Question

We want to develop an application for iOS and Android smartphones. We are mainly using Microsoft technologies for developing our applications. We thought that if we would use MonoTouch and Mono for Android we would only have to maintain one code base with only a different UI layer for each device.

Because currently nobody in our small team ever developed a smartphone application and we need it quickly we want to outsource it. We asked other companies whether they perfer MonoTouch or Objective C for iPhone development. Most of them said, that the would choose Objective C. They said that Objective C offers more functionality and possibilities, it’s faster and for MonoTouch there is a chance that Apple will not support it anymore in the future. Is all of that true or are there other reasons to prefer Objective C? I know there are other threads like this around, but they did not answer my questions, especially the one regarding Apple’s support for MonoTouch.

Answer 1

applications. We thought that if we would use MonoTouch and Mono for
Android we would only have to maintain one code base with only a
different UI layer for each device.

this is a possibility IF you structure your app right. If not: no.

If you use Java+ObjC+C# (for WP7 / Win8 metro etc) then this is not an option AT ALL

Because currently nobody in our
small team ever developed a smartphone application and we need it
quickly we want to outsource it. We asked other companies whether they
perfer MonoTouch or Objective C for iPhone development. Most of them
said, that the would choose Objective C.

If you are outsourcing it, you should dictate what you want it written in, surely? If you need to support it in-house, and you only have C# skills, then MonoTouch etc makes more sense for you, the people paying the bills!

They said that Objective C
offers more functionality and possibilities,

FUD, and also incorrect. Monotouch has the full API available. If it’s not there, as Xamarin to bind it (which they have done often before)

it’s faster

I’d love to see the benchmark. Yes, technically, it can be faster in some circumstances, but in general use, MonoTouch the same or quicker.

Programmer error is a more common cause of iOS app performance problems. eg not getting things off the UI thread (which is easier to do in MonoTouch than in ObjC, tho blocks have helped that a lot), or taking too long to get out of FinishedLaunching (the “main” method, if you will, tho it’s not really…)

Garbage collection and things like linq, xml/json parsing, generics and collections are also hugely valuable, and very quick.

and for
MonoTouch there is a chance that Apple will not support it anymore in
the future.

yes, there is a chance. There is also a chance that Tim Cook will run off with Apple’s billions and buy all of Hawaii (rather than Larry Ellison’s “I’ll just have this island” purchase). But the chances are now rather slim.

Is all of that true or are there other reasons to prefer
Objective C? I know there are other threads like this around, but they
did not answer my questions, especially the one regarding Apple’s
support for MonoTouch.

Apple doesn’t support MonoTouch. Xamarin does, and they do it exceptionally well. Apple doesn’t support anything except XCode, which is their product.

Apple DOES allow MonoTouch apps (there are lots). Another way to look at it: usually, 95% of the top 100 games are written using Unity3D, which is based on the same techniques (ahead-of-time compilation of C# code and embedding a cutdown version of the Mono/.NET framework).

There ARE reasons to prefer ObjC which would be:

• You already know ObjC and CocoaTouch and like it.
• Your team already knows ObjC and CocoaTouch or you can easily hire people who do (note: currently, as far as I know, iOS developers are CRAZY expensive to hire, if you can get them)
• You need to use the beta’s the day they come out. Keep in mind that you can use the current MonoTouch and deploy to your iOS[REDACTED] device with the beta on it. You just can’t use the new stuff in iOS6 YET (Xamarin said “around 2 weeks” which should be about now…). Also keep in mind that you can not deploy an app to the store which is built with the beta SDK, even if you don’t use any of the stuff in it. You can’t even mention iOS[REDACTED] in your product description (I’ve tried)
• you love [squareBrackets andTheOccasional:@”strange syntax things”];

Now, will building a cross platform, shared code app be an easy undertaking? HELL NO. It’s a very complex piece of development for a non-trivial application. But thats the fun part of software development: if it was easy, it’d be boring! Grab Greg Shackles book ( http://www.amazon.com/dp/1449320236 ) to get an idea of whats needed for iOS+WinPhone+Android style development.