
Announcing Xamarin 3 - vdepizzol
http://blog.xamarin.com/announcing-xamarin-3/
======
supermatt
I tinkered around with Xamarin, and a very basic app (using some 3rd party
libraries) or even using the tutorial/sample apps was immediately outside of
their free tier.

Now I would like to understand the logic behind the 30 day free trial. If you
are preventing app distribution (binaries are only valid for 24hrs when
compiled in the trial version) why restrict it to 30 days? Why not allow
people to tinker around as much as they want? I see no negatives to having an
unlimited trial, and then simply charge to remove the '24hr binary'
restriction.

As it is, the little free time I had over those 30 days to play with Xamarin
equated to around 5 hours, most of which was going through the tutorials and
sample apps (which you cant use in the free mode). I certainly haven't
experienced enough to commit to a purchase, and now I likely never will.

I spoke with one of your colleagues about this. He offered me 20% discount on
the business tier if I purchased iOS and Android (~$1600 'value') within 4
days... All i wanted to do was evaluate the damn thing...

I think what you are doing is great, but please try and apply some common
sense to your evaluations.

~~~
kerbs
Considering it's per-developer:

Imagine an enterprise of 20 devs hacking away at various Xamarin projects with
one dedicated "deploy" person. They'd get away with not paying licenses for 19
of those devs.

~~~
supermatt
Which would be breach of terms, resulting in unlimited civil penalties. It
should be pretty easy for Xamarin to track that kind of behaviour.

If said enterprise was so inclined they could share a valid license, or simply
create new trial accounts every 30 days.

Organisations I have worked for tend to be pretty hot on their licensing
obligations. Fines can be pretty steep.

~~~
migueldeicaza
That assumes that we want to spend our time tracking down infringers (hard to
do) and litigating (slow and expensive)

~~~
wvenable
The assumption is the risk is high enough that firms will not infringe.

You're assuming that current overly crippled evaluation model is good enough
to show off your product -- I think the overwhelming consensus is that it is
not.

------
keithwarren
I have been working with Xamarin stuff for a couple years now, released about
7 apps with them and honestly cannot imagine another approach. I mainly work
with smaller startups in specific line of business scenarios and it has become
a necessity to not only have viable mobile offerings, but they have to have
parity across platforms and support both phone and tablets. When I go into a
sales meeting and pitch the idea that I can build for Android and iOS using
the same language and sharing much of that code - I usually crush my
competitors on price - which saves the customer money and makes more money for
me (yipeee!)

The Forms work in Xamarin 3 seems lined up to make that pitch even easier and
will likely help Xamarin grow into the enterprise even faster as ease of
management in the code base is going to be a major driver in decisions for IT
shops that now have to support a much more diverse platform set than they did
in the days when a website was good enough.

~~~
natfriedman
Thanks for the endorsement!

We built Xamarin.Forms because we have lots of enterprise customers building
apps with a dozen or more screens doing simple things like tabular data
display and data entry, but who have a native UI requirement in their app.
Xamarin.Forms should make these types of apps much easier to write quickly.

~~~
noir_lord
Seconding the post above, your clear moves towards the Enterprise have on my
radar as soon as I have the resources to develop native mobile clients :).

------
natfriedman
Thanks for all the kind words, everyone! This release was the result of a lot
of hard work; especially the new visual designer for iOS, which took two years
to build.

You can read more about our platform here:

[http://xamarin.com/platform](http://xamarin.com/platform)
[http://xamarin.com/studio](http://xamarin.com/studio)
[http://xamarin.com/visual-studio](http://xamarin.com/visual-studio)

And our new Xamarin.Forms library is explained here:
[http://xamarin.com/forms](http://xamarin.com/forms)

~~~
runjake
Please, please, how about an affordable option for hobbyist/free app
programmers? The current free Starter version isn't it.

Edit: Wow, natfriedman. If you could only see the uparrows this comment is
getting :)

~~~
kayoone
This. I have been using C# with Unity3d a lot and love it and i would love to
try Xamarin with a sideproject, but $1000 per year/seat (yes i want VS
integration) is just too much.

Making this more affordable would do wonders for C#s popularity in the mobile
space and possibly trickle down to a lot of other usecases.

------
untog
Kind of amazing that Xamarin now seems to have better dev tools for iOS than
Apple do.

I was badly burnt by buying a Xamarian dev license a couple of years ago for
$499 then not using it (my own fault entirely) so I've been hesitant to jump
back in to Xamarin-world, but it's really only a matter of time. I'm very
impressed.

~~~
natfriedman
Drop me a note - nat@xamarin.com

~~~
evo_9
Would be nice if after subscribing you get a better price to renew your
subscription, I don't see that as an option right now though, right?

For example my Xamarin License expired on May 24th; to renew I have to pay the
full price again, correct?

------
gum_ina_package
Now all they have to do is make it free. Seriously though, as a student I
can't shell out $299 for a license and even at the $99/year student rate (with
proof of relevant course work), I can't see myself paying $99/year to
write/maintain apps I've built. Especially considering the $99/year Apple app
store fee.

Please, Xamarin, show us young C# devs some love!

update: not really sure why the down votes. I'm big fan of Xamarin and C# in
general. All I was doing was pointing out that there's no way I can afford/am
willing to buy their software and that I think I speak for the majority of
student developers.

~~~
masivemunkey
I agree. It's a great product, but $300 per year is cost prohibitive for me.

~~~
swalsh
I think $300 is a pretty cheap price to pay for a huge productivity boost.

~~~
benologist
It's only a huge productivity boost if you're already working with .NET. For
everyone else the free trial limitations are so severe you're being asked to
pay $299 _just to try it out_ while most alternatives are cheaper, free, or
open source.

------
mkal_tsr
Man, as much as I'd love to use Xamarin w/ VS, 3 platforms for a single
developer (myself) is $3000. It looks like a great product but wow, I can't
swing that solo while bootstrapping. Have you considered a free-until-release
approach? Don't get me wrong, you guys need to make money, I'm just wondering
if there is a more optimal / appealing approach for those that are between
Indie and Business.

------
revelation
Awesome work! I wonder how responsive the UIs created are? The workflow looks
a lot like Windows Forms (dropping elements in the editor and resize to
match), and there it wasn't exactly easy to produce interfaces that could
scale or even adapt.

So, in short: is this more Forms or WPF?

(I've looked at the subpage for Forms now, and the widgets presented there
tend to lean heavily towards WPF.. so yay!)

~~~
migueldeicaza
We support a number of layout managers that allow you to create responsive
UIs.

This is very important on Android since there is really no single form
factor/screen resolution to target. You really need to build UIs that work on
various kinds of resolutions.

------
danabramov
Beautiful work. Congrats to Miguel, Nat and everyone on the team.

Funny that IB stinks so much they had to basically rewrite it.

Also, I like the (minor) redesign. Looks more solid now.

~~~
migueldeicaza
Thank you Dan!

------
jordan0day
Xamarin.Forms looks _very_ compelling. In a former life I was a .NET person,
and so I've always kept my eye on Xamarin, but the only real mobile stuff I've
done has been native cocoa touch dev on iOS.

Even though Xamarin.Forms might be a lowest-common-denominator type of thing,
being able to build basically "universal" apps looks awesome.

The indie license really isn't very expensive, but I wish the starter version
allowed bigger apps (but maybe stripped out publishing to app stores or
something), so you could really thoroughly check it out without spending $300.

------
Zigurd
Xamarin is the cross-platform solution I would consider first for developing
mobile apps, and I can't think of a second one that's close. If your team is
mostly experienced in C# or if F# is your thing, I would really seriously
consider it versus training for iOS and Android. It's an very hard problem,
and Xamarin has successfully gone from "That's neat but weird" to what looks
like a practical tool that isn't going to leave you stranded with an oddball
code base.

------
evo_9
It's a real shame that Xamarin has a such a prohibitive pricing structure.

My employer would love for me to use this on projects but they simply won't
pay that much for a tool EACH YEAR.

Considering Visual Studio, if you actually pay for it and don't go to an event
and get a free copy, is a one time cost that a company can semi-easily justify
(we've been on VS2010 for over 4 years now, with 5 developers, that's a major
expense if we have re-subscribe each year).

But with Xamarin, unlike Visual Studio, it's a 1 year subscription. I hate to
say it but I agree with my employer, as much as I LOVE using Xamarin to build
mobile/cross platform apps, the current pricing model is just crazy.

I'd say drop the subscription only option (maybe have that as one of the
choices), and add some 'buy it, you own it forever' options, hopefully without
raising the price (ideal world you'd drop the price, too).

~~~
wvenable
You _do_ own the software forever. It doesn't expire after a year; you just
will no longer have access to new releases and support. It's their last FAQ
item on the pricing page.

It does seem a bit odd to hide that detail on the very bottom of the page. I
have other development tools (JetBrains products) that having similar pricing
models without signing up for a "subscription" and with a discount for
renewing each year. I feel a lot better about that than what Xamarin has
presented here.

~~~
squeaky-clean
The JetBrains stuff is also cheaper. I'd love to buy Xamarin just to play
around with. But $300 for a single platform, and I don't even get Visual
Studio support with it? The idea of using C# for apps really appeals to me.
But only because that means I could use Visual Studio and ReSharper.

To compare that with the JetBrains business model. I can get a personal
license for IntelliJ IDEA for $200, and there's even a free open source
version that does 95% of the things I want with no limits. Their other
products also have fully unrestricted 30 day trial periods.

I guess Xamarin isn't targeting indie developers or hobbyists in that field.
Which is OK. But it feels a little insulting to have an "indie" license which
is so prohibitive and at the same time expensive.

------
martinald
This looks amazing. Especially Xamarin forms.

Surely Microsoft will acquire them soon? They'd be totally nuts not to.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
What benefit would Microsoft get by buying them?

~~~
runjake
Ownership of a high-quality, viable, cross-platform mobile environment with
its own UI frameworks. They could essentially stage a development platform
coup on the leading mobile platforms.

~~~
mariusmg
Yes, because that's exactly what MS wants now. Another UI framework to
support.......

~~~
runjake
Did you not pay attention to Microsoft's BUILD (Microsoft's version of WWDC)
conference this year, where they gave Xamarin the limelight and official
blessings?

------
soapdog
I've never played with C# or Xamarin but this tool set is looking really good,
specially the F# thing.

Anyone care to share their stories about F#? it appears to be a nice
functional language.

------
p_papageorgiou
Hey Guys,

I'm the co-founder of Avocarrot
([http://www.avocarrot.com/](http://www.avocarrot.com/)) and we were wondering
for a while whether to build a dedicated plugin for Xamarin. How easily can
you integrate an native Android or iOS SDK with your Xamarin apps? Would it
make a big difference for you if a Xamarin plugin was available?

~~~
natfriedman
You have two options:

1\. You can bind the native iOS or Android library into C#, which is
relatively straightforward:

[http://developer.xamarin.com/guides/ios/advanced_topics/bind...](http://developer.xamarin.com/guides/ios/advanced_topics/binding_objective-c/)

[http://developer.xamarin.com/guides/android/advanced_topics/...](http://developer.xamarin.com/guides/android/advanced_topics/java_integration_overview/binding_a_java_library_)(.jar)/

2\. Or you could create a single, managed library in C#, which would also make
it easier to get Windows support.

Option 2 is more work.

------
andyjohnson0
I appreciate that this is an initial announcement, but does anyone know what
the situation is with upgrades for existing users?

Edit: Forgot to say that this new version looks really good - congrats to the
Xamarin team! Not having to launch XCode is going to massively improve my
quality of life.

~~~
natfriedman
All of these features are available free to existing customers with current
subscriptions!

~~~
andyjohnson0
Excellent. Thanks Nat!

------
jedahan
Looks cool, but why translate to native UI elements at run-time as opposed to
compile-time? Does it help with debugging?

Forgive my ignorance as I have not used Xamarin.

~~~
ColinDabritz
From the page: "...which are mapped to native controls at runtime, which means
that your user interfaces are fully native. "

I read this as "we allow design in our forms library, but compile to native
controls for use at runtime."

It took me a couple reads to come to that conclusion, I was also confused by
the wording. If that is not the case, I definitely have the same question as
you. Perhaps the page could use some clarification.

~~~
pat2man
Apple's storyboards and xib files are essentially XML serialized views. Apple
deserializes them at runtime and its a feature built in to Cocoa and Cocoa
Touch. Since Xamarin is just wrapping the native libraries it is easier and
more compatible to just follow the same approach.

------
SneakerXZ
They aim on enteprise clients otherwise I cannot justify the pricing.

I cannot imagine spending 600 USD for both platforms just to build hobby
project (and with missing Visual Studio support) and if I cannot build a hobby
project, how can I propose it to my employer when I don't have any experience
with it?

I would love to use Xamarin and would be willing to pay (I could justify 300
USD for all platforms (iOS, Android, Mac) with Visual Support for my hobby and
indie projects. I hope Microsoft buys them or they will be more friendly to
indie and hobby developers.

------
ternaryoperator
Detailed review of the v. 3.0 Enterprise Edition here:
[http://www.drdobbs.com/240168321](http://www.drdobbs.com/240168321)

------
adl
I know that the official comment regrading Linux support is that there are no
plans to support it right now, I just want to say that there are people on
Linux that are willing to pay for your product!

I'm developing cross platform mobile apps with HTML5 and I would jump at the
chance of using Xamarin instead (I was a C# developer in another life).

I might just end up running it in a VM, but it would be great running Xamarin
Studio on Linux.

Thanks :-)

~~~
migueldeicaza
Once we charge you, you would expect the same level of support that we provide
users on other platforms. And The Linux desktop is just too fragmented for us
to be able to do this and deliver the support you need.

~~~
adl
Thanks for your quick reply Miguel, I do understand the difficulties of
supporting the Linux ecosystem.

I hope that someday it becomes worthwhile for Xamarin to provide that support,
in the meantime, another laptop or a VM will have to do. ;)

Xamarin 3.0 looks great, congratulations!

------
buster
But as always, no Linux support, sadly and a no go for me :(

------
egeozcan
Xamarin is great. I saw a colleague of mine developing apps with it and was
simply amazed. I think it definitely deserves all they're asking for it. Just
one thing though: Why do I have to pay 700$ difference per year just for VS
support? Is it really that hard to integrate?

------
hamstu
This is cool. I didn't know about Xamarin until now. I use Rdio a lot, and
it's generally a very good, smooth-running app on my Nexus 4. Didn't realize
it was built cross-platform like this!

------
thebouv
Looking forward to giving this a try. I've built many mobile solutions in
various languages / frameworks / platforms, but being new to C#, I'm eager to
give this a go.

------
jasallen
Looks great, love designer and Forms sounds epically wonderful (wonder if I
can export my ios designs to forms for easier porting :-) )

First ten minutes experience: I've got a little weirdness with the differences
in generated code from x-code vs new designer (an outlet name went from upper
case to lower for instance).

iOS designer is giving prominent error "Custom components are not being
rendered because problems were detected".. Though everything seems fine and
log doesn't particularly help.

~~~
natfriedman
Sorry to hear about the error message. Can you email your logs and the
storyboard file to support@xamarin.com?

~~~
jasallen
Working on it. In a related issue, "copy file path / name" from a storyboard
tab doesn't seem to do anything :)

------
miguelrochefort
Awesome work guys! Can't wait to give Xamarin.Forms a try!

I'm wondering how well Xamarin.Forms will work with MVVM and bindings.

~~~
natfriedman
Xamarin.Forms is designed to work with MVVM and data bindings:
[http://xamarin.com/forms](http://xamarin.com/forms)

~~~
miguelrochefort
Thanks Nat! That's awesome news.

To what extend is XAML support in Xamarin.Forms? Can I use it to create
multiplatform controls/views?

~~~
natfriedman
Yes, you can use XAML to create multiplatform controls/views with
Xamarin.Forms.

Xamarin.Forms supports all of XAML 2009 and uses the XAML syntax with its own
namespace and types. So, no existing XAML designer will work with
Xamarin.Forms. However, the names and properties should be familiar to any
experienced XAML developer.

~~~
bztzt
omg, something finally supports XAML 2009. =O

------
bigdubs
Can I show two files open at once vertically split yet?

Follow Up: The answer is no. This is a pretty big productivity killer, and the
ticket to implement this feature has been around forever. This is the last
major gripe that is keeping me from using Xamarin Studio in lieu of VS2k12.

~~~
natfriedman
Xamarin Studio doesn't have this feature yet, but you can use Visual Studio to
build Xamarin apps (and many developers do).

Split panes will be coming to a future version of Xamarin Studio, though.

------
fakir
Looks Great! Do you have any plans to integrate this with an MBaaS ( Azure
looks like a great fit)?

~~~
natfriedman
We have support for Azure, Parse, and others already:

[http://components.xamarin.com/view/azure-mobile-
services](http://components.xamarin.com/view/azure-mobile-services)

[http://components.xamarin.com/view/parse](http://components.xamarin.com/view/parse)

------
romanovcode
I don't understand how come that Indie license does not include Visual Studio
support? I think the biggest issue with Xamarin for me is this:
[http://i.imgur.com/wmdaLL7.png](http://i.imgur.com/wmdaLL7.png)

~~~
jbigelow76
I agree. Xamarin has a price difference between "Business" and "Enterprise"
but really the 600 bucks for Visual Studio support is what differentiates
between Enterprise vs everything else.

I wonder if Visual Studio starting to integrate Phone Gap tooling could eat
away at part of Xamarin's value proposition.

Regardless what Xamarin does with pricing, their announcement today with the
new native UI builder is huge, congrats to the team.

------
rogerthis
I may be stupid, but I found Xamarin too bugged. And to use it well, i have to
know C#, iOS and Android well. With Phonegap I need to know web dev well,
phonegap, and much less of the underlying platform.

------
paulsmith
Site looks hosed, is there a summary of what was announced, specifically?

~~~
leorocky
Yep, totally not responding and I have no idea what a xamarin is.

EDIT:

Looks like the main website is up:

[http://xamarin.com/](http://xamarin.com/)

They let you build apps for other platforms in C# which is cool.

------
yawn
How well does the new Forms stuff play with existing MTD? How hard would it be
to transition from MTD to Forms?

~~~
migueldeicaza
You can mix and match.

The transition depends on whether you use MTD just as a consumer, or whether
you subclass it extensively (like I used to do on TweetStation).

The former is easy, the latter not.

------
nbevans
Is this available to download or what? Even as a beta?

~~~
natfriedman
It's fully released and supported. You can download here:

[http://xamarin.com/download](http://xamarin.com/download)

------
WorldWideWayne
The per-platform pricing is ridiculous.

Would someone please build an open source competitor and put these jerks out
of business?

