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

Post by migueldeicaza » Thu, Dec 13, 2012, 12:37 AM UTC

danabramov wrote: post #81

migueldeicaza wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Managed languages are designed with a different set of goals than unmanaged languages. C#'s design goals were in general to reduce the number of bugs, help developers write better code, and maintain the code over the long term. It has evolved over the years to also adopt new programming techniques that have proved to be useful (generics, iterators, functional constructs, delayed-execution frameworks, Async programmin…

Can't wait to use C# 5 async in MonoTouch. I heard it's coming soon.

Post by starik36 » Thu, Dec 13, 2012, 12:42 AM UTC

edwinnathaniel wrote: post #50

georgemcbay wrote: post #38

Looks nice, but as with MonoTouch the pricing kills it for me. While I'm sure it pays for itself in overall value if you actually ship a product with it, attaching a price that high to a development tool causes (IMO) all sorts of secondary effects like balkanized user community, inability to realistically use it for writing open source software that anyone will collaborate on, etc. If the product cost more like $99 i…

Yes for $99 for individual developer. PLEASE.

Post by cdmckay » Thu, Dec 13, 2012, 12:56 AM UTC

eropple wrote: post #104

yawn wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used MonoTouch at work (where price was not an issue) to convert an existing project to iOS. Aside from some minor complaints about the editor, the experience was amazing. I had previously written a couple of iOS apps using the "native" toolset, and I would not go back if I had the choice. While I understand your pain (I would gladly fork over $100 as a lone developer/hobbyist for personal development, but can't ha…

I've been playing with it on my own, and I tend to agree. MonoDevelop is still pretty rough--I'm doing game stuff, so I'm kicking any actual OS X development down the road as far as humanly possible--but once you get your code deploying, it's a very nice setup. I'd really like a way to build in VS (maybe against dummy assemblies or something) and kick it over to my MBP for real compilation and deployment, though. I r…

Post by shadowmint » Thu, Dec 13, 2012, 1:16 AM UTC

natfriedman wrote: post #19

untog wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Post by jmcqk6 » Thu, Dec 13, 2012, 1:54 AM UTC

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.