Interessting move from Microsoft. We will see where it ends.
http://www.wired.com/2016/02/microsoft-expands-empire-beyond-windows-xamarin-buy/
Interesting. I always liked the interface builder. It is similar to Xcode but better implemented with the code editor.
Xojo Inc should take a look how Xamarine does it. The visual displaying of all the Views is truly amazing. In fact, Apple should do the same regarding the interface builder. 
The Microsoft bureaucrats will mess it up. Just as they did with Skype and many others. What once was a lean and mean agile company with a promising product will simply go lost somewhere in the intestines of this giant. Like when Allaire went Macromedia went Adobe. Und tschuess (and see you never again) …
I hope I’m wrong.
I remember when Macromedia bought Altsys who made Fontographer, back in 1995. Ten years frozen hibernation and total abandonment, until Fontlab bought the license back in 2005. They issued a bugged version 5 completely unusable under Windows, no fix ever, so for all intents and purpose the product is dead, dead, dead.
Microsoft is familiar with buying competition to kill it. Xamarin is probably as good as dead.
Not quite dead since if you look at the last release of Visual Studio, then it was all about reaching out to other platforms. Since I think MS has realized they cannot any more be on just one platform. Every technology today wants in some form to reach out to some sort of mobile devices and or other platforms. Given whats been happening in Visual Studio and with MS reaching out with .NET in the last year to Mac and Linux for server components, then I would say this is what MS Wants with Xamarin.
True.
The Microsoft blog post: Microsoft to acquire Xamarin and empower more developers to build apps on any device
My view is similar to that of Björn Eiríksson. Microsoft has a real interest in cross-platform software development tools. They already have Visual Studio Code which is an impressive cross-platform IDE. The next few years should be interesting for cross-platform software developers.
Seems more like MS is coming to the admission / realization that Windows isn’t going to be everywhere & they have to adapt.
Xamarin is a smart choice for them to push C# onto every platform especially those where they are extremely weak (mobile)
Mark my words - It’s a new revision of “embrace, extend, extinguish” the philosophy of old
All the big tech companies do it, Google, Apple, they buy t’other company or product, then simply let it wither and die…
I believe that it will improve Xamarin immensely. Xamarin will never be what Xojo is in terms of rapid development, it is a beast with more than a fair share of bugs and MS will bring it inline with VS in terms of quality and usability. MS has really progressed with x-platform with Visual Studio Code and .NET Core but these are still early days.
Don’t bury your heads in the sand, as beautiful as the Apple products are, MS still dominates business software and systems and provides the some of the best developer tools available. Sure buying a competitor to remove the competition is a practice that many companies partake in – but Xamarin was never a competitor, MS wants the technology and can accelerate its development faster than Xamarin ever could alone.
Xamarin mobile targets iOS, Android and Windows Mobile natively and Windows, OS X and Linux for desktop - Xamarin needed this change to mature and now it has happened.
BTW Skype is still here and now also exists as Skype for Business as part of the Office Suite replacing the horrible Netmeeting offering. Skype runs on iOS/Android/Windows Mobile/BlackBerry and Windows/Mac/Linux plus some Smart TVs, Xbox One and PS Vita…
I remember when ‘cross-platform’ from Microsoft meant it worked on Windows 98, 2000 and XP.
I don’t know why one of these FANG behemoths haven’t offered Geoff a truckload of $$$. If he has, I’m glad he hasn’t accepted!
It may - and I say may - be that Apple will dislike MS having a tool to create native iOS (and OSX) apps and stop accepting apps not made by Xcode. Just to outrule MS. Steve Jobs surely would consider this.
The big boys are all trying to create x-plat dev tools now (Xojo was just ahead of the pack), Google are working on tech that allows Java based Android apps to be ported to iOS (sorry threw up in my mouth a bit).
Apple’s Swift covers all Apple devices and Linux, although read that as Android, as Apple Music (phrgh) was written in Swift. With Swift being open-sourced it’s only a matter of time before it can be used to construct Windows apps.
With Xamarin, this opens up VS to more platforms.
Business 101; if you can’t compete, copy.
Apple does seem to slowly moving this way, certain types of apps can only be built using their language and tools (Photos extension as an example).
And sadly, Xojo still seems to be focused on marketing to hobbyists. You look at how much Xamarin charges and who they sell to and you wonder what Xojo is doing wrong. I suspect it’s who they are focusing on.
My Xojo vs Xamarin blog post has been, by far, the most widely read post on my blog. Ever. Not even close. And yet I don’t believe that Xojo has ever tried to encourage that comparison or actively worked to compare themselves to Xamarin, or any other tool for that matter.
I find this good news. Over the last few years I’ve been enjoying c# over xojo anyways. I use Xojo for its cross platform capabilities and I like the community but the language is missing too many key features for me to tolerate it and be efficient in a lot of cases.
Without Generics, Lambda Expressions writing code is much more time consuming and frustrating in Xojo. The fact you can’t use introspection to get the name of an enum or its list of values is insane (IMHO). Autocomplete is still a mess and the ‘new’ IDE leaves a lot to be desired. Couple these Xojo’s with a lack of a Nuget package equivalent (other than all of MBS’s paid libraries) and you’re left with a mediocre tool thats remaining perk is it being crossplatform. But even for iOS you have to use the new framework and so many declares it hardly makes it crossplatform friendly when moving from one of your desktop projects to mobile.
I worry that if Xojo doesn’t take a serious look at some of these issues they’ll be left behind far too soon.
I’ve looked at Xamarin several times, but although it looks good at the outside is certainly has its problems, like:
- Slow building.
- Very buggy IDE.
- Errors when loading storyboard.
- Disappearing controls.
Just look for these on their forums.
And it’s expensive. For $25/month/platform you don’t even get e-mail support; only forum (and hoping you get an answer …).
Xojo may be limited but, compared to Xamarin, it’s fast and lean. Yes Xojo has its bugs, but Xamarin has more.
NB: It’s a sign that Xamarin offers a version 3 download link just below the version 4 link “for those who have problems with version 4” (…).
Same experience here. We gave up and tried to use Cordova/PhoneGap but that was not a way forward either (compiling for Android was a pain). The projected was successfully using AppCellerator’s Titanium framework instead. Worked good for cross-compiling Android and iOS. The integration with Xcode worked flaw-lessly and integration with the Android SDK was OK. Debugging on Android was a pain, but the framework was good enough that if it worked on iOS it worked (with 99,9% certainty at least) on Android.
Native app projects was eventually scrapped and replaced with a WebApp sin Sencha Ext JS instead because of distribution problems through the various stores.
you know both MS and Apple worked together on MS office for mac?
yes, and what is your point?
[quote=249740:@Bob Keeney]And sadly, Xojo still seems to be focused on marketing to hobbyists. You look at how much Xamarin charges and who they sell to and you wonder what Xojo is doing wrong. I suspect it’s who they are focusing on.
My Xojo vs Xamarin blog post has been, by far, the most widely read post on my blog. Ever. Not even close. And yet I don’t believe that Xojo has ever tried to encourage that comparison or actively worked to compare themselves to Xamarin, or any other tool for that matter.[/quote]
The answer to that is very simple, over the last 18 years or so then its always the same story. You start telling them about it its xplaform and sort of cool in this and that way. They ask what language is behind it, you tell them its sort of basic dialect then there is short silence (at that point they stamp it as a bit of a toy) then you talk more of but you just press compile for the other platforms and even if reluctant their still interested to see more though not happy, then if you make it that far and show them the IDE then thats where it ends, every time. All interest is gone. The code editor number 1, 2 and 3 kills it. Sluggish IDE number 4 and 5. (especially if you make the mistake to show it on Windows).
Sure there might be a few simple users who might think they need dumbed down IDE. But your really loosing all the chances to reach for the mass markets. There is just no chance at all as is. Same with the basic dialect yes it somewhat passes as I described above but thats not where the cult is today, its not where the mass of the programmers want to position them selfs. Sure it would take time to option different dialects like Visual Studio does (like the C# which is free for others to use that language) but the cost of adding 2nd dialect might be fraction compared to what impact it has to have a chance for actual mass market and not just the tiny edge case market. But of course this all is a bit mute while the Code editor is as it is since that’s where the interest is gone every single time. And anyone who is saying that is not the case is just fooling them selfs, I have shown it time after time over the past 18 year, and I have worked in very big companies, including Microsoft most valuable partner in Western Europe, and every time it comes down to same thing.