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Architosh Staff ([email protected])
28 Nov 2001

 

Reader Q: Is it possible for Microstation to return to the Mac?

Architosh Reader Questions.

Q: Is it possible that Microstation might make a return to the Mac. Quite a few people still use it here in London on the Mac. The newer versions are obviously PC only but they all bear the Java logo on the splash screen. As OS X is so Java savvy could it be easily ported. Don't they also make a version for UNIX?

A: As far as we understand it, Microstation returning to the Macintosh remains a potential opportunity with or without Java or any other technology for that matter. It is ultimately a financial and market decision. So it is possible.

The technological development questions regarding Java and UNIX have interesting answers. Yes, they are using Java, but from all that we have learned, Microstation is being developed exclusively with Microsoft development tools and technologies, including Microsoft's proprietary Java-related technologies. Since one assumes many of these Microsoft tools are Windows-centric and/or Windows-exclusive, Java as a technology doesn't seem to help Mac users' cause in this situation.

As for UNIX versions, we are of the impression that Bentley is supporting their other platforms but has "suspended" future development on them. If you know different, let us know.

Other Issues and Other Resources

We have published a very good in-depth article on this issue before (about a year ago) and from it we can glean a number of insights. One of those is that Bentley is clearly committed to evaluating the markets to determine its next OS moves. Phil Choinard of Bentley made it clear that if there is real interest from the engineering and design community in other platforms (be them Linux or Mac OS X) then they will move in that direction. The real question is, has that happened yet?

Microstation for Mac OS X, the future is open

Other Microstation Articles

Find Section. You can find articles on Bentley Systems in our Find Section article indexes here.


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Macworld Expo New York 2001

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