Novell gives C# .NET developers iPhone solution with MonoTouch

The iPhone may be a very popular platform with millions of users and tens of thousands of apps, but if you plan on developing for Apple’s device you have two choices. The first is to learn some Objective-C and attempt to develop your app from scratch, where as the second involves using an engine such as Unity, Torque 2D, or Shiva. In both cases a developer is going to have to learn something new and if they have existing apps they want to migrate it could mean a lot of work and a few headaches.
Novell may have a solution, however, if you currently work with .NET and C#, which a lot of application developers do in comparison to those that work with Objective-C. Novell already produce Mono, which is a .NET platform solution supporting C# and will deploy to a number of operating systems from a single code base including Windows, Linux, BSD, Solaris, UNIX, and Mac OS X. The Mono project is open source and available for anyone to download and take advantage of without charge, but Novell also provide paid-for MonoKit solutions.
Now Novell are offering MonoTouch 1.0, which allows developers to take a C# .NET app and easily port it to the iPhone and give the ability to have that app interact across the different platforms Mono already supports. Novell are providing everything a developer needs with MonoTouch including compilers, libraries, and tools to support your app. They even see MonoTouch being used for games as well as business app development. You will still need a Mac and a developer license to get your software on to the App Store though.
Unlike the open source Mono project, MonoTouch isn’t free and will cost $399 for a personal license or $999 for a corporate license. In both cases the license doesn’t need renewing, but you are limited to 12 months of updates with additional payment expected to keep that support going there after. A free evaluation copy is expected to appear shortly and MonoTouch is supported by a website offering installation guides, documentation, and tutorials to get you up and running.
Read more at InfoWorld