Seems awesome. I wonder how they made it possible to have an iOS simulator in their Visual Studio plug-in. Apparently it will be possible to develop native iOS / Android apps written in C# from Visual Studio and I'm guessing from Windows.
I have much respect for Miguel and the other guys at Xamarin. They work on some great stuff, I think C# has a great future for mobile development because of all the work these guys have done.
Our new Business edition, at $999, now includes iOS support for Visual Studio developers.
I guess you will be able to use a device from Windows, or something like that. Otherwise it won't make sense to provide iOS support for VS.
Correction - you will need a Mac for the final build of the product. VS will connect through network to this Mac ... Not sure if it makes more sense to just use VS as a glorified C# editor. I suppose if you are a hard core VS user it will be easier to do your development from VS.
Using VS would be a huge plus. You don't have to buy a bunch of pricey macs, just 1. You don't have to retrain C# coders to use a Mac. You can use ReSharper! You can open two code windows side by side, something monodevelop cannot do (not sure about Xamarin Studio as I am still waiting on the download). VS integration with Team Foundation is much better than git-tf, so if your company is already using Team Foundation you can tack on iOS development/ports with out much trouble. There are a lot of reasons it makes sense.
I don't own a Mac, but have an Ipad. If I jalbreak my Ipad, would I then be able to deploy applications built with xamarin studio or visual studio for testing?
I have much respect for Miguel and the other guys at Xamarin. They work on some great stuff, I think C# has a great future for mobile development because of all the work these guys have done.