Hi Michael, I kept reading and searching earlier and I've answered some of my own questions. Indeed you have to separately purchase Xamarin (~$1000/year) and have all the required dependent kits and devices (luckily I have an iMac here with the latest Xcode, and an iPad and a Nexus phone). I've seen screen shots of coding in VS2015, but it's hard to know what the experience is like, they describe it being lovely of course in the advertising. No one talks about deployment. For some reason I had this preconception that part of Xamarin was going to be bundled with VS2015, but alas no.
I'm surprised you're using Xamarin on a Mac to make Mac apps, as you might as well use Xcode and Swift. My experience with products that "try to do everything" like Xamarin is that they are full of quirks because they have to appease everyone, but worst of all, you have to learn to do things their way. I might take up your offer of Saturday so I can see with my own eyes what the whole experience is like. I'll email you offlist re the hack day. In the meantime, the latest VS2015 RC ISO download is at 66% with an hour to go. I have spare time, so I'll also install a new trial of Xamarin and see how it all hangs together. Thanks, Greg On 27 May 2015 at 06:59, Michael Ridland <[email protected]> wrote: > > I'm not sure about Visual Studio parts as i primarily use Xamarin Studio > on a Mac, this is the best if your developing production iOS apps with > Xamarin as I find it's much faster to build and load up your apps. You also > need a Mac to put into the AppStore, no matter what tech you use. > > As far as how near Native, well essentially anything you can do in a > Native app you can do in Xamarin, it's just a thin layer over the native > API. Any slowness is programmer error. There's more to it than that, > there's big learning curves and other frustrations but it's the best option > we have. > > If you want to know more, your welcome to come to a hack day in Sydney, > Brisbane or Melbourne. Www.xamarinhackday.com or just drop me an email. > > > > On Wednesday, May 27, 2015, Greg Keogh <[email protected]> wrote: > >> 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* >> > > > -- > > *Michael Ridland | Technical Director | Xamarin MVP* > > XAM Consulting - Mobile Technology Specialists > > www.xam-consulting.com > > Blog: www.michaelridland.com > > > >
