iPhone simulation

The iPhone simulation environment lets you build and run your iPhone application on your computer. You use the simulator environment to:

 Find and fix major problems in your application during design and early testing.

Learn about the Xcode development experience and the iPhone development environment before becoming a member of the iPhone Developer Program.

Lay out and test your application’s user interface.

Measure your application’s memory usage before carrying out detailed performance analysis on iPhone OS–based devices.

A major part of the iPhone simulation environment is the iPhone Simulator application. This application presents the iPhone user interface in a window on your computer. The application provides several ways of interacting with it using your keyboard and mouse to simulate taps and device rotation, among other gestures.

iPhone OS supports the Objective-C runtime introduced in Mac OS X v10.5 except for access to Objective-C class metadata. This means that, if your application accesses Objective-C class metadata, it may not run on iPhone Simulator.