iPhone World

I don’t know how I didn’t know about this sooner, but it appears the long wait is [sort of] over. .NET has come to iPhone development. Yes, you heard me, the ability to write for the iPhone in C# is here.

This changes everything.

First, the bad news.. It’s not free. The personal edition will set you back $400. There was a beta test program but 1.0 was released today so there will be no more of that. I’m sure it will eventually show up on torrent sites but for now there doesn’t seem to be anything out there.

MonoTouch is the Mono edition for Apple’s iPhone and Apple’s iPod Touch devices.  MonoTouch allows developers to create C# and .NET based applications that run on the iPhone and can take advantage of the iPhone APIs as well as reusing both code and libraries that have been built for .NET as well as existing skills.

To purchase a copy, you need to head over to Monotouch. It seems this was also just posted to Slashdot, and the site already seems to be suffering, so I am reposting the following from the FAQ which is what most of you will be interested in.

What is MonoTouch?

MonoTouch is a software development kit for Mac OS X that lets you use .NET programming languages to create native applications for Apple iPhone and Apple iPod Touch devices. MonoTouch allows developers to use the .NET framework and more efficient programming languages, such as C#, to create applications that run on the iPhone and can take advantage of native iPhone APIs. Developers can test MonoTouch applications on the iPhone simulator, as well as physical hardware, and can distribute MonoTouch applications on Apple’s App Store.

What is included in the MonoTouch SDK?

MonoTouch is delivered as a static compiler that turns .NET executables and libraries into native applications. There is no JIT or interpreter shipped with your application, only native code. In addition to the core Base Class Libraries that are part of Mono, MonoTouch also ships with bindings for various iPhone APIs to allow developers to create native iPhone applications with Mono.

Do I need a Mac to use MonoTouch?

MonoTouch requires a Mac and Apple’s iPhone SDK to test on the emulator and deploy on the device. And you will need to be an Apple iPhone developer to deploy on the device.

How is MonoTouch Licensed?

MonoTouch is a commercial product based on the open source Mono project and is licensed on a per-developer basis.

With which version of .NET is MonoTouch compatible?

MonoTouch is based on a hybrid .NET 2.0 and Silverlight 2 API profile. If you want to use existing C# code, you will need to compile it from scratch using our compiler and tools to make sure that the proper assemblies are referenced.

What .NET features does MonoTouch support?

MonoTouch supports garbage collection, multi-threading, and many features of .NET 3.5, including C# 3.0 and LINQ, with some exceptions due to the security system in the device. See Limitations for more information about the limitations of MonoTouch.

Does MonoTouch support running Silverlight /Moonlight applications?

No.MonoTouch does not currently include Moonlight or Silverlight functionality.

What is the difference between MonoTouch Personal Edition and MonoTouch Enterprise Edition?

A MonoTouch Personal Edition license is non-transferable, entitles the owner to one year of MonoTouch updates, and allows distribution of applications built with MonoTouch on Apple’s App Store.

A MonoTouch Enterprise Edition license is owned by a legal entity for use by one developer at any given time, entitles the owner to one year of MonoTouch updates, and allows enterprise deployments of MonoTouch applications, as well as the distribution of applications built with MonoTouch on Apple’s App Store.

Soooo. If anyone decides to pony up the cash for MonoTouch, or happens to find it by some other means, let’s hear about it in the comments. How does it stand up? Is it the biggest thing since sliced bread?