Previews of upcoming versions of Xamarin.iOS are available when you select the Alpha channel in your IDE. Depending on the release cycle, updates on the Alpha channel will only be available if your system has the proper Apple SDK installed.

For example, the April 15th 2010 preview of Xamarin.iOS required Apple's confidential iPhoneOS 4.0 SDK, so the packages were only installed if you had selected the Alpha channel in the Xamarin Studio Updater and if you had iPhoneOS 4.0 installed

Enabling Preview Updates

Follow these steps:

• Make sure that you have the iPhoneOS 4.0 SDK installed, this is mandatory.
• In Xamarin Studio:
  • In the Xamarin Studio menu, select "Check for Updates":

    

  • Change the "Update channel" to "Alpha" (the default is "Stable"):

    

  • Click on the [Download] links for the various packages you might want to install. You need:
    • Xamarin.iOS
    • Xamarin Studio Alpha (required for various new features in iPhone OS 4)
• In Visual Studio:
  • Under Tools and then Options, select Xamarin and iOS Settings:

    

  • In Xamarin.iOS Updates set the channel to "Alpha".