Pete Lacey wrote:

But lets add a requirement: my news reader must be cross-platform. That eliminates .NET as a development platform [..]. Fortunately, there’s quite a few other ways to go:

  1. Browser based
  2. Java based
  3. Dynamic language based: Perl, Python, Ruby, Tcl
  4. Native cross-platform development environment, e.g Qt
  5. Apollo
  6. Others, e.g. Eclipse RCP

If the .NET Framework is not cross-platform, Apollo isn’t either. The .NET Framework runs on all Windows versions, and Mono also runs on a lot of other platforms, like Mac OS X, Solaris, Linux (x86, x64, ia64 and more) and even a few Nokia phones. I’m not even taking Silverlight into account.

Apollo, however, is based on Flash. Flash only runs on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux, and a very old version on Solaris. Only x86 browsers are supported. While this isn’t a problem on x64 operating systems, it is on ia64 and other architectures not offering x86 compatibility.

Now, Apollo doesn’t require a browser. However, the only currently available Flash implementation is a browser plugin. If I look at the Apollo alpha, only Mac OS X and Windows are supported.

If you ask me, both the .NET Framework and Apollo qualify as being cross-platform, but the .NET Framework supports more platforms.