Microsoft To Detail Mac .NET Plans
Yahoo | at | by Mike
Reaffirming its support for the Macintosh platform and opening a bevy of new options for Apple's corporate direction, Microsoft this week is expected to announce its plans for implementing the .NET platform on the Mac OS. Mac business unit vice president Kevin Browne will deliver the news. The five-year-old Apple/Microsoft partnership will technically expire this summer.
Described by Microsoft as "a set of Microsoft software technologies for connecting your world of information, people, systems and devices," .NET will go head-to-head with Java, which Apple has ardently backed, for shared applications and Web services on the Mac. The .NET strategy may play well in Apple's digital hub strategy, which puts the Macintosh in the center of several digital devices that can share information and control one another. While development tools for XML (the language used for .NET servers and clients) are scarce on the Macintosh, Browne's presentation may eliminate the void.