Microsoft to the WWDC?
If this rumor is true (and mind you, it's a nothing but a single sourced rumor right now) it would sure be a visible turn around. Remember the giant projection of Bill Gates at an Apple event back in 1997? At that time, Apple was barely afloat, and Microsoft desperately needed to keep some competition around. Well, it's 13 years later, and things have certainly changed. Apple's market cap now exceeds Microsoft's, and there's this rumor:
Trip Chowdhry, an analyst with tiny Global Equities Research, contends that 7 minutes of the June 7 keynote by Apple CEO Steve Jobs has been blocked off for a presentation by Microsoft to talk about Visual Studio 2010, the company’s suite of development tools. Chowdhry says the new version of VS will allow developers to write native applications for the iPhone, iPad and Mac OS. And here’s the kicker: he thinks Microsoft’s presentation could be given by none other than Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.
If that's true, it would be a very visible turn about. Even if it's not true, you have to consider where Apple is in the most relevant space (mobile) compared to MS right now. Apple is in the lead, and MS is busy rearranging the deck chairs.
Comments
Re: Microsoft to the WWDC?
[anonymous] May 27, 2010 10:14:16.346
The Visual Studio part doesn't make sense.
Visual Studio running on Windows targeting OS X (Mac, iPhone and iPad) would be a cross development environment - something you do for embedded system where you have no choice. You'd need all the OSX libraries on the Windows system in order to link an application - I can't see Apple allowing that.
Visual Studio on OSX would get you Microsoft's C and C++ compilers on OSX. But what is Visual Studio without Windows and .net? Would they bring all of .net to OSX? They can't bring it to the iPhone or iPad because of the interpreter rules.
Neither scenario appears to have much financial benefit for Microsoft, both have costs.
Still I am prepared to be surprised.
If I was Microsoft I'd be demonstrating iPad as SharePoint client and the tools and API's for making Mac, iPad and iPhone fit in an enterprise based upon Microsoft's server applications. There is profit for both sides there because Microsoft charge a per client license fee - possibly more than XP license for the lost netbook sale that the iPad took.