Download the First Build of Visual Studio for Mac Here

Microsoft is welcoming Google to the independent.NET Foundation.

The portal could be a boon for both developers and Microsoft. Once it does, the days of Mac users having to use a Windows or virtual machine to run the software will officially end. Let us know in the comments.

Microsoft published the announcement prematurely and then withdrew it. That time has now come and as Liuson told me earlier this month, this was the plan all along. Uninstalling is also aggravating, as numerous dependencies have to be removed separately.

So why are people embracing open source he asked? The company has typically taken a somewhat uneven approach to supporting the Mac with its Office productivity suite, and there typically isn’t feature parity between one version of Word and another.

Microsoft has shown tremendous interest in cross-platform development this year, notably with their acquisition of Xamarin. The inspector can attach to a live application on any of the supported platforms. It also supports server development backed by the Azure cloud. Microsoft has finally announced its launching its primary coding interface, and this is a big shakeup for the company, which has previously preferred to lock developers into its platform by keeping coding tools Windows-only.

Visual Studio Mobile Center also supports iOS and Android.

Visual Studio for Mac isn’t, in fact, Visual Studio at all.

Microsoft has been playing with other platforms.

Transforming Visual Studio into a cross-platform development tool is an interesting move for Microsoft, and something it has resisted for quite some time.

Visual Studio 2017 for Windows also is relying on the “Roslyn” work to rearchitect the C# and Visual Basic compilers. “There’s no need for any conversion or migration”, Microsoft explains. However, it’s more logical in the context of Microsoft’s “mobile first, cloud first” strategy. You can learn more here.

As is often the way with these things, it’s the tiny details that leave the best taste in your mouth.

Visual Studio for Mac will be based on Xamarian Studio, which is pretty known for C# ID# for OS X.

Visual Studio for Mac might not be the full-blown Microsoft IDE that is available on Windows, but this is still good news for developers that prefer to use Apple macOS.