.NET on the MAC Say it Ain't So
Last night at the monthly TRINUG meeting I heard a nasty rumor that Microsoft is going to port the .NET framework to the MAC. As ghastly as this sounds, it could be a wise move for two reasons. First, Microsoft is currently trying extremely hard to court graphics and design guys to use Expression and help with all the great new WPF applications that are about to spring up everywhere. I downloaded the latest Expression Blend just yesterday and I am excited. Porting .NET to the MAC will give them a great way to ease the acceptance by the graphic design world. The more I work with Paint.Net the more I really, really hate PhotoShop.I think once MAC guys start using better software they will start turning and accepting if you know what I mean.
The second reason I think this may be key is competition. Remember a few years ago Apple was about to go belly up and Microsoft stepped in and saved the day by dumping like $300M cash into the Apple coffers to keep it afloat. My take on it was an effort to keep the competitive nature of business in place and help get the Clinton Whitehouse off it's back for being innovative. Porting the .NET framework means that developers, like me, can now build good applications and they should work on both the Windows kernel and the MAC FreeBSD kernel.
I personally do not care one iota if my applications run on a MAC or not, but think about this from the point of view of the Java guys. 13-14 years ago when they were touting the nirvana of writing for any platform with Java and their virtual machine. What they did not think about was ease of development and ease of use. Java has pretty much failed as a technology because there are poor tools and a poor user experience. What it did achieve though was working on just about every OS. Now .NET looks like it is poised to be able to run on Linux (see the Rotor project) and now MAC! That pretty much covers everything.
I fully expect there to be hiccups and performance issues, after all it is a MAC and is still pretty proprietary in nature. But, hey this is a good move and one that should increase demand for good .NET developers and the need for training and mentoring, which I am really for! Now understand this is simply an unconfirmed rumor I heard in a User Group conversation, so it may never see the light of day, but this is my early take on the concept.