Hi,
I hope that on this forum I will get enough information about Xamarin. I intend to make some interesting applications that I would like to use on multiple platforms. Therefore I started to read many articles about one of the best solutions or "THE BEST" solution to make cross-platform applications.
The HTML5 + CSS it's not the solution I want, therefore what I found most interesting are Xamarin products and Remobjects Oxygene products. I have to admit that each one has it's strength, each one has pros and cons. But here I would find more about Xamarin and what will be it's future, meaning I don't want to invest money and time to learn and use something that in a few years will disappear. The partnership between Xamarin and Microsoft looks promising. Anyway I have some problems regarding Xamarin compared to Oxygene.
A friend, let me try (on a remote computer) the Xamarin product that he bought and I become very sad when generating a simple Hello World application for Android that generated a 3 MB app (in release mode) compared to Oxygene that's only a few KB. Than I tried the JetBoy app and it grew up to more than 9 MB compared to 1.5 MB on Oxygene. Using your products to make my app, that has multiple plugins will reach to an enormous file size. The second problem would be the apps starting time that's quite long compared to the same Oxygene generated app. Will these change or not - maybe I'm doing something wrong? I have to admit that after the app started it worked as intended.
Another issue is related to the price. To have the chance of deploying apps on multiple platforms I would have to pay a big amount of money (~ $3000) for each developer compared to Oxygene price ($699). Will this change in nearest future? I know that you work hard to make it work and you have to be rewarded for that, but with that amount of money I would pay for Xamarin products for one developer I could buy 4 copies of Oxygene, for 4 developers. OK, I know, code reuse would be better in case of Xamarin compared to Oxygene, meaning more work for developers.
Another issue would be related to how fast can you make updates for a new OS version (like Android or iOS). Will I have to wait a longer period of time to have all the bindings done?
I want to know how much can I rely on your products. I have to choose between Xamarin and Oxygene in such a way that I would not regret. So please help me with extra information about Xamarin that would let me choose the best solution.
Thank you very much.
Levente.