Rumour: Ballmer at WWDC, VS2010 for iPhone/Mac

tulkastulkas
Posted:
in iPhone edited January 2014
MacRumors is reporting (source: Barrons)that Ballmer may appear during Jobs keynote at WWDC to announce that Visual Studio 2010 will support compiling native apps for Mac OSX and iPhone OS. Beyond the huge shock this would be, it would also fly in the face of one of Jobs arguments against Flash. The stated concern, which I agree with, was that third party IDE's could not be counted on to keep up with advancements to the API and so devs using those environments wouldn't be able to take advantage of the newest enhancements. This was stated as being the most important reason for the prohibition of Flash. So, is MS expected to be more reliable in keeping up with developments of the platforms? Apple doesn't want to, and shouldn't, allow their success to be dependent on other companies, as it was with Office and CodeWarrior. While this would open the doors to many new developers, it seems counter to their recent position.

Quote:

This becomes even worse if the third party is supplying a cross platform development tool. The third party may not adopt enhancements from one platform unless they are available on all of their supported platforms. Hence developers only have access to the lowest common denominator set of features. Again, we cannot accept an outcome where developers are blocked from using our innovations and enhancements because they are not available on our competitor’s platforms.

-Steve Jobs

April, 2010



Strange rumour. I wonder how reliable the source is.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 4
    dfilerdfiler Posts: 3,420member
    The distinction would be "compiling native apps". In other words, if VS for Mac were to disappear, developers could simply switch to another IDE without any functional changes in their code. The build process would certainly be different. But this is a drastically different scenario then Flash, which consists of a different language and API set.
  • Reply 2 of 4
    spotonspoton Posts: 645member
    If anyone wants to give me their WWDC ticket, if Ballmer takes the stage I will guaranty to get up and chant



    "Monkey Dance! Monkey Dance!"



    "We want the Monkey Dance!"





    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbCmnRztK1Y



    I'm not kidding either, I have nothing to lose. PM me, it will be a riot!
  • Reply 3 of 4
    tulkastulkas Posts: 3,757member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by dfiler View Post


    The distinction would be "compiling native apps". In other words, if VS for Mac were to disappear, developers could simply switch to another IDE without any functional changes in their code. The build process would certainly be different. But this is a drastically different scenario then Flash, which consists of a different language and API set.



    I don't think it is a matter of 'if VS were to disappear'. That wasn't really part of the statement from Jobs. The issue was, that if VS (or other IDEs) were widely used, then Apple couldn't guarantee that API advancements would be current in environments from third parties. Does Apple have faith that MS would keep up parity of VS with XCode? Does Apple really trust MS enough to give them advance access to upcoming APIs, which would allow MS to maintain parity? It isn't like MS hasn't used insider access to Apple IP for their own advantage before.
  • Reply 4 of 4
    dfilerdfiler Posts: 3,420member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Tulkas View Post


    I don't think it is a matter of 'if VS were to disappear'. That wasn't really part of the statement from Jobs. The issue was, that if VS (or other IDEs) were widely used, then Apple couldn't guarantee that API advancements would be current in environments from third parties. Does Apple have faith that MS would keep up parity of VS with XCode? Does Apple really trust MS enough to give them advance access to upcoming APIs, which would allow MS to maintain parity? It isn't like MS hasn't used insider access to Apple IP for their own advantage before.



    Don't get me wrong, i'm not saying it isn't an issue. Just making it clear that Flash development isn't perfectly analogous. It wouldn't be inconsistent to prohibit flash but yet to allow IDEs that compile native code.



    It would seem that nib construction would be the biggest issue. Type ahead completion in source code editors could read from the apple supplied API definitions. Would it make a difference elsewhere?



    Edit: The underlying compiler could also be critical to a future API or API revision from Apple. Hmmm, I wonder if MS would go the same route as Apple and rely on 3rd parties for this. Does MS currently do this with VS?
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