Looks nice, but as with MonoTouch the pricing kills it for me.<p>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.<p>If the product cost more like $99 it might be able to overcome the inertia a bit better. I know I'd be willing to buy it for that even if I wasn't sure I'd ship a product on it, but $399 is Real Money, so as hypothetically interested as I've been in MonoTouch, etc, I've never really looked at it beyond the press releases.
My experience with MonoTouch has generally been very positive.
Why I love MonoTouch:<p>- C# goodness, especially event handlers instead of overly verbose ObjC delegates<p>- It's fun to port ObjC loops to oneliners using LINQ and lambdas<p>- I prefer somewhat ugly MonoDevelop to pretty-but-very-odd Xcode<p>- I can reuse both C# and ObjC code, and ObjC code is straightforward to port, if needed<p>- Xamarin support is friendly and helpful<p>There are some things that annoyed me:<p>- Some generic-heavy C# code will crash the device due to AOT limitations—learned it the hard way<p>- MonoDevelop hangs for a few seconds after you switch from Xcode, even if you didn't change anything<p>- You need to make sure you _understand_ how MonoTouch GC works together with ObjC reference counting, or you'll get memory leaks<p>- You'll need to learn to use Instruments to find those memory leaks<p>- Debugger often freezes (should've reported this)<p>- Binaries can get heavy, but not too heavy<p>- Compilation is impossibly slow on Air, barely tolerable on Pro<p>- Lack of tooling for binding ObjC code—I wish I could just drop ObjC files and headers into a MonoTouch binding project instead of compiling it to fat binary first<p>But still, I'm glad we went with MonoTouch.
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.<p>The other problem is the lack of linux support for their SDK. Seems rather odd, considering Mono's roots.
Where does this leave MonoMac? <a href="http://www.mono-project.com/MonoMac" rel="nofollow">http://www.mono-project.com/MonoMac</a> states that Xamarin.Mac has broader API coverage; does this mean MonoMac will continue to be developed, but just remain as a (free) subset with LGPL portions?
I'm huge fan of Xamarin but somehow missing how is this different from MonoMac?<p>For anyone who is thinking to start development of cross-platform GUI app in .NET, I encourage to check Eto project - <a href="https://github.com/picoe/eto" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/picoe/eto</a>
Interesting that Apple allows this, not just on Macs but on iOS devices. When Adobe wanted to cross-compile Flash for iOS, here is what Steve Jobs wrote:<p>"We know from painful experience that letting a third party layer of software come between the platform and the developer ultimately results in sub-standard apps and hinders the enhancement and progress of the platform. If developers grow dependent on third party development libraries and tools, they can only take advantage of platform enhancements if and when the third party chooses to adopt the new features. We cannot be at the mercy of a third party deciding if and when they will make our enhancements available to our developers.<p>"This becomes even worse if the third party is supplying a cross platform development tool. The third party may not adopt enhancements from one platform unless they are available on all of their supported platforms. Hence developers only have access to the lowest common denominator set of features. Again, we cannot accept an outcome where developers are blocked from using our innovations and enhancements because they are not available on our competitor’s platforms."<p><a href="http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/" rel="nofollow">http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/</a><p>FWIW, I've always thought this was an overly broad generalization.
I downloaded the trial and tried to create a Xmarin.Mac.Project and I got an error that I need to buy the software.<p>Did I choose the wrong option? If so, which one should I be testing? Why can't I test out all features of the tool?<p>Also, I agree with everyone else that the price point being $399 is way too high for personal development. Would it be possible to get something cheaper for personal development to see if it's actually useful for my needs?
So MonoMac is going pro? Glad to see it will be supported.<p><a href="http://www.mono-project.com/MonoMac" rel="nofollow">http://www.mono-project.com/MonoMac</a><p><pre><code> > 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.</code></pre>