RajenK

Hi there! To answer your first question, it's any of the above :) If you use Hotmail, Outlook.com, Xbox Live, etc. they all are associated with a Microsoft Account. You can also associate your existing e-mail address, which you regularly use with a Microsoft Account, if you prefer that.

As for why, it's really a good way for us to stay in touch with you and keep you updated about what's new, help you get started, and make you successful in general. Visual Studio Community on Windows has the same behavior for the same reasons. Hope that helps!

Hi there, Rajen Kishna here, Product Manager on Visual Studio for Mac. If you haven't tried it out yet, I would definitely say check out the released version of Visual Studio for Mac. It has support for mobile apps with Xamarin, but adds so much more to build web apps and services with .NET Core and even games with Unity. We also announced preview support coming very soon for Docker and Azure Functions and are definitely planning on adding more over time.

Hi there! Rajen Kishna, Product Manager on Visual Studio for Mac here. Visual Studio for Mac is a full-featured IDE to create apps, games, and services for mobile, web, and cloud. Creating mobile apps with Xamarin and C# is definitely one of the workloads available, but there's a lot more with .NET Core, Unity, and Azure. You can view .NET Core as the cross-platform implementation of .NET you can code against and share code across apps and web on Windows, Linux, and macOS. Hope that helps clear things up!

Hi there, we actually released the product today, so it's generally available and fully supported. Hope that clears things up!

Hi, Rajen Kishna here, Product Manager on Visual Studio for Mac. It definitely is more than Xamarin, we brought in support for creating web apps and services with .NET Core/ASP.NET Core, game development with Unity and C#, and cloud integration with publishing your web apps/services to Azure directly from within the IDE. We're also announcing some preview features coming very soon, including Docker and Azure Functions support, as well as targeting IoT devices like Android Things. Lots of goodies to be had!

Hi, Rajen Kishna here, Product Manager on Visual Studio for Mac. Our goal with Visual Studio for Mac is to create a native IDE for Mac users with workloads that make sense on macOS. That means "desktop app" development will target macOS and Visual Studio (on Windows) can be used to target Windows.

The core of the IDE definitely has a heritage in Xamarin Studio, but this release has brought in so much more with .NET Core/ASP.NET Core development for web apps/services, Unity support for game development and cloud integration with directly publishing your web apps/services and previews of Docker and Azure Functions coming very soon.

Extensions is definitely another area we're looking to align more over time. Currently, there is an extensions framework, but you're right that it's different from the one used on Windows.

Definitely keep the feedback coming, we're listening and looking to act and prioritize accordingly!