The simulator is a different SDK target than iOS itself.
You have to compile completely independently for it, and depending on your dependencies they may not compile for the simulator.
Additionally the simulator runs a really ancient and feature restricted version of Metal. That means you can’t test a lot of graphical things that the hardware actually supports. I’m not sure if this supports GPU passthrough but the macOS VMs do, so that alone would be a huge improvement if possible.
Sure, you can also have iOS binaries forward relevant iOS SDK symbols to macOS. That doesn’t mean they’re not different SDKs with different limitations, and not everything that is on the store can be patched to run in the simulator because there are legitimately symbols missing or with stubbed functionality.
You have to compile completely independently for it, and depending on your dependencies they may not compile for the simulator.
Additionally the simulator runs a really ancient and feature restricted version of Metal. That means you can’t test a lot of graphical things that the hardware actually supports. I’m not sure if this supports GPU passthrough but the macOS VMs do, so that alone would be a huge improvement if possible.