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Oh my god it's already happened!

http://monotouch.net/

MonoTouch for iOS, and MonoDroid for Android.

Those might be suitable for an established company, but both appear costly for someone trying to build a business with sweat equity by running it as a hobby until the first product is finished. Even if you already own a Mac and a copy of Windows to run in a virtual machine, the price per seat for MonoTouch, MonoDroid, and their dependencies appears very expensive. From the MonoTouch web site:

1 Named User: $399

From the Mono for Android web site:

Visual Studio 2010 Professional, Premium, or Ultimate. Mono for Android for Visual Studio 2010 will not work with Visual Studio Express.

From the Microsoft Visual Studio pricing page:

Professional with MSDN Essentials: $799

What's the best way to justify this cost to other people in the same household before a hobby-turned-business starts to have some sort of revenue?

Mono for Linux and OSX, MonoTouch for iOS, and MonoDroid for Android. XNA is a library that deals mostly with graphics and input and the like; it doesn't actually have anything to do with your actual game logic (eg. physics and AI). XNA isn't available on platforms like iOS or Android, but that should be okay because you'll be ripping out the graphicsa nd input stuff anyway. Although you'll have to rewrite your graphics and input for each platform, it's possible to have a single C# codebase that runs on all major platforms.

Hint: You can't write iPhone apps using Fortran.

Think again.

Monotouch allows you to develop using C#. There was a short period when there was concern that apps created with it would be rejected from the App store (during Apple's statements about 3rd party toolkits), but that was exactly what it was.. a short period of concern.

The parent is quite right on this. That said...

I know this isn't popular here on slashdot, but being able to target both should be pretty easy using Mono. MonoTouch is already out there, and is a well proven technology, and MonoDroid should be out soon. Just remember to keep the business logic of the app separate from platform specifics.

Or, you could just stick to C, which will work on both platforms as well.

Adobe/MonoTouch

Shouldn't that be Adobe/Novell? (It's "MonoTouch from Novell")

And before anyone argues that XCode is free, there are also the following considerations:
1. You need a Mac for it.
2. You need to know one of the programming languages allowed for usage. Ostensibly, this means Objective C.
3. Novell makes a product named Monotouch that compiles code written in C# to native code. Currently it only officially supports C#, but expect support for VB.NET (and possibly other languages like IronRuby and IronPython) later. It also includes bindings to directly access iPhone APIs, since these apps would just be crappy ports if they didn't.

Seems to me like a big problem for MonoTouch too :(
It is a commercial project based on Mono for compiling C# code into native iPhone code.
It's a shame how the programming languages eco-system for the iPhone is so small.
While a good programmer can program well with any language, I would still rather program in C#/Python/Java than Objective-C.

It runs on Windows, MacOS, Linux, FreeBSD and I believe I've even seen it for HPUX.

And it compiles (not bytecode) for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

News Flash - You still need a Mac for installing the iPhone SDK and Mono.

To begin using MonoTouch, you will need to have:
* Apple's iPhone SDK 3.0 or higher, available from Apple's iPhone Dev Center (http://developer.apple.com/iphone/).
* An Intel Mac computer running MacOS 10.5 or 10.6 (Leopard or Snow Leopard).
* The latest release of Mono for OSX

You still pay the Apple hardware tax.

Your argument makes no sense at all. First of all, there are already lots of ways to build iPhone apps without using a Mac, like Unity 3D or MonoTouch. So you don't need a Mac, even without a JVM or Flash player.

Regarding Unity3D, see the Unity for iPhone Requirements page:

In order to license and use Unity iPhone Publishing, developers must meet the following requirements:

• You must own Unity 2.x (Indie or Pro)
• You must be an approved Apple Developer for the iPhone and install the iPhone SDK (requires Intel-based Mac running OSX 10.5.4 or later)

And regarding MonoTouch, see the MonoTouch FAQ:

What is MonoTouch?
MonoTouch is a software development kit for Mac OS X that lets you use .NET programming languages to create native applications for Apple iPhone and Apple iPod Touch devices. [...]

Do I need a Mac to use MonoTouch?
MonoTouch requires a Mac and Apple's iPhone SDK to test on the emulator and deploy on the device.

So no, those aren't ways to build OS X apps without a Mac. For someone who asks his parent poster to rant all he wants, but at least to make sense while doing so, you might check your facts a little better.

Your argument makes no sense at all. First of all, there are already lots of ways to build iPhone apps without using a Mac, like Unity 3D or MonoTouch. So you don't need a Mac, even without a JVM or Flash player.

Regarding Unity3D, see the Unity for iPhone Requirements page:

In order to license and use Unity iPhone Publishing, developers must meet the following requirements:

• You must own Unity 2.x (Indie or Pro)
• You must be an approved Apple Developer for the iPhone and install the iPhone SDK (requires Intel-based Mac running OSX 10.5.4 or later)

And regarding MonoTouch, see the MonoTouch FAQ:

What is MonoTouch?
MonoTouch is a software development kit for Mac OS X that lets you use .NET programming languages to create native applications for Apple iPhone and Apple iPod Touch devices. [...]

Do I need a Mac to use MonoTouch?
MonoTouch requires a Mac and Apple's iPhone SDK to test on the emulator and deploy on the device.

So no, those aren't ways to build OS X apps without a Mac. For someone who asks his parent poster to rant all he wants, but at least to make sense while doing so, you might check your facts a little better.

Your argument makes no sense at all. First of all, there are already lots of ways to build iPhone apps without using a Mac, like Unity 3D or MonoTouch. So you don't need a Mac, even without a JVM or Flash player.

Do you even know what you are talking about? MonoTouch lets your write in .NET languages, but still requires a Mac.Unity 3D is a gaming platform, I'm sure everyone wants to just write games....

So refute rants all you want, but at least make sense while doing so.

If a complete Flash Player and Java are on the iPhone, everyone can develop for the iPhone without an SDK, everyone can publish/sell applications without the crApp Store.

Your argument makes no sense at all. First of all, there are already lots of ways to build iPhone apps without using a Mac, like Unity 3D or MonoTouch. So you don't need a Mac, even without a JVM or Flash player.

Secondly, you wouldn't be able to publish and sell apps if a JVM or Flash Player would exist on an iPhone, because without jailbreaking the device, the only way to install apps remains through the App Store. Supporting Java or Flash has nothing to do with the way apps are distributed.

Rant all you want, but at least make sense while doing so.

http://monotouch.net/
Compile C# code written against .Net libs and get it running on the iPhone. Monotouch provides a C# to ARM compiler and the ARM implementation of the .Net libs you might need.

According to this http://monotouch.net/Documentation/Debugging There is virtually no debugging support for developing C# application on MAC OS X. No breakpoints and only Console.Writelines !!!!

1. It's not a "shell" or a "runtime", it is ahead-of-time compiled down to native code.
2. This is a wrapper around native Apple UI objects, it's not using any Windows or .NET UI objects. You use the Apple Interface Builder just like you would if you were using Objective C.

It compiles to native code. It just allows you to use C# to do it.