Microsoft pays Apple app devs to port to Windows Phone 7

if MS did include a objective-c framework+runtime on their windows OSes then I would consider to develop for them.

but if I have to fight with .net ... no thanks

Another multi-platform developer here! We can do Palm, Windows Mobile, Windows, Mac, iPhone, Android all from the same codebase, with thin skins of C++, C++, C++, Objective-C, Objective-C, Java; but we're locked out of Windows Phone 7 because we'd have to duplicate all our C++ source code and double all our maintenance and update efforts thereafter. Not good.

C++/CLI is not C++.

I am a game developer with an app on both android and iPhone. My codebase is approx 40,000 lines of c++ code, with the iPhone interface layer being less than 1000 lines of objective c code and the android layer less than 1000 lines of java code.

To port to windows phone currently would require a complete rewrite due to c#. If they supported c++ I would just need a small interface layer and to replace about 4000 lines of code that uses OpenGL with a directx layer which I already have implemented.

For me, it is 100% a language issue. For any of my games to show up on windows phone they will need to add c++ support or totally dominate the market.

Well, most games for iPhone are in c++ so you were right the first time around. c++ compiles just fine inside XCode with a bit of Objective-c++ just to hook up the views.

Wow - there seems to be a lot of confusion here!

The question is not whether developers write their Windows Phone 7 apps in Objective-C but whether they can port existing C++ apps.

Sure, most of the APIs available on the iPhone are Objective-C, but many developers will have their own APIs written in C or C++. This is especially true for games developers who may be using OpenGL or custom physics engines.

As an iPhone developer (who has written cross-platform C++ apps which run on Window, OS X and the iPhone) I would not expect Windows Phone 7 to support Objective-C or any of the Apple APIs. However, I would expect to be able to use C / C++.

The issue is whether Microsoft are allowing unmanaged C++ to be used along with C# or whether developers are only able to use managed C#.

http://www.pocketgamer.biz/r/PG.Biz/Windows+Phone+7/news.asp?c=18776

For what it's worth, I believe your original article needed no correction and the whole Objective-C thing is a complete red-herring.

At some point, Microsoft just decided they could no longer be embarrassed or ridiculed too much. They just copy and mimic and are a very desperate company. I cannot imagine being an employee and telling people who I work for.

Objective-C support for .NET wouldn't help at all; almost all native iPhone apps are built entirely upon Cocoa TOuch and Core Foundation. It's a not a lnaguage issue, it's a framework issue.

Silverlight applications don't have to be in C#, VB.NET's another alternative if that's more your thing. I know that the latest version of IronPython also produces Silverlight web pages but I don't know if that means you can use Python to develop for Phone 7.

You should correct this article as the 2 preview posts pointed out, Cocoa and Cocoa touch are a framework of Objective-C and no C++ (even when you can use C and C++ statements while coding, they are not the same), MS will not implement Objective-C on they frameworks since it is most based on OpenSteps (which is based on NeXTsteps, that it is an extension of the original Objective-C from StepStone).

The framework uses specifically extensions of POSIX and UNIX that are not present on Windows based OS (even mobile's one).

Hmm. Now correct me if I'm wrong, but calling C++ the same thing as Objective-C is a pretty inaccurate statement (and I think for the most part, iPhone apps are Objective-C), and C# is also much, much easier to work with than C++.

I'm not really in a good position to comment on C# vs Objective-C, but I think there are a lot more developers out their who would be more familiar with C# because it's almost syntactically the same as Java and several other dot-notation languages. (I'm a C# coder on a daily basis, but I have played with Objective-C).

However, translating from Objective-C to C# would still be an expensive process - It appears to be rare that you find someone who can read/write both languages fluently. The majority of coders will be either in the Microsoft-camp or in the Apple-camp, but not usually both.