Finally, Good news for .NET developers, Thanks to open source efforts of Novell ( the force behind the .NET runtime port to Linux, unix and mac ), .NET developers will be able to develop applications for Apple iPhone touch using their favorite tools i.e. Microsoft Visual studio,, C# and .NET framework. Man I’m excited about this one. Why this is a exciting news because previously iPhone development was only possible using Apple’s Objective C or Javascript widgets.
Novell today announced MonoTouch 1.0 , a first tool from Mono Project which targets a mobile platform and lets developers compile their code for IPhone and IPod devices.
“We are seeing a lot of iPhones work their way into the enterprise, yet the number of people willing to make the commitment to bring in people with Objective-C skills is low,” said Joseph Hill, a Novell product manager.
MonoTouch is a software development kit that can be used to develop software for iPhone using C# or visual basic languages available for .NET framework. MonoTouch supports most .Net features like object services, garbage collection services, threading services, but it is not a traditional .NET runtime, with some differences due to the different security model of the iPhone. Also none of the dynamic features of .NET are present on this. That’s the limitation that Apple has imposed at legal level and at a technical level. The iPhone developer license forbids scripting engines or just-in-time (JIT) compilers, which .Net needs to run code. Additionally there is no support currently for Silverlight or Moonlight, the media delivery and scripting functions of .Net as of yet, although there are plans of bring silverlight to MoonTouch later on.
Behind the scene, .NET dynamic code which compiles at runtime using JIT Compiler is used to output static code, using a static compiler. What it means is that there will be no JIT compilation in MonoTouch applications.
MonoTouch will cost $399 per year for an individual license and $999 per developer for an enterprise license.Five Enterprise licenses in bulk can be bought for $3,999 . An evaluation version will be made available later this week
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Article by Muzzammil Waheed
Founder of BiGGTech.com, tech enthusiast, develops in Microsoft technologies with interests in technology, science and gadgets