January 14th, 2007
Is “Technology X” a desktop version of the .NET Framework for Mac?
This "Technology X" thing on the About page of Mix 07 is killing me. I can't tell if it's something big or something small that I've already heard of. Mary Jo Foley solicited ideas for it and garnered a bunch of responses. WPF/E and WPF are already mentioned on that page though Visual Studio isn't, so maybe "Technology X" is the newest version of Visual Studio which will include "Cider", the WPF designer.
Then I started doing some reading about the Channel 9 video I talked about earlier and discovered some interesting thoughts. Paul Wilson wrote a post titled Breaking News: Future Version of .NET Framework to Run on the Mac and then goes on to back it up with sources, including the video. Now he also doesn't mention a time frame (no one does). This is also only barely related to "web experiences" which are supposed to be enabled by "Technology X". But it would make a pretty big splash. But Paul linked to Keith Elder who talked about the mobile implications for WPF/E. Maybe "Technology X" is a version of WPF/E for devices.
So who knows. Hopefully you guys have better ideas than I do and some thoughts on a subset of the .NET framework on the Mac. If WPF/E supports managed code, I wonder what else has to be done to give developers access to that outside the browser.
