XML similar to an INI file ?

Just getting started with XML. At a brief glance it seems to be a similar concept to an INI file. Is this fair?

Also it seems pretty simple to understand and implement. Are you ever really going to have to use anything other than 3rd party tools to create and parse XML files ?

Basically, XML is just markup, a bit similar to HTML(they both originate from SGML), just a bit more strict. Visual Basic has a built in XML parser AFAIK, but you could just as well make your own...