you to have a trial to see if it’s right for you before purchasing either for a fixed period or a monthly subscription. In addition the services offered by these providers do indeed support the latest and legacy variants of XCode with the suite already being pre-installed on the machine you’re remotely connecting to. Lastly you can also perform tests on the effectiveness and convenience of your user interface as well as get some results on the performance of your app.
Option 2: Run macOS on a Virtual Machine on Windows PC
The second option open to you for being able to Run Mac OS on your Windows operating system is through a virtual machine. Virtual machines essentially using the working RAM left vacant on your machine to run a virtual emulation of your chosen operating system in a new window. OS’s that are supported include Windows, Linux and the latest Mac OS variants. With VirtualBox there is a free version. Now we’re going to look at how both of these would work in the scenario of if you wanted to use them to develop your app for iOS.
VirtualBox is a free-to-use and open source hypervisor which allows for users to run operating systems on Virtual Machines using allocated resources from their host PC. It can be installed on a range of systems including Linux, Windows, Solaris and Mac OS. To get started you’ll want to do the following:
Ios Emulator For Mac Os
- Go to VirtualBox Site and download the latest version of VirtualBox.
- Next you’ll want to find a Virtual Disk Image File (.vdi or .vmdk) of the macOS you want to be emulating; the latest is currently called macOS Mojave 10.14.3.
- Once you have fully downloaded the VirtualBox .exe file double click the finished install. Once installed and you have your empty virtual machine ready you are ready to open up Mac OS in this Virtual Environment.
- Create a new virtual machine with your Virtual Disk Image file then turn on your Virtual Machine.
Once you have managed to get Mac OS running whether it be through VirtualBox or VMWare Workstation Player or even if you’ve hired a Mac machine which you’re remotely connected to, now we have that sorted we can install XCode. If you have successfully installed Mac OS you should be able to browse this machine and find yourself the ‘App Store’. Typically this will be found on the dock to the bottom of the screen or on your launch pad.
Now we have gone through all the steps, we have our Mac OS environment live and XCode installed now is the time where you can actually begin to code. Within XCode if you want to be testing our updates to your application in real time you’ll want to be using what is called the ‘Simulator Function’. This will feed back to you just how your application would act in a real scenario across various devices, which can be useful if you’re developing an application that can be used both on a Mac, on an iPhone and even on an Apple Watch. Search 'Simulator' in macOS Mojave.
Not only can you test your application on different devices but also different variants of them devices. For example with iPhones you can start with testing it on the iPhone X and work your way backwards to test for backward computability so you know which devices will be able to run the app and which won’t be able to.
Hopefully today we’re covered in detail all the steps you need to take in order to start developing your own applications for iOS. Not only this but you can rest assured that even if you are simply running a Windows Desktop this won’t be an obstacle in your development career.
Introduction
Games For Mac
Mobile first! It became true in the end of 2016 when a mobile web-browsing eventually overtook a desktop one. This brings new challenges for web designers and engineers. Besides the adapted for mobile devices user interface, we also should ensure it works perfectly on a great variety of devices, screens, operation systems and web-browser engines. Several years ago, in a 'desktop era' it was enough to install all the web-browsers on the developer's machine and review a website in them. Nowadays we also need mobile browsers which don't exist on desktop machines. Google Chrome web-browser has an emulation mode, however, it basically resizes the viewport and emulates touch events. It works on the same Chrome's engine even if you 'emulate' iPhone. So it might be enough just to see how a website looks on small screens, but it's never a real emulation.
Fortunately, we don't need to build large farms of mobile devices in our offices. The major mobile platform manufacturers, Apple and Google, provide great developer tools which include the real simulators and emulators of the mobile devices with great configuration possibilities.
In this blog post I'm going to describe step-by-step how to install and configure iOS simulators and Android emulators.
Prerequirements
Since iOS developer tools are only available on macOS, this is the main pre-requirement: you need a Mac to test your website in iOS Simulator. Android developer tools are cross-platform and it's possible to install them on Mac, Windows and Linux.
Install iOS Simulator
iOS Simulator is a part of Xcode. As a Mac user you can download and install it for free from App Store.
https://lenstree856.weebly.com/r-c-flight-simulator-for-mac.html. It downloads around 5.5 GB, so the installation takes some time depending on your network connection.
After the installation is completed, launch Xcode from the Launchpad, accept license and wait for some additional installations. Finally, you'll see the Xcode welcome window.
Since we are not iOS app developers, we don't need to create any projects there. As web developers all we need is just to run the iOS simulator. Click Xcode in menu bar, Open Developer Tool and Simulator then.
Great news! You've got the new iPhone X for free! This is a fully-featured simulation of iOS device. Check Hardware menu for all the capabilities.
Adding more versions and devices in iOS Simulator
You can change both the version of iOS and the device 'hardware' which is running it. Open Device menu item under Hardware in menu bar. There is a list of currently available operating systems. The submenu of the selected operation system is the device to run.
If you need more versions of simulated iOS, return to Xcode, select Preferences.. in the Xcode menu bar item, switch to the Components tab and you'll see a list of all the available iOS versions. Click a small arrow down icon near the simulator name to download the version you need. The simulator images are pretty large, so it will take some time to download and space in your Mac storage.
Is the simulator accurate? Can you trust it? Does it simulates the real device? Once upon a time I debugged a very specific issue. A user reported our webapp crashed the web-browser on just released iPhone 6 Plus. It worked good on any other device except for this iPhone. We didn't have this device in the team, so the issue was really hard to reproduce and fix. We updated Xcode to get the latest versions of the simulators and finally we reproduced the issue on the simulator. So yes, I am convinced that it's pretty accurate since it emulates even crashes and iOS bugs.
Install Android Emulator
As in case with iOS, Android Emulator is a part of Android developer tools. As the first step you need to download Android Studio.
Run Android Studio once it's downloaded and installed. It will ask your a few configuration questions and install some additional components. I suggest to select Custom installation type and check Android Virtual Device. Then continue the installation leaving the default settings and wait for downloading of components.
After it's completed, you'll see the Android Studio welcome window.
Despite the fact we need the emulator only, it's required to start a new Android project there. I just entered Emulator as a project name, add no activity and left the other settings default. Need to wait a few more downloads and installs and get the Android Studio workspace.
No, it's not a finish yet. It might be just early release issues, but just after install from scratch, Android Studio still required to install some missing components: android-26 platform first and Build Tools 26.0.2 later. Just click the Install links and follow the installer screens.
After all activity is done, there is a clean Android Studio workspace. You can find Android emulator under Tools ->Android ->AVD Manager menu.
Android -> AVD Manager menu item' />
It opens Android Virtual Devices (AVD) Manager window. You can notice a warning there: HAXM is not installed. This is Intel Hardware Accelerated Execution Manager, and it's required to run the emulator. However, at the moment it doesn't support automatic installation on macOS High Sierra (10.13), so you need to install it manually. Hopefully, they'll fix it in the future versions.
Open Finder and navigate to ~/Library/Android/sdk/extras/intel/Hardware_Accelerated_Execution_Manager/. There is a file IntelHAXM_6.2.1.dmg. Run it and follow the installer instructions.
During the installation, macOS might show a warning that the kernel extension is blocked by security reasons. Then you need to open Security & Privacy window in the System Preferences and click Allow button. Return back to AVD Manager and click Refresh button in the bottom right corner. The warning message should disappear.
We are good to go! AVD Manager already has a preconfigured Android emulator of the latest Android version. Just double click it.
Here we go! The emulator has control buttons at the right side of the screen. Fl studios 12 for mac. It has a complete set of emulations just like iOS simulator.
Adding more versions and devices in Android Emulator
To get more device configurations and Android versions, click Create Virtual Device button.
There you can select either a ready-to-use device hardware preset or to create your own hardware profile. On the next step you should select the version of Android which you'd like to run on the selected hardware. You'll need to download the older versions of Android before usage. Check out the x86 images to get more versions to use.
Click Next and Finish on the next screen and you'll get the new configured virtual device which is ready to run on the Android Emulator.
Debugging in iOS Simulator
Debugging capabilities are essentials for the engineers. Before we just ran the simulators and emulators and could see and interact with UI. Now we need to get the console, to inspect and to debug.
For iOS simulator it's possible using Safari web-browser. Firstly, ensure that you have Developer menu activated: in Safari menu open Preferences.. and switch to Advanced tab. At the very bottom of the window check Show Develop menu in menu bar. That's it.
Now run the simulator, open a required website in the iOS Safari, then open Safari on your macOS. In the Simulator menu under Develop menu there is an item related to the opened in iOS Safari website.
It opens a fully-featured Safari Web Inspector with the loaded in the simulator website.
Debugging in Android Emulator
Debugging websites in Android emulator web-browser is possible in desktop version of Google Chrome web-browser. However, this feature works starting with Android 4.4. Sad but true.
Run the emulator (Android version 4.4 or above) and open a website in the system web-browser. Then open your desktop Google Chrome and open the Developer Tools. In 'three dots' menu of the developer tools, find More tools and ensure you have Remote devices enabled. It opens the related tab.
If your emulator is up and running, you'll see Android SDK built for x86 - connected in the device list. Click it, find the page you want to debug and then click Inspect.
Finally, it opens a separate window with the fully-featured developer tools with the required page loaded. Mytunes for mac.
Please note that if you’d like to open a website which is running on your local machine server (its address is usually localhost or 127.0.0.1), in the Android emulator this address won’t be valid. The right address you should enter to access the local webserver on your machine is 10.0.2.2.