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Your C# App on 66 Million Macs: Announcing Xamarin.Mac

blog.xamarin.com

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Re: Your C# App on 66 Million Macs: Announcing Xamarin.Mac

#13

Post by profquail »

TheEskimo wrote: post #7
LaSombra wrote: post #2

This might be the final blow to Java on the desktop.

Not at all. This offers a completely different solution than java. With java, you write once and run on everything. This lets you write C# on OS X, but it won't compile and run on Windows or Linux. Windows software can't be as easily ported to OS X either, the entire GUI, at the least, will have to be rewritten. I would argue that Python would make more sense as a java-killer. It has the write once, run everywhere th…

IKVM.NET is a suite of Java-to-CIL conversion tools, and it used primarily with Mono: http://www.ikvm.net/

Re: Your C# App on 66 Million Macs: Announcing Xamarin.Mac

#14

Post by untog »

natfriedman wrote: post #10
untog wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It costs $399 for an individual license, so there is a cost barrier. I balked at the cost of MonoTouch, but since playing around with it, I've got to say- I think it'll be worth the money. I just wish it was a little more affordable to hobbyist developers like myself. EDIT: I just noticed that they had a 25% Black Friday offer. Damn.

Thanks for the feedback. We definitely have two classes of customers - businesses and professional developers who can't believe how cheap our products are relative to the value they're receiving, and hobbyists who are more price-sensitive. It's tricky to balance these two.

Oh, I understand entirely. To a large company a $999 license is practically a rounding error given expenditures on other products out there.

I don't have any great suggestions on how you can fix it, just a lament :)

Re: Your C# App on 66 Million Macs: Announcing Xamarin.Mac

#15

Post by flogic »

LaSombra wrote: post #2

This might be the final blow to Java on the desktop.

Personally, I think computing power has hit the point where Java desktop apps and applets aren't that big a deal. I've got one running on my desktop right now. It runs for day's on end without being a significant burden to the rest of the system.

Re: Your C# App on 66 Million Macs: Announcing Xamarin.Mac

#16

Post by natfriedman »

lucian1900 wrote: post #12

Xamarin's stuff looks really nice, but I really wish they had a non-profit free tier. I can't even make opensource Android apps without paying a lot. The other problem is the lack of linux support for their SDK. Seems rather odd, considering Mono's roots.

It personally pains me not to support Linux, but we get such a tiny fraction of our customer base coming from Linux that it isn't worth it. Not to mention that there is effectively no "Linux" platform and you have to select a subset of distro versions.

Re: Your C# App on 66 Million Macs: Announcing Xamarin.Mac

#17

Post by untog »

lucian1900 wrote: post #12

Xamarin's stuff looks really nice, but I really wish they had a non-profit free tier. I can't even make opensource Android apps without paying a lot. The other problem is the lack of linux support for their SDK. Seems rather odd, considering Mono's roots.

The other problem is the lack of linux support for their SDK. Seems rather odd, considering Mono's roots.

I suspect that they make the vast majority of their profit on MonoTouch (Mono for Android is great, but Java and C# are similar enough that there is a lower barrier). With that in mind, there isn't much point in focusing on Linux- you can't develop for Mac or iOS on it.

Re: Your C# App on 66 Million Macs: Announcing Xamarin.Mac

#19

Post by natfriedman »

untog wrote: post #17
lucian1900 wrote: post #12

Xamarin's stuff looks really nice, but I really wish they had a non-profit free tier. I can't even make opensource Android apps without paying a lot. The other problem is the lack of linux support for their SDK. Seems rather odd, considering Mono's roots.

The other problem is the lack of linux support for their SDK. Seems rather odd, considering Mono's roots. I suspect that they make the vast majority of their profit on MonoTouch (Mono for Android is great, but Java and C# are similar enough that there is a lower barrier). With that in mind, there isn't much point in focusing on Linux- you can't develop for Mac or iOS on it.

Actually Android and iOS make an equal amount of money for us. This was not true a year ago, when iOS sales were about 65% of our volume, but today it is almost exactly 50-50.

Re: Your C# App on 66 Million Macs: Announcing Xamarin.Mac

#20

Post by j_s »

So MonoMac is going pro? Glad to see it will be supported.

http://www.mono-project.com/MonoMac

  > the result of weekend hacking as our day to day work 
  > revolves around Mono's efforts on Linux servers, Linux 
  > desktops, Visual Studio integration and our mobile 
  > efforts. Luckily, it shares some components with MonoTouch.
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