Iphone developers get .NET resources

Update
Your humble reporter has got to ‘fess up that he was beguiled by the prospect of developing apps for Istuff - on whatever OS. So we actually wrote it like you could do it in Windows. Not so. This runs only under OS X plain and simple.

We do, however, stand behind the point of the article - a not-so-small community of .NET developers will begin targeting Apple's devices while hooked up to a C# drip from Microsoft. A proprietary drip, as it were. And if past experience tells us anything, it's that Microsoft decides when and where its code evolves, or dies. The Vole also has a long history of strangling competitors whenever it can, as well as pulling the rug out from under both its partners and its users when it thinks that's advantageous to it.

Now let me go outside and address that crowd of villagers bearing torches and pitchforks....

THE MONO PROJECT introduced its C# and .NET developer suite for Apple's Istuff, dubbed Monotouch, yesterday.

So if you didn't think Apple blended well with Windows, you've got another thing coming.

Developers working within the .NET framework can now take their snippets of Volish code and programming libraries straight into OS X and use those to develop applications for Steve Jobs' fruit themed gadgets.

Despite being named after a contagious disease - which seems quite appropriate to us - the Mono Project's Monotouch packs all the necessary components to get Iphone and Ipod applications compiled using C# and .NET programming languages, in no time.

The Monotouch software developer kit (SDK) is broken down into four parts - the Monotouch.dll, the command line SDK itself, the commercial licence and the Mono Developer add-in. The Monotouch API is a mix-and-match of Apple's own Iphone APIs and Microsoft's .NET 3.5. This will let the Microsoft-centric community of C# developers cobble together apps directly from their .NET bag of tricks and load them onto Apple's toys.

C# - read C-sharp - is Microsoft's unique twist on C that takes somewhat after Java and is tailored to be used with the Vole's .NET framework, Microsoft's proprietary software development environment.

Novell - the distributor of SuSE Linux that climbed into bed with Microsoft a couple of years ago - is the driving force behind the open sauce Mono Project. It apparently thinks that Itunes is fast becoming the Internet store of choice for just about everything digital, or at least important enough for .NET developers to want to target.

We wonder what the Apple crowd thinks of this match, as it might just open the floodgates and anyone with Volish click-and-drool programming skills can now try to peddle their wares on Apple's App Store. If they buy a $999 single enterprise licence or the $3999 enterprise five-user licence, that is. Or if you're a lone ranger, you can still have a go if you pay the Monotouch personal edition fee of $399. These are all annual licences, by the way.

Just don't get sucked into an illusion that this means life-made-easy. As any Apple apps developer can tell you, programming for a fixed hardware requirement in competition with many other developers out there with great ideas is hard work. It'll come down to how good your app is. Period.

If you're comfortable putting yourself at the mercy of Microsoft's proprietary C# and .NET to develop apps for Apple's Itunes store, you can find Monotouch here. µ