Great way to churn out second-rate programs on the Mac!
You're depending on Microsoft for the interface. Since when is that a good idea?
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Microsoft to Open Source .NET Stack, Expand Platform to OS X, Linux
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Great way to churn out second-rate programs on the Mac!
You're depending on Microsoft for the interface. Since when is that a good idea?
Nothing in that announcement precludes the ability to write and run .Net GUI apps on a non-Windows platform. Nothing at all.
They mention a compiler, runtime libs etc. Pick your favourite text editor for coding and some .Net bindings to a graphical toolkit for OS X and away you go. As for an IDE who cares if Microsoft never makes one for OS X, there are a number of cross platform IDEs that could easily perform this task on a Mac (Eg Eclipse).
This news should also not be taken in a vacuum. I have run full fledged .Net apps using Mono on OS X and this was even prior to Microsoft actively getting involved in the Mono project to improve it.
So yes, this press release mainly deals with running asp.net on a Linux server (presumably as an Apache DSO or something), but it does not rule out the other uses.
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Well, the 2014 13" MacBook Air benches 5289 in Geekbench, and the iPad Air 2 benches 4504. But the mid-2012 MBA is pretty close, and it beats out many of the 15" and 17" MacBook Pros from 2010. Just doesn't have as much RAM. Not too bad though! And since iOS is lighter it feels great.
The iPad thing isn't surprising. Apple cares so much more about iPhone and iPad hardware than about Mac hardware that it's sad. But the Microsoft thing is shocking!
It also has worse GPU, slower RAM, slower storage, and like you said less RAM. A computer isn't just CPU. In fact, the CPU it's becoming less important than the GPU.
I don't think the press release mainly dealt with server stuff, it explicitly dealt with server stuff.
Cross-platform GUI/desktop stuff may not have been "ruled out", but that does not make it imminent or practical, which is what most of the posts here were assuming.
Is everyone else looking forward to the monthly .NET updates (security and otherwise) on your Macs and iOS devices? For those who may not have had the pleasure, Patch Tuesday is the second Tuesday of each month... 
And because Swift is practically as easy as Python, it's an awesome language to churn out third-rate programs on the Mac! Even Malware!
No, no we're not. Mono is an open source implementation of the .NET framework, meaning that if MS shuts down, .NET will live on.
When I see Microsoft open source DirectX and work with the community to bring it to OSX and Linux, I'll accept that they're committed to supporting cross-platform development.
But they don't even open up the latest DirectX versions to their own prior platforms. Instead, they seem to use DirectX as motivation for gamers to upgrade from a perfectly usable Windows installation.
Unfortunately, Microsoft is in the business of selling Windows not PCs (despite their commercials leading to such confusion), so they don't have the luxury of releasing Windows for free (as Apple now does with OSX) or truly embracing cross-platform support. Why would Microsoft want to enable a shift of gamers, a massive community of consumers with upgrade-itis, to other platforms that they choose time and again over Windows? Or even non-gamers, for that matter?
So I wonder at the timing of and real motivation for open sourcing .NET.. is it in danger of falling out of favour given Apple's increasing market presence and the introduction of Swift?
But they don't even open up the latest DirectX versions to their own prior platforms. Instead, they seem to use DirectX as motivation for gamers to upgrade from a perfectly usable Windows installation.
Unfortunately, Microsoft is in the business of selling Windows not PCs (despite their commercials leading to such confusion), so they don't have the luxury of releasing Windows for free (as Apple now does with OSX) or truly embracing cross-platform support. Why would Microsoft want to enable a shift of gamers, a massive community of consumers with upgrade-itis, to other platforms that they choose time and again over Windows? Or even non-gamers, for that matter?
So I wonder at the timing of and real motivation for open sourcing .NET.. is it in danger of falling out of favour given Apple's increasing market presence and the introduction of Swift?
Actually, I just ran some benchmarks and the 3D performance of this custom Apple modified eight-core PowerVR chip is on par with Intel integrated graphics 5000, which is the current GPU in the MacBook Air. It's roughly equivalent to the GFLOPS of the Xbox 360 GPU, so not too bad for a 6mm device. The test I was comparing is the GFX Bench Manhattan Offscreen Open GL ES 3.0. Other tests might show different results but that's the first one I tried and then I looked up the 5000 in their results browser.
An iPad Pro with a quad core 1.8GHz A8XS (or whatever), faster NAND and 4GB of RAM would be pretty badass. Maybe they would even stack two hex-core PowerVR chips to make a 12 core GPU monster lol.
.Net on non Microsoft platforms has been championed by the guys (and girls) at Xamarin. Their CTO wrote mono. Xamarin are the commercial part of the operation.
You have been able to write Native Mac GUI applications and iOS Applications in C# on a Mac or under Visual Studio for a few years now. If you want to do this just go buy their product!! This stuff isn't coming soon. It's been there seen it - done it - and you can get their tea shirt. Check it at www.xamarin.com. Apps developed this way are no different from native apps.
Microsoft have however recently been supporting Xamarin with their efforts as it will help Microsoft to keep their platform the basis of your development efforts. Which is a good thing for them as people have been slipping away in recent years. These initiatives will make it more likely that you will do a Windows and Window Phone version of your app. Without this you may choose to use other tools that would make this difficult or not worth while.
You have been able to write Native Mac GUI applications and iOS Applications in C# on a Mac or under Visual Studio for a few years now. If you want to do this just go buy their product!! This stuff isn't coming soon. It's been there seen it - done it - and you can get their tea shirt. Check it at www.xamarin.com. Apps developed this way are no different from native apps.
Microsoft have however recently been supporting Xamarin with their efforts as it will help Microsoft to keep their platform the basis of your development efforts. Which is a good thing for them as people have been slipping away in recent years. These initiatives will make it more likely that you will do a Windows and Window Phone version of your app. Without this you may choose to use other tools that would make this difficult or not worth while.
MIcrosoft themselves are just supporting (headless) server APIs. So They have no interface. It's no part of their solution.
If you use the Xamarin product in addition to Microsoft's offerings you can support GUI apps and there is no reason to get 2nd rate apps unless you are a 2nd rate programmer as there is c# support for all of Apple's APIs.... The Apps are the same to the user. It's only the language used to write them is different.
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I'm pretty sure you misunderstand this. How would open sourcing .net allow it to be used to write apps for other platforms? What they mean is that you will be able to write windows apps from any other platform. Think about it. Cocoa is a library giving you all of the basic building blocks for os x apps. .net does the same for Windows. In order to build os x apps in .net you need a bridge to cocoa. These already exist, certainly for ios development. So this is not what M$ has in mind. By open sourcing .net they will be doing something similar to android. They will control all of the interesting parts of .net and give the rest away. This is just marketing to the hearts and minds of devs. Let's face it not very much really great software gets build on Windows despite superior tools to do so.
Depends on the persons perspective, but it is more Open Source in philosophy and ideal than MIT. The GPL v3 has not been wildly successful that's for sure.
I don't think this is going to help you write OS X apps in C#. It sounds like they are only open-sourcing the server-side code. This will allow you to run a .NET-based application server on OS X, but it won't let you build a WinForms or WPF app in OS X, for example.
However, the availability of a fully-supported .NET runtime on OS X could certainly make adding such support in the future easier.
The debate over these two software licenses could run pages and not be settled. Developers tend to be pragmatic and choose the license that best fits the SW being released SW is not religion unless you RMS.
No. By open sourcing .net, then the Mono/Xamarin will be able to use it to implement even more of the .net framework, which in turn means even more .net support in the Xamarin/Mono products.
Those two products allow devs to write native OS X apps with C#.
I don't see how the MS tools set will make any differnece to Mac development unless you want to use your Mac to build Windows apps, but even so they wouldn't run natively. To use c# to build for iOS is possible already but then you need to know cocoa and c# which strikes me as backwards. C# is just a Java clone. It's nice but no better than Swift or objc IMO. In short, I doubt this will make any difference except you will be able to work on a Mac and make windows apps.