Before we begin installing Xamarin Studio and the necessary supporting components, it's important to note that this book's perspective is developing iOS, Android, and Mac applications on a Mac. This means that the names and conventions will be those you'll see when working with Mac OS X. In most cases, the differences between a Mac OS X environment and a Windows environment will be negligible and, therefore, I won't discuss them. However, in the cases where the differences are significant, or where there is a different process to be followed, the details will be pointed out and highlighted. In some cases, entire portions of the book (such as the Installing the Visual Studio plugin section in Chapter 4, Plugins, Templates, Libraries, and Files) will be dedicated to the Windows platform environment.