Aspen Simulator

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

As much as I’d like to blog about my trip to Austin and SXSW last week I’m just too excited over the iPhone SDK goodies that dropped last Thursday.

You may be asking yourself, “he’s a web guy, why does he care?” Well, there happens to be a beautiful gem tucked away called the Aspen Simulator.

This is a complete pixel and functionally perfect replica of the iPhone and it’s fantastic for testing web apps. Before I was spending a lot of time back and forth between my iPhone and my desktop but since this thing is so identical I really don’t have to own an iPhone (but I will anyway).

It’s a little hard to find, but after installing the developer tools look under / Developer / Platforms / AspenSimulator.platform / Developer / Applications.

A few tricks

If you want to do a two finger zoom just hold down the option key while click dragging. You can also rotate the the phone by using the command key and right left arrows. To lock the phone press command L. Still try to figure out how to do a two finger scroll.