iPhone Gets .Net App Development Capabilities

Posted 09/15/2009 at 5:29am | by Paul Lilly

0

Comments

Print

In a win for both iPhone owners and .Net developers alike, Novell this week has begun offering a kit for developers to build iPhone and iPod Touch apps using Microsoft's .Net framework. The kit -- called MonoTouch 1.0 -- lets developers utilize code and libraries written for .Net and progamming languages like C#, providing developer services like garbage collection, thread management, type safety, and Web services, noted Miguel de Icaza, VP of the developer platform at Novell and leader of the Mono project.

"MonoTouch brings a new option to the table," said analyst Al Hilwa, a program director for application software at IDC. "I would say that applications closest to the metal will continue to be written in Objective-C, but where developers want to target multiple platforms, including apps that cross over between desktop and mobile, MonoTouch allows them that portability. Of course, the big win with it is that it opens the door for some 5 million .Net developers to begin to do iPhone applications."

By opening the .Net door to iPhone app development -- and a programming language more familiar to the average developer than Objective-C -- Novell anticipates new apps being developed ranging from productivity software to health care apps and games.

Image Credit: uberphones.com