Testing iPhone web applications
March 10, 2008 – 9:46 amOne of the ongoing frustrations with web application development for the iPhone is testing - until last week, you were either forced to use an actual iPhone with some manipulation to get your development site accessible to it, or to experiment with “simulators” that are really nothing more than constrained views (I’m looking at you, iPhoney). Luckily, however, the release of the iPhone SDK solves this problem once and for all.
While most of the SDK is targeted at native application development, it also includes an iPhone simulator that accurately recreates the experience - from proper scaling to rotation, and even including multi-touch. If you’re developing web apps for the iPhone, you owe it to yourself to suffer through the 2.1GB download just for this tool alone.
And just as a note - if you’re trying to run the simulator after installing the SDK, it might be called “Aspen Simulator” instead of “iPhone simulator.” Not sure what’s up with that, but there it is.
4 Responses to “Testing iPhone web applications”
“Aspen”, pre-release code-name?
By Thom Parkin on Mar 10, 2008
I’m guessing so. It’s a little surprising to see them leave that in, though - especially since the official documentation clearly refers to it as the “iPhone simulator.”
By Ben on Mar 10, 2008
It’s the code name for the iPhone OS 1.2.0 release not the simulator itself. Apparently thye use ski resort code-names for the iPhone versions.
Microsoft actually uses them as well. The name the NT family releases after places in the Whistler-Blackcomb ski resort. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_codenames
By Jon Gretar on Mar 10, 2008
It’s in this location on my disk:
/Developer/Platforms/AspenSimulator.platform /Developer/Applications/
By Phil Crosby on Mar 11, 2008