iPhone Development using Visual Studio

Question

I thought I heard something about VS2010 supporting iPhone/iPod touch development.

Did I fantasize/dream it?

If so, has anyone heard of any plans to support development for these platforms?

Answer 1

According to my knowlage, the iPhone SDK must be run on Mac OS system, so I dont think that you will be able to develop using VS.

Answer 2

Due to the libraries used - I'm fairly sure you need to run this on a Mac OS System. You can do some basic gcc compiling using cygwin if you wanted to - but other than that I would think you'll need Mac OS

It's why most of us are stuck buying a Mac Mini - getting a putty knife and adding more RAM and then struggling to get our old LCD monitors to work

Answer 3

Xcode must be used to develop for the iPhone. It is the only platform for which the iPhone SDK is available

Answer 4

I believe you can use Mono to develop for the iPhone. You can read more about this here www.mono-project.com/Mono:Iphone

This requires Static compilation, and I've heard the process is pretty difficult at this point. Here is an article that provides some details http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/01/open-source-mono-framework-brings-c-to-iphone-and-wii.ars

If you are beginning iPhone development similar to myself I'd suggest sticking with XCode and the Apple tools. Although they offer a different developer experience then we are used to from Microsoft tools, they seem to have a good helpful community around them.

Update: Mono Touch now allows you to do development using MonoDevelop and statically compile for the iPhone. Here is the link with more info http://monotouch.net/

Answer 5

I think it's possible to identify a device/browser on the server side. Therefore, it should be possible to develop server-sided applications that behave like an iPhone app but run in the iPhone's Safari browser. I could very well imagine that with VS2010 the device support is significant for the iPhone in the way that it comes with a special JavaScript Library that your Safari implicitly downloads the first time. The Commerce Server appears to have a support like this already - good news for everybody who is not in love with Objective-C or maybe wants to minimize effort ind iPhone development http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=2df25ab7-f38d-439e-9391-ef8f025e8064&displaylang=en

Answer 6

Yes there is a rumor... http://www.osnews.com/story/23365/Writing_iPhone_Apps_with_Visual_Studio_

Answer 7

Sounds like it will be official: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/27/ballmer_wwdc/

Answer 8

Now there are stories that Apple has give an interval of 8 minutes to Steve Ballmer to announce iPhone & iPad SDK support on VS 2010. According to various sources, it is now 90% comfirmed that VS2010 will host both iphone and ipad SDK. And this will profit for both Apple and Microsoft.

Answer 9

Hello,

Apple supported development from within Visual Studio would be really great! However, as far as i know Apple has absolutely no intention to release such a thing. Even the usage agreement that all iOS developers have to agree to disallows usage of the SDK on 'non-Apple branded computers'. In my humble opinion, this is really a bad thing because it forces multi-platform applications to be developed on multiple operating systems.

Because of this, i have started implementing a Visual Studio 2010 package that allows for iOS development from within the IDE. To workaround the SDK agreement compilation is executed on a iOS powered device.

Development progress (including screenshots) can be folowed on:

http://www.petervrenken.nl/visual%20studio

Greetings,

Peter Vrenken