If a user wants to use a Monotouch app, what does he need to download onto his iPhone prior to using the app? Also how heavy is the stuff he needs to download?
Thanks.
+3
A:
Monotouch is completely transparent to the end user - the user just buys a monotouch app from the app store, and it just works, in exactly the same way a normal iphone application works.
The size of the app will very depending on how many of the frameworks are used by the app.
JosephH
2010-09-28 12:57:31
Is there a way to know what the size of the app would be on a user's iphone?
askmo
2010-09-28 13:05:41
You're basically asking "how long is a piece of string?". Either try and find an app that's similar to what you want to write and see how big that is, or try one of the samples ( http://monotouch.net/Documentation/Samples ) that's close to what you want to do and see how large that compiles to be.
JosephH
2010-09-28 13:25:34
Well I can to that as well :). However I thought that someone with experience developing MT apps could tell me if the size differs (a lot).
askmo
2010-09-28 13:33:18
+1
A:
The user shouldn't need anything. The MonoTouch SDK
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.
From: http://monotouch.net/FAQ
Guy
2010-09-28 12:59:27
But the size of MT app is A LOT bigger than of Objective-C app. So it'd not just native code, right?!
askmo
2010-09-28 13:05:11
Where do you see that the size of an MT app is "A LOT" bigger than an Obj-C app? No, it's only native code. Now, if MT base/wrapper classes have to be compiled into the app, then yes, that's more code, so more binary data, but everything is turned into a native iOS binary.
Guy
2010-09-28 13:19:08
I haven't seen it anywhere, but I read blogs and developers complaining that their MT app is a lot bigger than of the OC one. They mention that 1MB OC app is approx 5MB MT.
askmo
2010-09-28 13:32:17
Yes, MT apps are in general a little bigger than ObjC ones. For example, my app Quicklytics, when compressed, has a size of aprox 3Mb, which is not much more than the minimum app size you can do with MonoTouch. Can you make smaller apps with ObjC? Yes. A similar app will likely be smaller, but it'll also take more time to do. MT includes lots of things, like garbabe collection, for free. In ObjC, you would have to take care of that. It's a tradeoff. Personally, as long as the size is below 20Mb and the app is fast, I dont care.
Eduardo Scoz
2010-09-28 14:30:55
Eduardo, have you made an app which size reached 20MB? we plan to build an app with substantial amount of graphics and MT's DLLs and that's the reason why we care about the size.
askmo
2010-09-29 09:10:46