Welcoming the Xamarin team to Microsoft

60 Comments

• https://youtu.be/QSQBwHjnlhI?t=844
  

• https://youtu.be/QSQBwHjnlhI?t=844
  

• That's very cool.
  Will Miguel be joining Microsoft? Don Box would be sooo happy :-)
  
  Added plus: This will double the number of people at Microsoft who love .NET and don't think .NET developers are dinosaurs for not wanting to switch to a scripting language invented in the '90s.
  

• Yay!
  

• Great news... If ever they start supporting VB as well...
  

• YES, YES, YES!!! Awesome!
  

• Nice "surprise". :)
  

• Great news!!!
  

• Microsoft buying another overpriced framework which looks like a perfect fit for managers desperately searching for the silver bullet : after all it promises to solve every problem - only then it actually delivers a poorly documented and buggy pile of excrement. It'll fit in perfectly.
  

• Only 13-15 years after we'd recommended this in the first place. Better late than never Scott.
  

• Dear god, thank you. Now please give us a pricing structure in-line with the reality on the ground. A dev looking to learn mobile, and is thinking about using c# and Visual Studio, cannot afford to pitch out $999 for the license. The $25 indie license leaves you without access to Visual Studio, which is no choice at all for those who rely on expert tools like Re-Sharper.
  
  The pricing structure is one of the biggest reasons independent .NET developers turn away from choosing Xamarin for mobile. And this is no small demographic. These same devs inevitably end up choosing to go native and end up leaving the entire Microsoft ecosystem altogether.
  
  Microsoft, make this right.
  

• What about Miguel?
  Will he really accept working for Microsoft ? Kinda liked his independence.
  

• This is FANTASTIC and welcoming news. Please do NOT forget the web, however. NodeJS is kicking our butts. :P
  http://blog.developers.win/2016/02/how-nodejs-is-dominating-net-in-3-easy-charts/
  

• This is outstanding news if they can get the pricing for Xamarin down to reasonable levels.
  

• This font of this post just sucks, makes me originally want to read but now not want to read it.
  

• I am a little bit confused about it.
  I don't know if it's a good news or not.
  Hope they will not destroy Xamarin like Oracle did with the JVM.
  

• its time to let indie users to build project in VS.
  
  thankyou.
  

• This is awesome news! Please... please... bake Xamarin iOS/Android into the cheapest VS SKU possible... It seems to me like it would make a lot of business sense to even roll it out to Community Edition. I gather this will have interesting implications for Mono and CoreCLR as well. Looking forward to reading about it. Unfortunately, I didn't sign up for //Build within the 60-second time window :-/.
  

• SO many free alternatives, please fix the xamarin pricing FIRST.
  

• Great, now these existing unsolved bugs will be solved much faster :-D
  

• Ya era hora Microsoft, Xamarin es demasiado caro y la licencia de $25 es muy limitada, ya estaba pensando en endeudarme para adquirirlo, pero esta noticia a hecho que cambie de opinión. gracias Scott!
  

• I just wonder how long will it take for MS to make Xamarin actually work. There are dozens of nasty bugs that current Xamarin people don't care to fix and don't even care to hear about, because people finding them don't pay them enough.
  
  Really hope MS would apply the same quality standards as with Visual Studio and make Xamarin actually usable.
  

• Oh... now Xamarin will be destroyed by a monster called Microsoft...
  

• Will Xamarin be a Microsoft Partner/MSDN/Visual Studio Dev Essentials/Visual Studio Enterprise benefit, with no additional cost?
  

• Excellent news, been hoping for this for a long time. Now please make this either free for indie devs or at least make it reasonably priced (with VS integration of course). And improve the quality of the product. Looking forward to more announcements on Build.
  

• Love it! Very happy to see the shift.
  

• Fantastic news! Excited for both Microsoft and Xamarin and the future of the platform.
  

• Here are my wishes:
  
  - Make Xamarin free as part of MSDN
  - Fix outstanding bugs (particularly Xamarin Forms and Android debugger)
  - More meaningful error / stack trace information when debugging iOS and Android
  - Visual designer for XAML
  

• MS telling to the mobile world keep whatever body( hardware ) you want but Brain (Software) is ours.
  Kewl, cool , kool.
  

• Congratulations to Xamarin!! I am sure now all Xamarin products will be available part of the MSDN licensing.
  

• It will be great to see VB.NET part of XAMARIN!
  

• it better be free to use right out of the box in Visual studio
  

• I love Microsoft in general. I want it to succeed over Googles and Apples. But got mixed feelings about this. Xamarin as an independent start up could have given more tough competition to other cross platform mobile frameworks rather than taking the burden of Microsoft's brand name. Hope Microsoft doesn't acquire it to just kill the competition.
  

• Great move from Microsoft in this acquisition and hope Nat and Miguel got what they deserved from the deal. This is another example that Microsoft has and continues to change and is becoming one of the most innovative companies in tech. Looking forward to the next few year to see what Microsfot brings to the market.
  

• Great news! I see this as a testimony to Microsoft's commitment that they are serious in bringing .NET (Core) and great tooling to other platforms. It might also bring some more start-up culture to Microsoft, as well as more open-source.
  

• Marcelo's comment about pricing is dead on.
  
  I went back and forth for months with Xamarin as a startup with deep C#/Microsoft experience who really wanted to work with their tools..., and the no-VS restrictions of Indie and crazy high pricing on business meant we gave up and started building with React/Cordova instead. And surprise - we're no longer planning on supporting Microsoft platforms now that we aren't using Microsoft tooling.
  
  This acquisition is long, long overdue - if executed three years ago, it might have singlehandedly prevented the death of Windows Phone as a viable platform. Microsoft needs to get this acquisition closed, fast - and the day it closes, fix the pricing model. VS is the whole attraction of using C# as a platform - include it at all tiers. Then remove any requirement to use the terrible Xamarin Studio IDE, and hand off maintenance to the community.
  
  Honestly, the greatest impact would be if the Xamarin toolset just gets rolled entirely into VS's existing licensing and pricing structure. If I were in charge, I'd offer free use of the tools as long as an app is simultaneously published to Microsoft's appstore alongside competitive platforms. If they take an approach like that, Microsoft could painlessly compensate existing Xamarin customers by converting the remaining time on their contracts to VS licenses.
  

• Awesome news, I hope this means they will open access to VS in the Indie subscription!
  

• Congratulations to all concerned! What exciting times we live in!
  

• Congratulations to all concerned! What exciting times we live in!
  

• Wow! This is stunningly good news. This could really change my development story. I chose ionic/cordova just a few months ago over Xamarin for a cross platform app but like Marcelo & Ben say... considerations around cost and pricing structure won the day.
  
  We're running a multi-developer environment and couldn't justify adopting those licenses for an experimental line-of-business where we have too many unknowns.
  
  Great news and big congratulations to the teams involved.
  

• Ótima notícia, com certeza será mais viável e adaptativo o desenvolvimento utilizando o Xamarin nativo!
  

• Great news!
  

• The comments above are pretty unreadable people. ;)
  

• Like all such announcements, this could turn out to be really great news, or disappointing, and only time will tell. It certainly makes sense. Xamarin is based in Microsoft technology and Microsoft’s mobile strategy, including UWP, has basically come from Xamarin. Hopefully, Microsoft will allow Xamarin to drive their mobile strategy, rather than the other way around. This could be really good news for Xamarin. Right now, Xamarin are severely resource constrained, being acquired by Microsoft could solve that. Xamarin.Forms could benefit greatly, the team is undersized and has to contend with multiple technologies. Access to Microsoft resources and skill pools could allow them to solve many of the layout performance issues (creating a layout engine is a huge undertaking and Jason’s team have done an amazing job, but having access to all that experience could be invaluable), and WindowsPhone and UWP would no longer be second class citizens. Lastly, having Microsoft’s financial backing will allow Xamarin to adjust their pricing policies – hopefully this will mean a useable free version, VS support in the Indie version, and Xamarin business included in MSDN, including the BizSparc and DreamSparc versions. We shall see in the coming months, if our hopes, or fears, are founded.
  

• Incredible! Just make sure to include it as an integral part of MSDN license.
  

• Yes, the quicker microsoft shifts to a purely subsidized model the quicker they can recover some marketshare. Tools need to be free. You need to get PAID to develop for Microsoft, not the other way around. For consumer oriented, tools should be free, dev environments on Azure need to be free (not 300/yr credits, but maybe 300/mo in credits (based on marketplace contribution maybe or with realistic restricted usage rights maybe). Money should be made on the distribution side (aka marketplace). This is why Apple is kicking but. The Visual Studio team (and Xamarin) have done amazing work, but I fear nobody is going to ever notice. The IDE and debugger are great. Right now the "Visual" part of the toolset is sad, but that is the state of union right now.
  
  For enterprise, a subsidized approach could work. Smaller companies could find promotional deals by searching. Larger companies can continue with the kinds of pricing they currently have (by seat or server or Azure resource demands). BizSpark and the spark programs need to be reinvigorated. They should look at companies like Yelp to follow their model for social buzz development.
  
  Short of that, I don't see why everyone doesn't just go to something like cheap VPS with an open stack.
  

• Will Xamarin.Forms be covered by my MSDN subscription or will this require a separate license?
  

• Xamarin is being Nokia'd!
  

• Good, now two things may finally happen after so much heartache:
  1) VB.NET to be included in Xamarin stuff
  2) Xamarin Forms to finally get fixed and be a useful alternative to Cordova.
  

• Does this mean that Nate is going to become a recluse again and travel the world endlessly...lucky bastard. I miss his stiky-note comics/blog/humor...
  

• 👌👀👌👀👌👀👌👀👌👀 good shit go౦ԁ sHit👌 thats ✔ some good👌👌shit right👌👌there👌👌👌 right✔there ✔✔if i do ƽaү so my self 💯 i say so 💯 thats what im talking about right there right there (chorus: ʳᶦᵍʰᵗ ᵗʰᵉʳᵉ) mMMMMᎷМ💯 👌👌 👌НO0ОଠOOOOOОଠଠOoooᵒᵒᵒᵒᵒᵒᵒᵒᵒ👌 👌👌 👌 💯 👌 👀 👀 👀 👌👌Good shit
  

• I've waited for this for 5 years!
  

• Great move, it will significantly ease for iOS and Android developers move to VS + NET
  Wishlist:
  - VB support
  - Indie to VS Community
  - support for SQL Server Compact to Indie
  - finish nonsense 'pay per platform' greediness
  

• I've been pushing for this/begging for this for a couple of years. I had a Xamarin business license for a year, didn't finish my VS Xamarin project in time, and couldnt come up with another $999 to finish my project. Hopefully, with visual studio integration for xamarin included in Bizspark VS Ultimate (without the starter-licenses limitations) I might be able to move on with my Xamarin development.
  

• Brilliant News! Finally Microsoft took the plunge :)
  

• I hope that means that "first class langauge" F# will get some multi-platform love.
  

• As long as the price of Xamarin remains what it is, I'm sticking with Unity.
  

• I sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter. Ever since I was a boy I dreamed of soaring over the oilfields dropping hot sticky loads on disgusting foreigners.
  

• Positive move but frankly years overdue. So happy to hear this very long overdue announcement. Now, if Microsoft could dump the pricing tiers of Xamarin and just merge the toolset over into Visual Studio then the future of Microsoft in the mobile world actually might start to look positive.
  
  Now... What about buying Unity as well as a move toward the having great dev tools for VR and Augmented Reality etc too, to compete with the likes of Amazon Lumberyard? The acquisition of Unity would be a really good follow-up for Microsoft to make. Xamarin is nice for building mobile apps, but what about mobile games and mobile vr and ar experiences. Please buy Unity as well 😃
  
  And all the tooling has to be free up front. Focus on the 30% kickbacks via app/game sales, in-app purchases instead of trying to extract cash from mostly cash-stricken devs up front 😃
  
  Could do worse than introducing the the same app-kickback pricing model for enterprise devs while you're at it instead of expensive MSDN subscriptions.
  

• This has literally just changed everything for us. We've wanted to use Xamarin for ages but the costs were just too high and so we turned elsewhere. If Microsoft pick up Xamarin's baton for OSX development as well as iOS and Android it will be game changer - to be able to reach all desktop and all major mobile platforms in C# using VS at an affordable price (or maybe free!) it will force us to take a 180 back around to MS tools and technology. Great news!