I see your frustration as a user of this system. I have tried the mono android version on the emulator too and it had horrible performance. Debugging was useless. Everything was crashing and so on.
But what you have to get with the evaluation version is not that you can test everything, but the overall progress that the mono team have done. This is why I purchased a license and now things work much better than on the emulator. The API that they have is a thin layer that allows the functionality below to be presented to the .NET crowd in a fashion that they are used to. So if the accelerometer or the compass or something else works on Android then the chance of it not working on Mono is very minimal. On the other hand adding restrictions to the users in order to make money is never an easy decision and I am sure that the mono team thought about your solution too. Personally if I was on their spot I would not like your idea too. 1. It will prevent anything that is supposed to show up on application launch to be seen (because of the splash screen they will have to show). 2. If they want to show your stuff after the application launch they will have to mess with the Android events that start Activities or the Application launch itself which will cripple the product as every other hack does. So in a conclusion, I based 40% of my decision on the fact that the .NET API looks good and intuitive and they try to keep up to date with all the new stuff that come out in the Android world, they add documentation and tutorials for Android newbies like me. 20% on reviews on the internet. 40% on the fact that I know some of the team members indirectly from IRC around the mono project for about 5 years and I know that they can and will make this project work in the best way possible. - Vladimir -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Tomas Finnoy Sent: Thursday, December 22, 2011 10:09 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [mono-android] Free version: Emulator only? ... Bye bye I don't see how an x86 emulator would make me test apps properly? Phones has abilities, like GPS and gyro, that simply doesn't exist on a desktop computer, and you would have to write an emulator for that as well. Most apps these days use these phone specific abilities in their apps, and I would think most companies would want to know if these things work properly *before* dishing out for developer licenses. And I know for certain that most indepedent developers would definetly want to test before opting to buy. Why not just add a splash screen or time limit? Or both? (This is built with a demo version of Mono for android. Please contact xamarin to know more.) If you want people to start using this product, you should give them a chance to try ...properly. -- View this message in context: http://mono-for-android.1047100.n5.nabble.com/Free-version-Emulator-only-Bye -bye-tp5091443p5093904.html Sent from the Mono for Android mailing list archive at Nabble.com. _______________________________________________ Monodroid mailing list [email protected] UNSUBSCRIBE INFORMATION: http://lists.ximian.com/mailman/listinfo/monodroid _______________________________________________ Monodroid mailing list [email protected] UNSUBSCRIBE INFORMATION: http://lists.ximian.com/mailman/listinfo/monodroid
