I'm not sure how big an event Qt/Mac's release is, but something nags me that it could be big. I've never quite understood how GPL'd software costs something, and I think maybe that's just maintenance. If that's correct, this certainly does mean that traditionally Linux-only programmers will be able to release fairly easily on the Mac as well as Windows with native code. If it catches on, well, that's certainly good news. I want to see a real competitor for .NET in the client-app "space" to appear that's xplat, and perhaps this could be it after it matures a bit. Unfortunately from my experiences, Java and Swing are not anywhere close to .NET and Windows.Forms yet, and probably won't be for a few years at the earliest. Native is better.

On the same subject, with Macs out now that are actually fast enough to run OS X and software at the same time *smirk*, I'm starting to think realistically about REALbasic. I don't like the RB IDE -- I wish they'd steal directly from VB6 and stop doing things their way, though I might have missed some config options -- but they really have the basics working fairly well on Mac and Windows, which is super. $250 to port to Windows? That's cheap. Now that you can reference dll's, etc, REALbasic is a decent solution. The only problem is that the rate's much greater b/c of the development tools and the lack of mature objects like the set VB6 and .NET give you.