iOS MonoTouch closed Beta

[mccannmarc]

Hey guys, I don't know how many of you will already know about this but I thought I would post it here to give anyone who doesn't know about it that may be interested a heads up.

The developers of Mono (think .Net but open source and multi-platform) are currently holding a closed beta of MonoTouch, it can be joined at:-

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

I don't know how popular something like this will be for iPhone development but for someone like myself who came from a Windows programming background it is definitely something worth looking at even if just for a play around.

 

[GetMobiled]

That's cool. I'm gonna read about it now. I'm primarily a .NET developer so this is definitely of interest to me.

 

[PhoneyDeveloper]

Just an idle question. How do you debug apps written using Monotouch? The description says that the code is compiled to native. Can you step through your .Net code in the debugger?

 

[mccannmarc]

Just an idle question. How do you debug apps written using Monotouch? The description says that the code is compiled to native. Can you step through your .Net code in the debugger?

I haven't a clue tbh, I'm still waiting to be accepted into the beta. I'll let you know when I've had a play. You will always still be able to use GDB to step through code at a lower level though either way.

 

[CylonGlitch]

Develop iPhone Apps with .NET (C#)

Yes, it seems to be true, you can now make iPhone apps outside of Objective-C. Even using the Microsoft C# suite.

Article on Arstechnica

Well this does look interesting and does open up the door to a lot of possibilities, I have a few concerns.

1) $399 for a PERSONAL license means that you can develop using it but can't sell it. So why bother?
2) $999 for the pro license means you're gonna have to sell your app well to break even.
3) You still need a Mac for emulation (if you chose to go that route)
4) You still need the developers program.
5) You, in theory, don't need a Mac any more... except to do emulation, install the license files, etc... And at $1000 for a license, why not just buy a MacBook and get Objective-C free? Sure Objective-C is different then C# and may not be as elegant, but it isn't that hard to learn.
6) Will Apple approve the apps? I'm guessing that they are using some custom profiling tools on the apps submitted, I wonder if this will screw things up for them.