Folks, could someone cut through the marketing woffle and clarify what is actually possible with the new platform projects that have appeared in Visual Studio 2015 (Ultimate preview) for iOS and Android? If you create one of these project types it looks like a thin shim over Xamarin, simply launching Xamarin inside VS2015. Sadly, I can't proceed because my licence has expired and can't be updated in the dialog. I can only quit VS2015, but in the background I see a "Download Xamarin" link.
So, does this mean I still have to purchase and install Xamarin to develop for iOS and Android in VS2015? It's quite expensive! Can anyone describe what the iOS and Android development experience is like inside VS2015? I downloaded a Xamarin trial before Xmas and it had gigabytes of dependencies on other SDKs, but I suppose that is unavoidable. I never got to the use the trial as it expired before I found time to try it. What's the deployment experience like? Most importantly ... how close can you get (or not get) to the native app feel? *Greg K*
