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Software Engineering vocabulary · Web, Mobile and Interface Development

Simulator

Meaning in software engineering, with examples

/ˈsɪmjəˌleɪtər/nounCore term

In software engineering, simulator means: Apple's tool, included with Xcode, that runs iOS apps on a Mac in a window that looks like an iPhone or iPad, without imitating the real device hardware.

In Turkish: simülatör

How it is used

iOS developers say 'run it on the simulator' or 'in the Simulator'. Because it uses the Mac's own processor, some things behave differently from a real device, such as performance, the camera and some sensors, so final testing is done on real iPhones.

Example sentences

  1. The animation is smooth on the simulator but laggy on an iPhone 11.

  2. Can you check the new layout on the iPad simulator too?

Common collocations

  • iOS Simulator
  • run on the simulator
  • reset the simulator
  • simulator build
  • emulatorA program that copies the hardware and software of a mobile device on a computer, so you can run and test an app without a real phone.
  • XcodeApple's development environment for writing, building, testing and publishing apps for iPhone, iPad, Mac and other Apple platforms. It runs only on macOS.
  • iOSApple's operating system for the iPhone. Apps for it are built with Apple's own tools, mainly Xcode and the Swift programming language.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Web, Mobile and Interface Development

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