iOS Apps on Lion

[The Norman]

I apologize that I couldn't find a thread already dedicated to this.

Because Macs have been demoted to "just another device", will they be capable of running iOS apps?

iPads can run iPad apps and iPhone apps, so why not let Macs run Mac, iPad, and iPhone apps.

Granted, the touch interface would be a MAJOR hurdle, but...

 

[robbieduncan]

I apologize that I couldn't find a thread already dedicated to this.

Because Macs have been demoted to "just another device", will they be capable of running iOS apps?

iPads can run iPad apps and iPhone apps, so why not let Macs run Mac, iPad, and iPhone apps.

Granted, the touch interface would be a MAJOR hurdle, but...

iOS Apps are compiled for ARM CPUs. Macs use x86 CPUs. So that's problem one. Then you get to the programming APIs which are different between Mac OSX and iOS. So in short, no, not happening.

 

[r0k]

iOS apps run just fine in OS X under virtualization when you install Xcode and the iOS SDK. It is conceivable however unlikely that Apple could replace the dashboard and its widgets with a virtualization environment for iOS apps.

 

[robbieduncan]

iOS apps run just fine in OS X under virtualization when you install Xcode and the iOS SDK. It is conceivable however unlikely that Apple could replace the dashboard and its widgets with a virtualization environment for iOS apps.

Only if you have the source code so as you can compile them for x86/Intel CPUs. There is no way to run ARM binarys from the store. And it's not virtualization: they simply run as a process under Mac OSX.

 

[maflynn]

And it's not virtualization: they simply run as a process under Mac OSX.

Technically I believe its an emulator.

 

[robbieduncan]

Technically I believe its an emulator.

Not really. Apple call it a "Simulator" but in reality the iOS app is compiled as a Mac OSX/Intel binary. It's even linked agains the Mac OSX version of some frameworks like Foundation. This can lead to interesting problems with testing as it's possible to call Mac OSX methods in Foundation in the Simulator an it'll work fine (as you are using the Mac version) and it'll fail on an actual device.

So in short: no virtualisation, no emulation in the current tools.