Hi Jason,

> I have mostly worked in the iPhone Simulator, but in this case you will
> miss out on testing some of the device's resource limitations.

This does seem to be the more the case for the iPhone Simulator.  And I think you are correct to point out that the difference between a simulator (as comes with the iPhone SDK) and am emulator (as come with the Android or Palm SDKs) is more that must a matter of semantics.  The Stack Overflow forum has some interesting things to say on this topic [1].

> If it supported multi-touch and rotation, it would probably be a great
> testing environment. For now, I'll just keep an iPod Touch on my desk.

If by rotation, you mean switching between portrait and landscape orientations, then the iPhone Simulator *does* support that.  I also believe you can do some multi-touch on the Simulator via the "option" key + mouse controls [2].

Having an actual iPhone or iPod Touch is definitely the best testing environment though for that platform!  

-- Michael

[1] Stack Overflow > iPhone device vs. iPhone simulator
    http://stackoverflow.com/questions/380062/iphone-device-vs-iphone-simulator

[2] See a video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGu52JNUSpQ

# Michael Doran, Systems Librarian
# University of Texas at Arlington
# 817-272-5326 office
# 817-688-1926 mobile
# [log in to unmask]
# http://rocky.uta.edu/doran/
 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
> Jason Casden
> Sent: Monday, March 01, 2010 12:53 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] C4L10 "Mobile Web App Design" slides
> 
> I have mostly worked in the iPhone Simulator, but in this case you will
> miss
> out on testing some of the device's resource limitations. I have had
> issues
> both with a native application and a mobile web app where I had smooth
> sailing in the simulator but then had crashes due to memory limitations
> on
> the actual device. Also, I have run into some things (maps) which run
> great
> in the simulator, but are crap on the device. While the simulator is
> still
> hugely useful and does allow you to fake an out of memory call, it's
> definitely not complete (in this case).
> 
> Actually, I bet this is a Simulator vs. Emulator issue. I see that the
> Palm
> webOS Emulator runs in a virtual machine, and I am able to get some
> slow map
> performance out of it. If it supported multi-touch and rotation, it
> would
> probably be a great testing environment. For now, I'll just keep an
> iPod
> Touch on my desk.
> 
> Jason