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Microsoft Announces Visual Studio For Mac (venturebeat.com)

Posted by msmash on from the what-a-day dept.

On the sidelines of major announcements such as Microsoft joining the Linux Foundation, and Google joining the .NET Foundation, at its Connect(); 2016 developer conference, Microsoft also announced that it bringing Visual Studio for rival platform Mac. The company also announced a preview of the next version of SQL Server, and a preview of Azure App Service support for containers. From a Venture Beat report:"We want to help developers achieve more and capitalize on the industry's shift toward cloud-first and mobile-first experiences using the tools and platforms of their choice," Microsoft Cloud and enterprise executive vice president Scott Guthrie said in a statement. "By collaborating with the community to provide open, flexible, and intelligent tools and cloud services, we're helping every developer deliver unprecedented levels of innovation." The fact that Microsoft is bringing its IDE to macOS would have arguably been the biggest news of the day, had the company not leaked the information itself earlier this week. Still, a preview of Visual Studio for Mac is now available, letting developers write cloud, mobile, and macOS apps on Apple's desktop operating system using .NET and C#. It's a big deal, given that Microsoft once made a point of locking in developers by only offering its tools on Windows. This has changed over time, with a big highlight in April 2015 when Microsoft launched Visual Studio Code, its cross-platform code editor, for Windows, Mac, and Linux.More info on Microsoft releasing SQL Server Preview for Ubuntu and Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

52 of 83 comments (clear)

  1. Dupe by Travis+Mansbridge · · Score: 1

    https://apple.slashdot.org/sto...

    1. Re:Dupe by msmash · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Not a dupe. Microsoft accidentally published a blog post earlier this week. That's what the old story is based on. But hours later, the company had pulled the blog post :)

    2. Re:Dupe by lgw · · Score: 1

      Psst, fix the /. IE bug. It's annoying, and likely a 1-line fix.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    3. Re:Dupe by Richard_at_work · · Score: 1

      While we are requesting /. bug fixes, how about fixing the one where the page is scrolled to a seemingly random point on the page on load...?

    4. Re:Dupe by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 1

      That's just the javashit loading.

      If you choose correctly, and run a browser with a Stop button, you can cut it off before it throws an error while you're trying to read the page. Seamonkey (still) has a stop button to cut off badly coded javashit (but now I am being redundant) that runs away.

    5. Re:Dupe by Hognoxious · · Score: 2

      What about the one where if you follow an external link or reply to a post it takes you to the top of the page when you come back, rather than the point you jumped off from?

      Which spacktard thought that was a good idea?

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    6. Re:Dupe by ChunderDownunder · · Score: 1

      sudo apt-get install microsoft-edge?

    7. Re:Dupe by ChunderDownunder · · Score: 1

      Firefox user, myself.

      But you're the one advocating support for Internet Explorer, a discontinued browser on a discontinued OS revision.

    8. Re:Dupe by lgw · · Score: 1

      WIn7 is here for many years to come, since MS has obviously given up on making a home OS people actually want to use. It's silly to use anything else for gaming. And that means IE is here for many years to come. It's not like IE11 is IE6 or anything - works just fine if the only extension you need is an ad blocker.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    9. Re:Dupe by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      What? Where? Internet Explorer is a currently developed and supported product in a currently developed and supported OS.

  2. Making the switch! by BigBuckHunter · · Score: 3, Funny

    I was all set to change over to using Microsoft cloud based technologies, but was completely hung up over the fact that VS wasn't available for the Mac. Thank you Microsoft!

    /sarcasm

    1. Re:Making the switch! by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 3, Insightful

      to bad apples hardware sucks!

    2. Re:Making the switch! by jellomizer · · Score: 1

      Actually today's design. The real problem is making iOS apps on PC's. I really don't want to buy a Mac (even a Mac Mini) just for iOS development.

      Microsoft is putting VS on all its platforms, because there are so many other development methods available.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    3. Re:Making the switch! by fluffernutter · · Score: 1

      I'm at that place right now. It's like I'm getting raped in every single orfice. I can't even get the useless base 256Gb SSD and install a third part one of my choice.

      --
      Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
    4. Re: Making the switch! by fluffernutter · · Score: 1

      And Linux, like Android does.

      --
      Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
    5. Re:Making the switch! by fluffernutter · · Score: 1

      Also.. I am pretty much forced to shell out for Applecare, because will the touch strip keep working? Who knows. The chance of something failing that is soldered in or only available through Apple is maximized.

      --
      Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
    6. Re: Making the switch! by R3d+M3rcury · · Score: 1

      Years ago, at WWDC, there were various rumors about Apple dropping OS X and getting out of the Personal Computer market. A batch of us were talking about it with some Apple DTS guys and one of them made the great comment:

      "Do you think Apple wants people developing iOS apps in Windows?"

    7. Re:Making the switch! by brantondaveperson · · Score: 1

      The chance of something failing that is soldered in...

      ...is quite low. Lower than the change of something that's connected via a header, anyway. Not that I'm into not being able to upgrade my RAM & HD, but the only thing that's ever failed in my macbook pro was the SATA cable.

    8. Re:Making the switch! by fluffernutter · · Score: 1

      How many years experience do you have with touch strip?

      --
      Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
    9. Re:Making the switch! by Fwipp · · Score: 1

      You can get the version without the touch strip, if you're scared of it. Saves you some money, too.

    10. Re:Making the switch! by brantondaveperson · · Score: 2

      Decades. I'm from the future.

    11. Re:Making the switch! by XxtraLarGe · · Score: 1

      to bad apples hardware sucks!

      to bad indeed!

      --
      Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
    12. Re: Making the switch! by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 1

      Back in the days of the NES and SNES, you had to buy ludicrously expensive special hardware from Nintendo to program games for the Nintendo platform.

    13. Re:Making the switch! by megamind · · Score: 1

      I feel like I am living in an alternate reality.

    14. Re:Making the switch! by cdrudge · · Score: 1

      Google "Macbook BGA" or "Macbook reflow". Heat issues lead to video chips solder joints breaking over time. It's not an issue that is unique to Macbooks, so I'm not hating on Macs, but it is an issue over time.

      Regarding hard drives, I've had laptops whose mainboards have died and weren't worth the cost to repair them. I've never had a problem popping out the hard drive, plugging it in to another computer, and pulling off my files. When the storage drive is directly soldered to the mainboard...not sure how I would recover that data. Sure I could get a time capsule so that all my files are backed up, but that's just another $250 expense on top of everything else just so I can save .01mm thickness.

    15. Re:Making the switch! by fluffernutter · · Score: 1

      Can I? It would be foolish for me to get the i5 processor so I want the i7, and it seems that forces me into the $3K+ fifteen inch models.. which forces me into touch strip.

      Or I supposed I could order the old model, but that would mean paying top dollar for a four year old system.

      --
      Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
    16. Re: Making the switch! by LinuxIsGarbage · · Score: 1

      Any information on what that development environment was like? This is the closest I can find

    17. Re:Making the switch! by brantondaveperson · · Score: 1

      I don't like non-upgradable storage, but not for the reason you suggest. These days I just assume that all the data in the laptop itself is effectively temporary, and I use both Time Machine, and Dropbox to store everything on the machine. Well, I only put the home folder in Dropbox, but you get the idea.

      You're right that if your mainboard fails, your data is safe. But that's probably a fairly rare situation, whereas laptop lost / stolen / got all wet / HDD dies, are all far more likely, and you'll be wanting separate backups in all those cases.

      If you don't back up your data, then you don't care about it. The day when you wish you had backed it all up, will surely come.

    18. Re: Making the switch! by ChunderDownunder · · Score: 1
      The next step is for Microsoft to release Visual Studio for iOS.

      I mean what is the point of an iPad Pro if you can't even run Xcode on it? Crazy talk that a thousand dollar 4GB 64bit computer with a 2048 x 2732 pixel screen requires another 64bit computer to develop software for it.

    19. Re: Making the switch! by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 1

      I found this thread where somebody was selling an original NES Development Kit.

    20. Re:Making the switch! by just+another+AC · · Score: 1

      How many years experience do you have with touch strip?

      So when it fails you won't be able to type emojis. Big loss.

    21. Re: Making the switch! by fluffernutter · · Score: 1

      I might miss the esc and function keys

      --
      Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
  3. Re:Oh thanks, just what I always wanted by Marsoupial · · Score: 2

    Translation: "I don't like Apple so I am comparing them to the British."

  4. I don't think this is a well thought out plan by HBI · · Score: 2

    Microsoft used to have compilers for other platforms. They stopped supporting them when they tried to unify everyone on Windows back in the 80s and 90s.

    Microsoft's revenue is still driven by Office and Windows.

    Why would you support other platforms with dev tools? It discourages people from writing for Windows to make it too easy to write to the Macintosh. In context, Microsoft has also made it undesirable to have Windows 10 in at least its consumer iteration due to the spyware and the confused interface. So on the one hand, you're driving the users off your platform, and on the other hand, you're facilitating moving the software they depend on to another platform. This seriously does not make sense from a profit generating perspective.

    The only way I can make sense of this is that they don't see owning a platform, its dev tools and the primary application software on that platform to be logical for them because they don't think that desktop computing will last. It'll be supplanted by mobile, which they failed to own the platform thereof. Therefore, they want to shove their dev tools and applications in every space they can.

    I don't see this as the likely end game, though. I really don't see desktop computing going away in the near term.

    --
    HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
    1. Re:I don't think this is a well thought out plan by pr0fessor · · Score: 1

      Desktop computing in the consumer market is going away already although not entirely gamers and some other hobbyists will still have desktops/laptops. Business of course is going to keep it much longer.

    2. Re: I don't think this is a well thought out plan by fermion · · Score: 1

      Because they can't make a decent mobile device to save thier lives, and desktop monopoly is not going to matter that much in a decade. Fewer people will use MS studio because the tools for Andriod are free and Xcode is basically free. MS studio will basically be B2B only, and IBM does it better. It is not a well thought plan. It is desperation from a lazy company whose only skill was OEM intimidation and lock-in.

      --
      "She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
    3. Re:I don't think this is a well thought out plan by Rob+Y. · · Score: 1

      Maybe, since they're trying to push Ximian as a cross-platform development environment - and because all iOS developers are currently developing on Mac's, they're moving VS to the Mac so that they can woo iOS devs over to Ximian without their having to have a second, Windows system.

      This is certainly not about using VS to build Mac desktop apps.

      --
      Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
  5. Trying to draw people to their cloud by phantomfive · · Score: 2

    Windows is a relatively small portion of Microsoft's revenue now. They see huge potential in the cloud (and that is Nadella's specialty, what he did before becoming CEO), so that is the point of all that they are doing. They've been trying to draw users into their cloud, and will do it with many different enticements.

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  6. Re:Oh thanks, just what I always wanted by lgw · · Score: 1

    /thread

    --
    Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
  7. NOT a port of VisualStudio by T.E.D. · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Note that this is not a port of Microsoft's Visual Studio to the Mac. All they did was buy Xamarin Studio a few months back and slap their nameplate on it. They are completely different products with different codebases, and look to remain that way.

    From a technical standpoint, there's not really much reason to be exited about this, unless you were already a Xamarin fan, and want to see it better-supported.

    1. Re:NOT a port of VisualStudio by Richard_at_work · · Score: 4, Informative

      Being that I currently have both Xamarin Studio and the VS for Mac preview open at the moment, Microsoft dis not simply slap their nameplate on Xamarin Studio - there are masses of changes, and VSfM has a totally different feel. Yes, its heritage is definitely Xamarin Studio, but Microsoft have overhauled it considerably - this is no mere name change, it definitely feels like a major new version.

    2. Re:NOT a port of VisualStudio by T.E.D. · · Score: 2

      this is no mere name change, it definitely feels like a major new version.

      ...of Xamarin Studio.

  8. Re:Oh thanks, just what I always wanted by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

    Translation: "The British are the new French. Move the pissing brigades into place!"

  9. Re:C++ support would be a dream come true by TheRealMindChild · · Score: 1

    http://www.mainsoft.com/conten...

    --

    "When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
  10. What you say?! by wjcofkc · · Score: 2

    Microsoft also announced that it bringing Visual Studio for rival platform Mac.

    Move every "zig"! Mac base are belong to us!

    --
    Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
  11. Makes sense by hcs_$reboot · · Score: 1

    Apple getting closer and closer to Microsoft practices, MS feels comfortable developing for the Mac.

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    Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
  12. The Mac isn't a "Rival Platform" for Microsoft by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 1

    The Macintosh is not a 'rival platform' to Windows, except in the fervid eyes of the Macintosh advocates.

    Microsoft produced Excel and Word for the Mac before there was even a Windows to create Office to run on. In the early days Microsoft obtained a LOT of revenue from the Mac, some even say Microsoft earned more profit for each Mac sold into a business office back then than Apple did.

    Nobody really cares about the Mac OS except for Apple enthusiasts. It's not seen as a 'rival' by Microsoft. It's a little niche that they sell into and make money from.

  13. Re:C++ support would be a dream come true by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 1

    That's great. Use the Mainsoft product, and porting VS code to the Mac only takes 6 months, instead of the usual 18 months. That's far better than a cross-platform tool with compiler switches, etc.

  14. Cannot build Windows apps! by vsilves · · Score: 1

    "Build apps for the cloud, iOS, Android, macOS, and wearables."

    Great, cannot even build a Windows app. Count me out.

  15. Well by tsotha · · Score: 1

    Hopefully they do better than they did with Outlook. Mac users won't be thrilled with getting 70% of a product.

  16. MS is still around? by irrational_design · · Score: 1

    If it wasn't for my company using Outlook, I wouldn't even be aware that MS was still in business. I don't think I've used any other MS product in 10+ years. That's pretty crazy to think about since for the first 10+ years I was using computers the majority of the software I used was from MS.

  17. Re: Visual Studio for iOS by tangent · · Score: 1

    That already exists, released a year ago:

    https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-...

    That feature is based on Xamarin technology, a company they wholly bought out about 6 months ago.

    This does mean you have to use a .NET language to target iOS, but I'll take C# over Objective C any day, and F# vs Swift is pretty much a toss-up.