Xamarin Moving On

A look at how Xamarin evolved, the different things that ‘Xamarin’ came to mean (Native Apps, Class Libraries, much later Xamarin.Forms.. but also Xamarin Studio, plus tooling like HockeyApp / App Center and more) ..

• Advantages of the Xamarin avenues, but also pitfalls and problems.
• Where to turn now on each of those paths (not necessarily a case of ‘choose .NET MAUI’):
• Native Apps in C#, but also a look at Swift and Kotlin, discussing advantages of either approach<
• And for Cross Platform: .NET MAUI, Uno Platform, Avalonia UI, or non-C# offerings.
• IDE choices, and replacements for tooling like App Center

Mike Irving is a Microsoft MVP, and the Co-organiser of Dot Net North and Macc Tech. He started programming as a young child on the Dragon 32 micro computer, and later on a ZX Spectrum. Professionally, Mike started out in web development on the Microsoft Stack. However, and in more recent times he has been heavily involved in mobile development, both native and cross-platform. Though regularly coding Swift, Kotlin and JavaScript, C# / .NET has remained a constant through his career.

Transcript

1. Xamarin: Moving On Mike Irving – Microsoft MVP Leeds Mobile – 10th April 2025 @mikeirvingweb Senior Developer
2. Xamarin: Moving On Mike Irving – Leeds Mobile – 10th April 2025 Mike Irving – Microsoft MVP Co-organizer of Dot Net North and Macc Tech Bluesky - bsky.app/profile/mikeirvingweb.bsky.social X / Twitter - twitter.com/mikeirvingweb LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/mikeirving GitHub - github.com/mikeirvingweb Sessionize - sessionize.com/mikeirving Website & Blog - mike-irving.co.uk
4. Xamarin: Moving On Mike Irving – Leeds Mobile – 10th April 2025 What was Xamarin? Lots of things.. Native Apps offerings: - Xamarin.iOS (MonoTouch) - Xamarin.Android (MonoDroid) - Windows and macOS (later) Portable Class Libraries (PCL) Xamarin Studio (MonoDevelop) IDE Xamarin.Forms (cross platform offering) Tools and Services
5. Xamarin: Moving On Mike Irving – Leeds Mobile – 10th April 2025 Mono Runtime Open Source .NET Runtime • Allows .NET to run on Linux • Founded in 2004 • Convergence started with .NET Core in .NET 5 • “Unification” by .NET 6
6. Xamarin: Moving On Mike Irving – Leeds Mobile – 10th April 2025 History Where did things begin? 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025
7. Xamarin: Moving On Mike Irving – Leeds Mobile – 10th April 2025 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025
8. Xamarin: Moving On Mike Irving – Leeds Mobile – 10th April 2025 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025
9. Xamarin: Moving On Mike Irving – Leeds Mobile – 10th April 2025 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025
10. Xamarin: Moving On Mike Irving – Leeds Mobile – 10th April 2025 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025
11. Xamarin: Moving On Mike Irving – Leeds Mobile – 10th April 2025 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025 MonoTouch MonoDroid ‘Xamarin’
12. Xamarin: Moving On Mike Irving – Leeds Mobile – 10th April 2025 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025 Xamarin.iOS Xamarin.Android ‘Xamarin’ Xamarin Studio (macOS) + plugins for Visual Studio (Windows) Portable Class Libraries (PCL) + macOS, tvOS, watchOS, Windows
13. Xamarin: Moving On Mike Irving – Leeds Mobile – 10th April 2025 iOS Windows Android Objective-C/Swift Xcode C# Visual Studio Java/Kotlin Android Studio No shared code • Many languages and development environments • Multiple teams 1st Party Native
14. Xamarin: Moving On Mike Irving – Leeds Mobile – 10th April 2025 iOS UI Windows UI Android UI Shared C# Logic Shared C# codebase • 100% native API access • High performance Xamarin’s unique approach
15. Xamarin: Moving On Mike Irving – Leeds Mobile – 10th April 2025 3 Native User Interfaces Shared App Logic iOS UI Windows UI Android UI Shared C# Logic Xamarin
16. Xamarin: Moving On Mike Irving – Leeds Mobile – 10th April 2025 Everything you can do in Objective-C, Swift, Java or Kotlin can be done in C# with Xamarin
17. Xamarin: Moving On Mike Irving – Leeds Mobile – 10th April 2025 Xamarin.iOS
18. Xamarin: Moving On Mike Irving – Leeds Mobile – 10th April 2025 Xamarin.iOS – Interface Builder
19. Xamarin: Moving On Mike Irving – Leeds Mobile – 10th April 2025 Xamarin.Android
20. Xamarin: Moving On Mike Irving – Leeds Mobile – 10th April 2025 Advantages Xamarin Native Disadvantages Use C# instead of Obj-C or Java Full native API / SDK reach Fast Visual Studio (or Xamarin Studio) Not fully Cross-Platform - not write once, run everywhere Relied on Xcode Interface Builder (iOS) iOS dev only with a Mac (initially)
21. Xamarin: Moving On Mike Irving – Leeds Mobile – 10th April 2025 Xamarin Studio
22. Xamarin: Moving On Mike Irving – Leeds Mobile – 10th April 2025 Advantages Xamarin Studio Disadvantages Develop on a Mac Direct access to iOS Simulator Lightweight Not a full IDE Lack of support for most other .NET workloads and project types
23. Xamarin: Moving On Mike Irving – Leeds Mobile – 10th April 2025 Advantages Portable Class Libraries Disadvantages Share business logic between apps and projects Cross-platform Code re-use Share with non-App projects Needing to avoid platform specific and .NET version specific gotchas not for shared UI replacement: .NET Standard libraries
24. Xamarin: Moving On Mike Irving – Leeds Mobile – 10th April 2025 Xamarin.Forms – C# + XAML
25. Xamarin: Moving On Mike Irving – Leeds Mobile – 10th April 2025 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025 Xamarin.Forms XAML + C#
26. Xamarin: Moving On Mike Irving – Leeds Mobile – 10th April 2025 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025 Xamarin.Forms XAML + C# WPF Silverlight WinRT UWP WinUI
27. Xamarin: Moving On Mike Irving – Leeds Mobile – 10th April 2025 With Xamarin.Forms: More code-sharing, all native Traditional Xamarin approach iOS UI Windows UI Android UI Shared C# Logic Shared C# Logic Xamarin.Forms XAML UI Xamarin Xamarin.Forms
28. Xamarin: Moving On Mike Irving – Leeds Mobile – 10th April 2025 Native UI from XAML
29. Xamarin: Moving On Mike Irving – Leeds Mobile – 10th April 2025 Native UI from shared code
30. Xamarin: Moving On Mike Irving – Leeds Mobile – 10th April 2025 Xamarin.Forms Advantages Disadvantages Fully Cross-platform, including the UI XAML Markup One UI + Codebase = faster Controls + Extensions Platform overrides Difficult to integrate 3rd party libraries 2nd class experience for Windows apps Hard to debug platform specific issues
31. Xamarin: Moving On Mike Irving – Leeds Mobile – 10th April 2025 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025 Xamarin.Forms XAML + C# Xamarin University Xamarin Test Cloud
32. Xamarin: Moving On Mike Irving – Leeds Mobile – 10th April 2025 Xamarin University Xamarin Test Cloud
33. Xamarin: Moving On Mike Irving – Leeds Mobile – 10th April 2025 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025 Xamarin.Forms XAML + C#
34. Xamarin: Moving On Mike Irving – Leeds Mobile – 10th April 2025 HockeyApp DevOps Crash Reporting and Analytics Builds + App Deployments Acquired by Microsoft in 2014 Features eventually transitioned into ‘Microsoft App Center’
35. Xamarin: Moving On Mike Irving – Leeds Mobile – 10th April 2025 Xamarin Pricing Starter – Free Indie - $299* (or $25/month) Business - $999* Enterprise - $1899* * per developer, per platform, per year! – on top of Visual Studio / MSDN licensing!
36. Xamarin: Moving On Mike Irving – Leeds Mobile – 10th April 2025 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025
37. Xamarin: Moving On Mike Irving – Leeds Mobile – 10th April 2025 Microsoft acquires Xamarin (2016) Pricing – made Free! Focus now on Xamarin.Forms Xamarin Studio becomes Visual Studio for Mac (vsMac) Better support added for Windows and Mac Desktop Apps Samsung add support added for Tizen Apps HockeyApp becomes Visual Studio App Center
38. Xamarin: Moving On Mike Irving – Leeds Mobile – 10th April 2025 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025 Xamarin Dev Days iOS Remote Simulator Xamarin University Xamarin Test Cloud Push
39. Xamarin: Moving On Mike Irving – Leeds Mobile – 10th April 2025 Xamarin iOS Simulator, on Windows
40. Xamarin: Moving On Mike Irving – Leeds Mobile – 10th April 2025 “Xamarin Dev Days” events
41. Xamarin: Moving On Mike Irving – Leeds Mobile – 10th April 2025 .. So what happened next? .NET Core
42. Xamarin: Moving On Mike Irving – Leeds Mobile – 10th April 2025 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025
43. Xamarin: Moving On Mike Irving – Leeds Mobile – 10th April 2025 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025
44. Xamarin: Moving On Mike Irving – Leeds Mobile – 10th April 2025 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025 .NET 5 - convergence .NET 6 : .NET MAUI released
45. Xamarin: Moving On Mike Irving – Leeds Mobile – 10th April 2025
46. Xamarin: Moving On Mike Irving – Leeds Mobile – 10th April 2025 .NET MAUI
47. Xamarin: Moving On Mike Irving – Leeds Mobile – 10th April 2025 .NET MAUI
48. Xamarin: Moving On Mike Irving – Leeds Mobile – 10th April 2025 .NET MAUI Upgrade Assistant https://aka.ms/xamarin-upgrade
49. Xamarin: Moving On Mike Irving – Leeds Mobile – 10th April 2025 What about Xamarin.Native? https://aka.ms/xamarin-upgrade
50. Xamarin: Moving On Mike Irving – Leeds Mobile – 10th April 2025 What about Xamarin.Native?
51. Xamarin: Moving On Mike Irving – Leeds Mobile – 10th April 2025 Visual Studio for Mac?
52. Xamarin: Moving On Mike Irving – Leeds Mobile – 10th April 2025 App Center?
53. Xamarin: Moving On Mike Irving – Leeds Mobile – 10th April 2025 C# Alternatives C# and XAML - C# Markup option - based on WinUI platform - Native controls - Mobile, Desktop or Browser very mature and solid Figma plugin No dependency on .NET MAUI or Xamarin MAUI embedding
54. Xamarin: Moving On Mike Irving – Leeds Mobile – 10th April 2025 C# Alternatives C# and XAML - C# Markup option - Skia drawn interface - Mobile, Desktop or Browser more mature for desktop XPF – run WPF apps on macOS and Linux No dependency on .NET MAUI or Xamarin MAUI embedding
55. Xamarin: Moving On Mike Irving – Leeds Mobile – 10th April 2025 Native + Swift UI + Jetpack Compose
56. Xamarin: Moving On Mike Irving – Leeds Mobile – 10th April 2025 Other Cross-Platform Tools
57. Xamarin: Moving On Mike Irving – Leeds Mobile – 10th April 2025 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025 Xamarin – end of life
58. Xamarin: Moving On Mike Irving – Leeds Mobile – 10th April 2025 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025 Microsoft donates the Mono Project to the Wine team Mono Project donated to Wine
59. Xamarin: Moving On Mike Irving – Leeds Mobile – 10th April 2025 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025 App Center: Extension of Product Support for Analytics & Diagnostics App Center
60. Xamarin: Moving On Mike Irving – Leeds Mobile – 10th April 2025 Thank you Slides available on GitHub at github.com/mikeirvingweb/xamarin-moving-on - All links and references in the README.md file For more info, find / contact me at: Bluesky - bsky.app/profile/mikeirvingweb.bsky.social X / Twitter - twitter.com/mikeirvingweb LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/mikeirving GitHub - github.com/mikeirvingweb Sessionize - sessionize.com/mikeirving Website & Blog - mike-irving.co.uk
61. Xamarin: Moving On Mike Irving – Microsoft MVP Leeds Mobile – 10th April 2025 @mikeirvingweb Senior Developer