Mobile development has come a long way since Microsoft acquired Xamarin, but now they have release the future of .NET mobile development and sadly it won't include Visual Studio for MAC. So, what will .NET Development look like on a MAC? Let's explore that in this article.

  In February of 2016, Microsoft acquired Xamarin in an effort to add mobile development to the .NET family. However, Xamarin iOS development worked closely with Xcode, Apple's software for developing apps for the Apple platform. Xcode can only be used on devices that run macOS. With this in mind, Microsoft developed a way to allow for .NET development of mobile apps using Xamarin on one of their most well known development platforms. They combined The tools from Xamarin with Visual Studio and released it to run on macOS. In November of 2016, Visual Studio for MAC was released. Three iterations of the program were released in 2016, 2019, and 2021 and were released in the many flavors that Visual Studio was released in as well (Community, Professional, and Enterprise).                                                                          

Visual Studio for MAC had a very good run with many developers either loving it or hating it. There were some differences with how the program ran, one in particular was when it came to Nuget Package Management. The program, however became a favorite for iOS developers who wanted to continue developing mobile apps while utilizing .NET Libraries. However, this would only remain dominant until 2020 and 2021 when Microsoft began developing a game changer in for mobile development. In November of 2021 Microsoft announced a Multi-platform App UI which would become know as .NET MAUI and finally the first iteration of it was released in May 2022. 

    .NET MAUI allowed for utilizing all versions of Visual Studio to now work with mobile development, and iOS development could be achieved by linking a macOS device to Visual Studio 2022 to utilize only Xcode to develop iOS applications on a Windows platform. This advancement spelled the end for the need to support a single use platform on macOS and in November of 2023 Microsoft announced that they would be ending support for Visual Studio for MAC.

    To me, this was a bittersweet announcement. I had started my journey of learning how to develop C# applications using Visual Studio for MAC. But the program had served its purpose of being a stepping stone for Microsoft to create a better way to achieve mobile application development in the .NET Framework and make it accessible to all .NET Developers, mostly (you still need a macOS device to develop iOS mobile apps even on Windows). So, where do we go from here? How does someone continue to develop .NET application on macOS devices? Fortunately, another one of Microsoft's popular products received a major upgrade to do just that.

    In 2023, Microsoft released a few new extensions for its very popular lightweight IDE, Visual Studio Code. The new C# Dev Kit extension essentially turns VS Code into a lightweight version of Visual Studio with the advantage of being able to use this software on virtually any platform, including macOS. It even has access to newer Microsoft technologies including ASP.NET Core, Blazor, and .NET MAUI. They've also said there would be continued support for Visual Studio working on Windows platforms installed on Virtual Machines or programs such as macOS's Bootcamp or Parallels for macOS. This means that development of C# applications can continue on macOS devices.

    On August 31, 2024, Visual Studio for MAC will finally come to an end . But this does not mean .NET development on mac comes to an end. New avenues have been created to allow for cross-platform development to continue. VS Code has grown up to step up and take the place of a single purpose application that has served its purpose to best of its ability. So I'd like to take this moment to say thank you to the program that helped me take my first steps into .NET development and introduced me to a passion that has only continued to flourish. I'm looking forward to seeing Microsoft has in store for the future. Who knows… maybe Visual Studio becomes a cross-platform application. Maybe VS Code gets many more new improvements that surpass Visual Studio 2022. Only time will tell and I will keep looking towards the future and enjoying every new experience it presents.

   So what do you think about the end of Visual Studio for macOS? What do you think the future holds for .NET development on a mac? I'm interested in hearing your thoughts. Leave me a comment below or if you are reading this through LinkedIn or any other social media, leave a comment there and share this post with your fiends and other developers. I look forward to hearing from you and I'll catch you all again in The Pulse…