It's so annoying how Macs cannot run iPad/iPhone apps despite having almost the same hardware.
I get it, because if you're a developer you don't want to be deluged with support requests from a platform that you don't care about.
But also, it feels more like a favor to big corporate interests who are probably worried about "security" in the sense that macOS is only 95% locked down. It's still possible to have true root if you disable a few things, and it probably makes the kind of companies who make apps that refuse to run on a jailbroken device worry.
When Apple pulls the last plug on letting us mere users actually own our computers and moves the macOS to the iOS model where Apple will decide what programs you can run, it will probably come with the small benefit that all iOS apps will be required to be installable on Mac.
And it's probably using something similar to the Simulator, but likely not the simulator itself. It's been a really long time since I launched any iPad apps on my mac, so I did get get a lot of the details wrong, sorry.