I agree; I haven't even bothered to tinker around with the free trial. The minimum price is too high to just buy to play around with and free version is too restricted to get a feel for the platform. What I would want is the ability to do everything but distribute/publish an application (even the 24 hour binary restriction is fine).
I also don't understand why Visual Studio support isn't included in the Indie price or the free trial since I suspect the vast majority of developers who want to code mobile apps in C# use Visual Studio. So for $300 I get a sub-par product and for free I don't know anything about it.
If you aren't a mobile developer today then there's really no reason to consider Xamarin. They aren't marketing to developers who currently aren't doing mobile development but are interested in it. They should be trying to woo developers who are on that ground level so we'll buy in once we're committed.
I also don't understand why Visual Studio support isn't included in the Indie price or the free trial since I suspect the vast majority of developers who want to code mobile apps in C# use Visual Studio. So for $300 I get a sub-par product and for free I don't know anything about it.
If you aren't a mobile developer today then there's really no reason to consider Xamarin. They aren't marketing to developers who currently aren't doing mobile development but are interested in it. They should be trying to woo developers who are on that ground level so we'll buy in once we're committed.