Yes, the Windows Phone 8 Simulator / Windows Phone 8 Emulator can run directly in OS X. However the mouse cursor is not visible. Mouse works, but no cursor/circle to show where your pointer is, which makes the VM difficult to use. Windows Phone 8 Simulator does the same thing on Windows when launched in Hyper V Manager (rather than Visual Studio). This may change in future. Keyboard support is fine.
I used VMware Fusion 6.01 / OS X Mavericks.
- Get the Flash.vhd file from C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows Phone\v8.0\Emulation\Images\Flash.vhd inside Windows 8, and copy it to OS X (I used VMware Fusions Sharing feature to set this up quickly)
- Import the VM into VMware Fusion
- Change the CPU and Memory setting to a minimum of 2 cores, 512 MB (Windows Phone 8's mimum requirement). Before I did this, Windows Phone 8 would pause at the boot screen.
Windows Phone 8 will launch.
Keyboard shortcuts are listed at MSDN. Remember to press Fn on your Mac for function keys.