May be of interest to .NET devs who like Apple iwotnots

[DimPrawn]

http://monotouch.net/

I think I know what I'm buying myself for xmas.

Monotouch, an Apple Mac and an assortment of iPhones and iTouch thingies.

[AtW]

"Please note that MonoTouch requires a Mac, Apple's iPhone SDK and you must be part of Apple's iPhone Developer Program to test and deploy your software on a device and to redistribute your code."

[AtW]

Does it generate native code for iPhone? If it requires user to install huge runtime then it's tulipy. Unless Apple preinstall it, which it certainly won't any time soon.

[Sysman]

"Please note that MonoTouch requires a Mac, Apple's iPhone SDK and you must be part of Apple's iPhone Developer Program to test and deploy your software on a device and to redistribute your code."

OS X comes with a full development system included, on top of which it's USD 99 to join the iPhone Developer Program and get the iPhone SDK.

Not too bad if you already have a Mac.

[xoggoth]

It's anoying one needs a Mac for Iphone dev. Was considering porting our stuff to it. Gave up on the Nokia too. Masses of stuff you need to instal but no clear instructions, broken links, sofware that is now called something else so you are not quite sure which is the right one out of a list of not quite matching names. Can't get it to work. Beats me how anyone manages to develop for these things.

[xoggoth]

PS I recently started using my old Psion 5 again.

[DimPrawn]

Does it generate native code for iPhone? If it requires user to install huge runtime then it's tulipy. Unless Apple preinstall it, which it certainly won't any time soon.

It generates native iPhone code, no IL and no runtime required.

[DimPrawn]

OS X comes with a full development system included, on top of which it's USD 99 to join the iPhone Developer Program and get the iPhone SDK.

Not too bad if you already have a Mac.

But then you have to know Objective C and you need to understand the full iPhone API.

Here you get to use your familiar C# language, .NET library, garbage collection, threading, XML handling, LINQ, etc and have to just learn a new set of assemblies to handle drawing widgets and responding to gestures on the screen.

Much smaller learning curve if you are already C#/.NET expert.

[Sysman]

But then you have to know Objective C and you need to understand the full iPhone API.

That is the route I'd take, but for someone already competent in .NET MonoTouch hopefully provides a quicker route.

[AtW]

It generates native iPhone code, no IL and no runtime required.

And how they include garbage collection into all that native code unless they prepack compiled version of Mono with the app (meaning it ought to be huge).

Also, they don't support Winforms, what would you use for UI on iPhone, WPF?

It's certainly interesting but then don't forget you'd probably need to get Apple to still "approve" your application, personally I hate this tulip with someone needing to approve my code - the only person who is entitled to do that is the user of the software.