Chapter 1. Introduction to iPhone Development with MonoTouch for C# Developers
WHAT'S IN THIS CHAPTER?
The history of the iPhone and its mindshare
A short history of Mono and its relationship to the .NET Framework
How MonoTouch opens the iPhone to .NET Developers
Why MonoTouch is so attractive to developers
The past several years have seen an amazing growth in the use of smartphones, and USA Today recently reported how smartphones have become an indispensable part of people's lives.
Although Windows-based computers running 32-bit ×86 or 64-bit ×64 processors dominate the desktop computer marketplace, and the .NET Framework is the dominant development environment for the Windows platform, no single vendor or platform dominates the mobile device marketplace; devices based on Symbian, Research in Motion (Blackberry), Windows Mobile, Android, and other platforms are available. In addition, devices may run the same operating system and be presented to the user in separate form factors. This fracture in the marketplace is problematic for developers — how can they take a development framework, or tool, that they already know and use that knowledge in a device that has a large and growing market share?
This chapter looks at how the largest segment of developers can target the smartphone with the highest mindshare, and that the smartphone is growing faster in marketshare than any other device.
PRODUCT COMPARISON
This section takes a quick look at .NET Framework, Mono and MonoTouch — three products ...
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