can you use a virtual machine for mac iphone emulator

Please DO NOTE that this is the truth for both native and hybrid (Cordova based) mobile app solutions And let it just be fate that these solutions are based on the Virtualbox VM software when it comes to running them on a Mac OS X machine. One of the things to keep your Android emulator running fast as lightning is NOT using Androids default emulator, but using an emulator solution like Genymotion or Xamarin Android Player which includes fast emulator installment and running your app on different configurations fast & furious. If your emulator slows down your code-build-test cycle frustration will rise and the possibility to introduce failures rises along.

Your VM images need to be able to run Hyper-V (called nested virtualization) and Virtualbox just isn’t up for that job.Ī fast running emulator for your Android platform build to test if Android (especially when not using Crosswalk) doesn’t screw up the rendering on different OS versions is a must.

Since Virtualbox is a very nice free virtualization solution but it doesn’t support Hyper-V yet. Even the latest Windows 10 emulator – still a pre-release – is based on Microsoft’s Hyper-V VM technology.Īnd that is a crucial factor when you want to pick the right VM software for your mobile development brick.

If you develop for multiple platforms and Windows is one of them you’re bound to encounter the need for a Hyper-V based Emulator when testing your app for Windows Phone 8. In this post i’m talking about running a Mac with VM to extend- and improve the platform development t0wards other platforms (Android and Windows). Please note (as mentioned in the comments) that Apple’s EULA prohibits you to use a Virtualised Mac OS box on Non-Apple metal. In this post I discuss some required stuff for creating cross-platform mobile apps for the top 3 mobile platforms (iOS, Android and Windows) and what Virtual Machine software will be the best setup to enable you to build for them. That leaves you with at least having to use some sort of Virtual Machine (VM) solution if you don’t want to reboot to reach the other side of your Mac (one partition running Windows, the other one Mac OS X). From a Windows machine, you can target Windows and Android but not iOS (since compiling Mac executable code may only be done on a Mac). Assuming you are targeting multiple platforms – most likely iOS and Android and some Windows too – you would need a Mac to compile your cross-platform solution for iOS.Īs it appears, when using the Cordova framework for your project you can build iOS and Android from your Mac, but not target Windows from it.

Can you use a virtual machine for mac iphone emulator