Rixstep
 About | ACP | Buy | Industry Watch | Learning Curve | News | Products | Search | Substack
Home » Products » Reviews

Silverlight 3.0.50106.0

Don't install it.

Microsoft
Rating: (four burnt toasts)

Microsoft
One Microsoft Way
Redmond WA 98052
US


Collateral damage:
Excruciatingly painful epic fail and shame

Silverlight is Microsoft's attempt to devour the flash market using their patented (and notorious) 'embrace & extend' methodology. The idea isn't to make a better flash any more than IE was an attempt to make a better Navigator or NET was an attempt to make a better Java.

It's simply to create an adequate replacement for a de facto standard so the de facto standard can be replaced with a Microsoft standard - a standard Microsoft and only Microsoft will control.

Microsoft will perpetrate this hoodwinking exercise the same way they always do: cajole other players to use their 'replacement technology' (and to curtail support for existing de facto technologies).

They even have a download for (gasp) Mac OS X.

You really don't want to install Silverlight on your Mac. It doesn't matter how much Microsoft twist your arm - don't do it.

The Silverlight download is 8.7 MB and comes as a DMG. Do Microsoft know anything about DMGs?

A little. They also know a bit about Cocoa programming - a bit. You don't really want to know how little they know but OTOH you need to know it. For here's the cosmic joke:

Most of the monster Silverlight plugin is a bunch of ordinary 32-bit Windows portable executables run through an ABI.

The code isn't even native Mac. It's even got Visual Basic shite in it.

CoreCLR.bundle/Contents/MacOS/de/mscorlib.resources.dll: PE32 executable for MS Windows (DLL) (console) Intel 80386 32-bit Mono/.Net assembly
CoreCLR.bundle/Contents/MacOS/es/mscorlib.resources.dll: PE32 executable for MS Windows (DLL) (console) Intel 80386 32-bit Mono/.Net assembly
CoreCLR.bundle/Contents/MacOS/fr/mscorlib.resources.dll: PE32 executable for MS Windows (DLL) (console) Intel 80386 32-bit Mono/.Net assembly
CoreCLR.bundle/Contents/MacOS/i386/mscorlib.dll: PE32 executable for MS Windows (DLL) (console) Intel 80386 32-bit Mono/.Net assembly
CoreCLR.bundle/Contents/MacOS/it/mscorlib.resources.dll: PE32 executable for MS Windows (DLL) (console) Intel 80386 32-bit Mono/.Net assembly
CoreCLR.bundle/Contents/MacOS/ja/mscorlib.resources.dll: PE32 executable for MS Windows (DLL) (console) Intel 80386 32-bit Mono/.Net assembly
CoreCLR.bundle/Contents/MacOS/ko/mscorlib.resources.dll: PE32 executable for MS Windows (DLL) (console) Intel 80386 32-bit Mono/.Net assembly
CoreCLR.bundle/Contents/MacOS/zh-Hans/mscorlib.resources.dll: PE32 executable for MS Windows (DLL) (console) Intel 80386 32-bit Mono/.Net assembly
CoreCLR.bundle/Contents/MacOS/zh-Hant/mscorlib.resources.dll: PE32 executable for MS Windows (DLL) (console) Intel 80386 32-bit Mono/.Net assembly
de/Microsoft.VisualBasic.resources.dll: PE32 executable for MS Windows (DLL) (console) Intel 80386 32-bit Mono/.Net assembly
de/System.resources.dll: PE32 executable for MS Windows (DLL) (console) Intel 80386 32-bit Mono/.Net assembly
es/Microsoft.VisualBasic.resources.dll: PE32 executable for MS Windows (DLL) (console) Intel 80386 32-bit Mono/.Net assembly
es/System.resources.dll: PE32 executable for MS Windows (DLL) (console) Intel 80386 32-bit Mono/.Net assembly
fr/Microsoft.VisualBasic.resources.dll: PE32 executable for MS Windows (DLL) (console) Intel 80386 32-bit Mono/.Net assembly
fr/System.resources.dll: PE32 executable for MS Windows (DLL) (console) Intel 80386 32-bit Mono/.Net assembly
it/Microsoft.VisualBasic.resources.dll: PE32 executable for MS Windows (DLL) (console) Intel 80386 32-bit Mono/.Net assembly
it/System.resources.dll: PE32 executable for MS Windows (DLL) (console) Intel 80386 32-bit Mono/.Net assembly
ja/Microsoft.VisualBasic.resources.dll: PE32 executable for MS Windows (DLL) (console) Intel 80386 32-bit Mono/.Net assembly
ja/System.resources.dll: PE32 executable for MS Windows (DLL) (console) Intel 80386 32-bit Mono/.Net assembly
ko/Microsoft.VisualBasic.resources.dll: PE32 executable for MS Windows (DLL) (console) Intel 80386 32-bit Mono/.Net assembly
ko/System.resources.dll: PE32 executable for MS Windows (DLL) (console) Intel 80386 32-bit Mono/.Net assembly
Microsoft.VisualBasic.dll: PE32 executable for MS Windows (DLL) (GUI) Intel 80386 32-bit Mono/.Net assembly
System.Core.dll: PE32 executable for MS Windows (DLL) (console) Intel 80386 32-bit Mono/.Net assembly
System.dll: PE32 executable for MS Windows (DLL) (console) Intel 80386 32-bit Mono/.Net assembly
System.Net.dll: PE32 executable for MS Windows (DLL) (console) Intel 80386 32-bit Mono/.Net assembly
System.Net.Native.dll: Mach-O dynamically linked shared library i386
System.Runtime.Serialization.dll: PE32 executable for MS Windows (DLL) (console) Intel 80386 32-bit Mono/.Net assembly
System.ServiceModel.dll: PE32 executable for MS Windows (DLL) (console) Intel 80386 32-bit Mono/.Net assembly
System.ServiceModel.Web.dll: PE32 executable for MS Windows (DLL) (console) Intel 80386 32-bit Mono/.Net assembly
System.Windows.Browser.dll: PE32 executable for MS Windows (DLL) (console) Intel 80386 32-bit Mono/.Net assembly
System.Windows.dll: PE32 executable for MS Windows (DLL) (console) Intel 80386 32-bit Mono/.Net assembly
System.Xml.dll: PE32 executable for MS Windows (DLL) (console) Intel 80386 32-bit Mono/.Net assembly
zh-Hans/Microsoft.VisualBasic.resources.dll: PE32 executable for MS Windows (DLL) (console) Intel 80386 32-bit Mono/.Net assembly
zh-Hans/System.resources.dll: PE32 executable for MS Windows (DLL) (console) Intel 80386 32-bit Mono/.Net assembly
zh-Hant/Microsoft.VisualBasic.resources.dll: PE32 executable for MS Windows (DLL) (console) Intel 80386 32-bit Mono/.Net assembly
zh-Hant/System.resources.dll: PE32 executable for MS Windows (DLL) (console) Intel 80386 32-bit Mono/.Net assembly

Adobe might not be much better but at least they're native.

Flash Player: Mach-O universal binary with 2 architectures
Flash Player (for architecture ppc): Mach-O bundle ppc
Flash Player (for architecture i386): Mach-O bundle i386


Silverlight: don't install it. Save yourself that creepy 'unclean' feeling with something from Microsoft on your hard drive.

About | ACP | Buy | Industry Watch | Learning Curve | News | Products | Search | Substack
Copyright © Rixstep. All rights reserved.