Novell announced support for Apple iPad application development with the availability of MonoTouch 2.0. The company claims that MonoTouch is the industry's first solution for developing applications for iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch using the Microsoft .NET framework, including C# and other .NET programming languages.

"With MonoTouch 2.0, Novell now supports the development of iPad applications, in addition to our current support for iPhone and iPod Touch," said Miguel de Icaza, Mono project leader and vice president of Developer Platforms at Novell. "Our MonoTouch software development kit allows developers on the popular Microsoft .NET platform to take advantage of iPad's larger screen and many new features. MonoTouch makes iPad development more accessible to .NET developers worldwide, and will help to significantly increase the size of the iPad ecosystem."

MonoTouch simplifies iPad, iPhone and iTouch development by allowing developers to utilize code and libraries written for .NET. While the iPad developer license restricts the distribution of scripting engines or Just-in-Time (JIT) compilers required by managed runtimes such as .NET for code execution, developers can use MonoTouch while fully complying with Apple license terms because MonoTouch delivers only native code.

MonoTouch from Novell is an SDK that contains the necessary compilers, libraries and tools for integrating with Apple's iPad software development kit. Microsoft .NET base class libraries are included, along with managed libraries, a cross-compiler and Xcode integration to enable device testing and shipment of applications to the Apple App Store. MonoTouch 2.0 includes the following enhancements:

• Support for building iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch and universal iPad/iPhone applications
• Complete C# support for all iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch application programming interfaces
• Significant updates over MonoTouch 1.0 releases, including debugging on simulator, debugging on device over WiFi, profiling support with Apple Instruments and Apple Shark, smaller executables and improved startup performance.