[djrockstar1]

Alright, I looked around and finally came across this StackOverflow answer[0] that supports your point. Turns out, if you use let Xcode handle code signing for you, you need a physical device for it to target (which is what we were doing), however there also exists an option to manually sign code yourself, in which case you wouldn't need a physical device. Thanks for the correction, I'm glad to be wrong!

[0] https://stackoverflow.com/a/58920415

[saagarjha]

You can just select the simulator target if you’re testing your app. When making a release build, you can either select a real iOS device or the generic iOS device that is there for that purpose. (Honestly, I agree with you on some of your points, but some of them seem a bit contrived or a derivative of “I need to learn how to do things in Xcode”. I’d be the first to admit it has a confusing interface for some things, but there’s also like some part of it you’re just going to have to deal with.)