It's very powerful. It's great for making desktop apps too if you're more used to using html and css for UI (if you use the Hybrid version - the standard uses XML exactly like Xamarin I believe). The only downfall it has at the moment is that it should also allow web deployment as a webapp too then it could be a true one and done framework.

You can get around it a bit by putting the pages into a library instead and have both a MAUI project and a Web so project that uses the same pages, just with different setups.

It’s a thing programmers use to make apps on iOS, android, and (previously) windows phone. It lets you use Microsoft’s words to translate into word that can be understood by iOS and android.

Basically, if you're going to develop an app for different platforms (iPhone, Android, Windows desktop, etc), you usually have to have some/all of your code be specific to that platform. In some cases it may even have to be in different programming languages.

Xamarin is an attempt to let developers write code in one language (Microsoft's C# language), with one common set of code that can then be installed on many different platforms.

In reality, it's a little more complicated than that... but that's the goal.