What is wrong with the simulator that's built in MPLAB. Is it comlicated or user non-friendly? It has everithing you need and supports all PIC's for free.
Lots of ways, one is open a watch window; select PORTA to watch and you can click on the data to change the bits (right click and view as binary might help)
The simulator in MPLAB is software, a slow computer will simulate slowly. A fast computer well goes pretty fast. Don't single step use breakpoints instead.
Right-click on any command line you want to deal with, and in the pop-up menu, choose "set PC at this cursor", or "run PC to this cursor" depending on what you want to do.
MPLAB, of course, there is no graphics, so not really friendly, but it is really good, absolutely free, supports all of PICs at its released time, ..., you can see why it is really useful and helpful.
dear;
oshonsoft is the best simulator ever -from my point of view- so don't disturb yourself by searching for another simulator, just take into consideration the speed difference between actual micro controller and simulator
But there is one big difference between proteus and other simulator and I find it very usefull. Compim feature lets you connect serial devices to the simulated circuit, no need to create the actual circuit.
It also supports lots of microcontroller aside from microchip.