Microsoft Announces Xamarin Will Be Included Free With Visual Studio, And Open Source
by Brett Howse on March 31, 2016 11:59 AM EST- Posted in
- Operating Systems
- Microsoft
- Visual Studio
Back in February, Microsoft announced it was acquiring Xamarin, the cross-platform toolkit which allows developers to write native apps for iOS, Android, Windows, and Mac, using Visual Studio and C# code. Today during the Build day 2 keynote, Scott Guthrie announced Xamarin will now be included for free with all editions of Visual Studio, and Xamarin will join the rest of .NET in being made open source.
Previously Xamarin was an expensive set of tools, and while powerful, the cost was prohibitive to a lot of developers. By moving the Xamarin tools right into Visual Studio at no cost, Microsoft is making a play to have Visual Studio be a much better platform for coding on all platforms.
Xamarin outputs native apps for the supported platrforms, and as part of the demo, Microsoft showed off a new feature of Visual Studio which is a remote simulator for iOS. Since they can’t emulate iOS directly on Windows like they can with Android, this at least allows you to debug and run apps in real-time without having to switch computers.
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WaitingForNehalem - Thursday, March 31, 2016 - link
This is just awesome! I've used Xamarin before but the subscription fee was just ridiculous. Still need to try out React-Native...lilmoe - Thursday, March 31, 2016 - link
HELL yes.CSMR - Thursday, March 31, 2016 - link
I was holding off on Xamarin, waiting for MS to buy it and set reasonable subscription fees. Free is pretty reasonable.cknobman - Thursday, March 31, 2016 - link
Finally, been wanting to use Xamarin for years but did not have the money to do it.Time to try making my Windows Phone app available for Android and iOS!!
estarkey7 - Friday, April 1, 2016 - link
This is the most awesomeness awesome ever! I am soooooo loving Microsoft post Balmer.vayal - Monday, April 4, 2016 - link
So very true! Me as well - starting to love MS. Satya Nadella seems to be really busy at work.101chris - Friday, April 1, 2016 - link
it's about time! still, this is a seriously awesome move for Microsoft. if only i could un-learn android java sdk and ios objective-c, and now just work in windows and c#. sadly about 7 years too late but better than never!doggface - Friday, April 1, 2016 - link
Amazing. Good move MS. Bringing back the love.ddriver - Friday, April 1, 2016 - link
That's MS, don't forget that, they will probably ruin it like everything else they acquired.kspirit - Friday, April 1, 2016 - link
Do you have to bitch about Microsoft in every post?