Microsoft to launch Visual Studio IDE for Apple's macOS

Microsoft has leaked plans to launch its Visual Studio integrated development environment (IDE) on rival Apple's macOS platform for the first time.

In what is becoming an increasing trend to launch its core software on rival operating systems, following the surprise announcement of SQL Server for Linux and the open-sourcing of PowerShell and the .NET framework, a leaked Microsoft announcement has pointed to the launch of a variant of the Visual Studio IDE for Apple's macOS, supporting .NET and C# development.

'At Connect(); in November, Microsoft is launching a preview of Visual Studio for Mac. This is an exciting development, evolving the mobile-centric Xamarin Studio IDE into a true mobile-first, cloud-first development tool for .NET and C#, and bringing the Visual Studio development experience to the Mac,' the announcement by Microsoft's Mikayla Hutchinson read following its publication late last night and prior to its deletion from Microsoft's Developer Network Magazine Blog. A full copy is, however, still available via Google's webcache service. The post appears to have been sent live early, with the Connect(); conference where Hutchinson claimed the announcement would be made not kicking off until November 16th.

'At its heart, Visual Studio for Mac is a macOS counterpart of the Windows version of Visual Studio. If you enjoy the Visual Studio development experience, but need or want to use macOS, you should feel right at home. Its UX is inspired by Visual Studio, yet designed to look and feel like a native citizen of macOS. And like Visual Studio for Windows, it’s complemented by Visual Studio Code for times when you don’t need a full IDE, but want a lightweight yet rich standalone source editor.'

Hutchinson has claimed that projects created within Visual Studio on one platform should be accessible using another platform, though warned that 'it's a new product and doesn't support all of the Visual Studio project types [of the Windows release].' The blog post suggests that the preview release will be available for free download at VisualStudio.com once the launch has been officially announced at the Connect(); conference.