Re: What if somebody just bought an iPhone?

Tyrone wrote on Fri, 17 May 2024 22:41:19 +0000 :

I did. Unless you are really desperate to run Android apps on your Windows PC,
I don't see the point in any of them.  You can just buy an Android
phone/tablet and not have to worry about emulation issues (and you listed MANY
issues).
 
Same goes for iPhones and iPads. If you want to run iOS software, then just
get an iOS device. Easy. No compatibility issues.
 
The emulators I have used were always for hardware that is no longer
available. Those were actually uselful. When the hardware is readily
available, I see no point in fussing with emulators.

Since you helped me, I will again try to return the favor to provide
some answers to your concerns, but we each may weigh them differently.

And that's OK as emulation isn't for everyone as not everyone needs it.
I don't need/want emulation, for example. And neither do you.

While I don't disagree with your reasonable points above, another key
reason for mobile device emulation on a desktop is so that developers can
test their mobile device code easily on hundreds of devices with an equally
large number of device setup and configuration.

In my experience (admittedly only with free Android emulators), the
emulator comes with anywhere from 1 to scores of Android mobile devices you
can emulate, one at a time, to load your code into to test how it works.

That's the main point of emulation, as far as I'm aware, which, for you and
for me, isn't of all that much use, as you noted, since we're not
developers.

A bit off that topic is mirroring, where mobile devices can mirror on all
three desktop platforms, which is something I do every moment of every day
that I'm sitting at my computer.
 <https://i.postimg.cc/KvTvtMS8/scrcpy31.jpg>

Mirroring allows me to operate my phone (while it's in my pocket) on my PC
with full functionality - using the PC's keyboard, mouse, monitor, speaker,
microphone & clipboard. In addition, I mount my phone as a Windows drive.
 <https://i.postimg.cc/hjkVFyqJ/scrcpy07.jpg> Android mnt as drive letter

Since I have a large monitor, my phone becomes almost two feet tall and
about ten inches wide - which makes it really easy to display and interact
with it over the Wi-Fi network - where I love the keyboard & clipboard use.
 <https://i.postimg.cc/9FJMKYch/scrcpy21.jpg>

Effectively, over Wi-Fi, my real Android phone becomes a Windows phone.
 <https://i.postimg.cc/tgvzsMRm/scrcpy25.jpg> Connect over Wi-Fi sans USB

For example, I can simply drag and drop over Wi-Fi an APK to install it.
 <https://i.postimg.cc/wvsbcNBz/scrcpy05.jpg> Drag APK from Windows

But I admit to make all that efficient took a bit of Windows knowledge.
 <https://i.postimg.cc/tTmdgKTB/scrcpy02.jpg> An efficient program setup
 <https://i.postimg.cc/XqZsmVFM/scrcpy14.jpg> AppPath & shortcut TARGET
 <https://i.postimg.cc/g2yNftw0/scrcpy15.jpg> Trick to pin batch shortcut
 <https://i.postimg.cc/5NrK7jtg/scrcpy16.jpg> powershell hide-console trick

Yet mirroring is not emulation (although emulation can do similar things).