

Will Steve Ballmer show up at the WWDC keynote? - adw
http://blogs.barrons.com/techtraderdaily/2010/05/26/apple-will-steve-ballmer-show-up-at-the-wwdc-keynote/

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archgrove
Hmm, I'm dubious. I can see XCode on Windows, as it increases the developer
market share and primes people for a move to Mac. I don't know how they'd do
it technically, though - most of the good bits of XCode are based on kernel
level dtrace support.

I just can't see them wanting Visual Studio support. It is, pretty much, just
better than XCode. Overnight, the superior development platform for an Apple
device would be a Windows machine. Unless they're really planning on EOLing OS
X and their non iP* businesses, why would they want the best developer
environment to be hosted on a rival platform? Killing or abandoning OS X seems
insane - desk/laptops still account for 50% of their income, and currently
most OS X developers are also targeting iP* devices in parallel with their
desktop work. Moreover, the iPhone halo effect is getting them more Mac sales
and Mac developers. Whilst they're not hurting for iPhone apps, why give
developers the incentive to stop buying Macs, buy Windows, kill off their OS X
development, and throw out a hugely profitable segment of Apple's business to
gamble on Android not eating their iPhone lunch?

I suspect this is just an analysts "blue sky" nonsense, or a confusion over
e.g. development environments for Office 2011 Mac. For reference, this same
guy claimed there would be no Mac updates in 2009, and that they'd release a
small OLED laptop by the end of 2009. 0 for 2 so far, and I'm guessing 0 for
3.

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mcaruso
> Visual Studio [...] is, pretty much, just better than XCode.

How so? (Genuinely curious, I have too little experience with either platform
to judge.)

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archgrove
Mostly, it's that the intellisense and interactive debugger systems are
streets ahead. Intelisense is basically useless on XCode, and the debugger
support is a thin UI layer around GDB (which, very often, just doesn't work.
The number of times it'll tell me that a variable is out of scope when it's
quite clearly right in front of its nose is insane).

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undees
Call me insane, but I kind of like GDB + Xcode's wrapper. Yes, once or twice
it has said dumb things about variables, but no more so than Visual Studio.

Likewise, I can't remember a time when I've seen Xcode's Intellisense-like
feature fail, though I can recall several times when Visual Studio's has.
(Xcode's method to advance to the next parameter--Ctrl-slash or something--is
pretty non-obvious, though.)

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waterlesscloud
No doubt followed by 6 minutes of rms promoting the ipad.

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adw
I'd pay to see that.

(Seriously; VS2010. If you assume it's about new-developer mindshare then at
the moment Android has one huge advantage - you don't need to buy a Mac.)

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jsz0
It seems entirely plausible to me. Much like iPod/iTunes support for Windows
in the past. It's inevitable. Apple's world does not revolve exclusively
around the Mac. Even if 50% of mobile developers used a Mac, which is
certainly an overstatement, that's too many Windows developers to ignore.
Apple is already giving away XCode so no conflict of interest there. I'm not
sure what Microsoft's motivation would be except trying to lure some potential
Android developers to the iPhone in the short term because they envision WM7
and Android competing directly with each other.

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adw
Microsoft are really strong in office software and in developer tools. Those
are businesses which are actually reasonably weakly coupled to the OS business
and barely coupled at all to their devices business units.

I'm suspicious of the idea that any company of Microsoft's size and maturity
has a coherent strategic direction. Apple's an exception, but it's not a
business: it's a totalitarian command economy with shareholders.

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keyle
I laugh because so many C# developer I know have suffered learning ObjC to be
with the cool kids... And it's such a pain.

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pohl
It would be quite a slap to Adobe's face to say that ActionScript is not a
valid source language, and then embrace C# as one. I don't know if Adobe's
face can withstand any more slappin'.

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gt384u
If Ballmer were to show up at a WWDC Keynote, (which I very much doubt) I can
think of a better reason than a technically impractical dev tool announcement:
integration of Bing services into iPhoneOS. Given the current friction between
Google, this would be a huge finger in Google's eye.

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barranger
So 6 months before they release their new phone OS, Microsoft is going to
announce that they are Supporting the iPhone with their superior (personal
opinion here) development environment, thus giving up one of the (very?) few
areas that WP7 has an advantage...

I'm going to go out on a limb as say, probably not.

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frou_dh
Does this guy not know that Visual Studio 2010 has already been released?

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ssharp
If you enter the Konami code during startup, you get the iPhone dev tools.

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martingordon
If this were to happen, the only reason it would is to bring Bing to the
iPhone. Bing Search, Bing Maps, and perhaps Bing Travel if Apple announces
their travel app plans (longshot).

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contextfree
while this would be AWESOME, I doubt it's true.

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slantyyz
I'm with you on this. It would be totally AWESOME and would bring major hype
to both companies, and possibly shift the discussion away from I/O + Android.

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jrockway
"The enemy of my enemy is my friend."

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k33n
No.

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ergo98
No. This is insanity.

There's the growing theme that Apple and Microsoft are pals in their fight
against Google. This is positively insane. Apple is absolutely devastating
Microsoft's core foundation in a way that some shitty online spreadsheet
hasn't.

Not to mention that this is the antithesis of pretty much everything that Jobs
recently said about Adobe.

Apple doesn't need to woo developers, or expand their development platform.
They have a lot of top notch apps, an overflowing app store, and everyone is
rushing the door to get their chance at having their app denied. Maybe in a
few years, if Android or WM7 really takes off, this will be a concern, but not
now.

