Microsoft's Steve Ballmer rumored to present at Apple's WWDC 2010 - Page 2

Apple need(s) a partner for what exactly!?

Dressed as Pagliacci and accompanied by Glenn Close singing, "Send in the Clown." Bet it would be number one on iTunes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vufO2...eature=related

Wouldn't Visual Studio for iPhone be against the terms of use? People can't right apps with Adobe's software so why let crappy apps be created with Visual Studio?

If this is about Mac/iPhone development within Visual Studio (and I'm sure Microsoft have had a lot of customer queries about it) then what it means is:

1) Adding an Objective C compiler back-end to Visual Studio
2) Adding the Apple frameworks as a platform into VS.
3) Presumably adding an ARM assembler and compiler as well, although it may already be there as part of Windows Mobile development.

Apps would still use Cocoa, Core Animation, etc. It's not about porting Microsoft's runtime (of any flavour) to the iPhone or Mac, it's just about enabling another development environment to develop native Mac/iPhone apps.

Debugging could be interesting, as it would pretty much require a fully operational set of Apple frameworks running on Windows. Never mind the incompatibilities. Maybe it will have a minimal Mac OS X install within a Virtual Machine.

Does Xcode work on PC?

I know there's a starter edition or something for visual studio that's free, and people can use it to write windows mobile apps. Maybe this will be the same thing.

Either way, you iphone users need to realize this is very good news. It means a potential developer doesn't need to buy a mac to write software for the iphone (honestly, I don't know if they did to begin with) and they can write apps for you for cheap, meaning the price of the app can be low.

And this is a terribly well educated answer, right

iPhone apps aren't always "crappy apps." You should think before you speak.

I could care less about MSFT's success or failure, to tell you the truth, since it does not affect Apple much one way or another. So I don't think I was coming to it with any particular bias.

The point about splitting off Windows and Office from the rest of the firm was simply because those are two innovation-less, mature cash flow businesses whose past success (and utility-like mindsets) are perhaps sucking the oxygen out of the rest of the comany's divisions. Future growth for Microsoft is going to come, if at all, from the rest of their businesses, not from these two stale, old behemoths.

The logic for splitting up, in turn, Windows and Office from each other was motivated by the fact that it would probably get Microsoft past its unnecessary antitrust hassles. Make each one compete in the marketplace separately, and it might also make them a little more innovative and nimble.

MS is still "friends" with google aren't they? Actually, now that I think about it, I don't know why I'm under that impression...

RUH ROH

Visual Studio 2010 on the other hand will be surprize ;-) So many consumers are waiting for this. Developers are also anxious to see what "technology changes" are coming from Microsoft with new suite of development tools. It will bo so easy now to develop some .NET parts and perhaps some ActiveX/COM funky stuff (that is what... 15 years old?).

As development engineer for last 19 years, I still cannot get Microsoft's point of going big bang with development tools that everybody treats just as utilty to make platform work for consumer. There is no space for real innovation with those IDE's.

I bet there will be known for years BS of: "robust application development", "quick turnaround" e.t.c. I have heard this in the beginning of '90 from the same company... when I was developing for Windows (old times .

I agree that this is a big question, and it does seem inconsistent with Jobs' earlier comments. However, there are several reasons why Jobs might see this as different. First, MS has a much better track record than Adobe when it comes to developer tools, going all the way back to the Apple II. Second, MS has kept its promises to Apple in the past -- when Apple was at death's door, MS was there with a promise of continuing Office support (which they did) and $150 million. Third, Flash doesn't open new markets for Apple, but this really could -- there's a ton of custom, internal software that businesses write using MS development tools. If this were also combined with Silverlight support on the iPhone, then it would put Apple devices head and shoulders above both Blackberry and Android in terms of corporate users.

And finally, remember that before Apple introduced the iPhone, Jobs went to great pains to explain why getting into the smartphone business made no sense for apple, and that people prefer devices dedicated to doing a great job at a single task rather than a general purpose device. And now we have iPads, iPhones, and hundreds of thousands of apps. Translation -- don't believe everything Steve tells you.

I think you got it right. And sure, while Apple likes selling a Mac to every new developer, it may be worth more to welcome established developers who are already successful using VS. If some software developer thrives in an established vertical market, and they want to enhance their product with iPhone/iPad offerings, I believe it's attractive for Apple to support them by enhancing the tool they already know as opposed to forcing them to learn a new tool.

Anyone out there have an estimate on how much it costs to train a software developer to become expert in a new IDE such as XCode or VS?

On the contrary, I would say that this twin monopoly is the primary reason Microsoft lost any innovative edge that it had. I would even claim that if the two had been split as Judge Penfield Jackson wanted back in '99, Microsoft (or the daughter cos.) would be in much better shape today.

I can see the following benefits for Microsoft:

1. Fed antitrust watchdogs get off MS's backs. MS won't have to second guess how the DOJ will react to every move they make.

2. The OS div will be free to update/retool Windows without having to worry about the effects on Office's monopoly position.

3. The Office div will be free to build apps for any operating system out there: Linux, MacOS, Android, iPhoneOS, Unix, etc.

If I had MS stock I would absolutely welcome a split. I'd own stock in two leaner, unfettered companies instead of one big fat corporation that is saddled with the burden of close fed oversight and the task of defending two innovation-sapping monopolies.

1 - Bing will be the default search engine

2 - Windows get an IDE for developing iPhone/iPod touch/iPad applications

3 - Windows is getting an infrastructure that will allow Mac applications to run natively (yellowbox?)

Okay, my bad... or rather, my interpretive reaction to Steve's response to an e-mail where he said in regards to the question "I hope you have some good WWDC announcements to blow them out of the water? (regarding Google)

and Steve's response "You won't be disappointed!"

Which could be taken as 'You'll be Pleasantly Pleased!"

But 'Pleasantly Pleased' doesn't have the same forcefulness as if you were told you are going to be WOW'd er, "You won't be disappointed!"

So after Steve's keynote, please come back to this post and let me know...

Were you not disappointed? Were you pleasantly pleased? Or were you Wow'd? Just out of curiosity...
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7 minutes of Ballmer on June 7 talking about Windows 7 - 777 the new number of the beast

More likely some sort of Office 2011 on Mac OS X demo of the release candidate build.


What is Apple going to do when they get to OS X 10.9 - go with 10.10 or OS X 11.0 - or OS XI (sounds like a hard k followed by the word eye). Or maybe OS 11.

I fail to see how anyone can view this as bad news. If the rumor holds true.

I think the BIG surprise here, is that this is a RUMOR, and not going to happen. But hey, they will get a nice free ride for a few days out of this one.

Skip

PS now if Balmer comes out, and kisses Steve's hand like in the Godfather, that might be worth the price of admission

I'm not buying this rumor one bit.

The IDE (development environment) is not the problem. Note that the developer agreement didn't specifically state that development had to be done using Xcode, just the programming language (C, C++ or Objective C).

Apple's position is that they don't want someone else inserting a layer of code between the developer and Apple's iPhone APIs, so no interpreters, source language translators, or libraries wrapping around the iPhone APIs.

Visual studio is already two thirds of the way there as far as the source language is concerned: it compiles C and C++.

If this rumour is correct, the most likely scenario is Microsoft announcing that Visual Studio is adding support for Objective C and generation of code for ARM processors, and Apple will be supplying the iPhone SDK in a form which can be used with Visual Studio, including features like an iPhone simulator running on Windows. Other languages supported by Visual Studio (particularly C#) will not be supported for iPhone development.

There could be issues with Microsoft's C/C++ runtime library code, but its source code is available, and Microsoft can liaise with Apple to address any issues. In any case, much of it would be optional, and the developer would not be forced to use a Microsoft-defined wrapper around iPhone APIs.

I don't see any problem with this from Apple's point of view. It is just a different compiler generating code to run on the iPhone.

Apple would lose the incentive to sell Macs to prospective iPhone developers who are currently Windows developers, but that is a relatively minor lump of money compared to the increased potential for iPhone application development, which would push further sales of the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch.


The situation with CodeWarrior wasn't one where Apple was "dependent" on another company. CodeWarrior was simply a better compiler and development environment than Apple's own tools, so it was more popular with developers. Apple supplied the Mac development SDKs for use with CodeWarrior.

A bigger issue was for application developers who used CodeWarrior when the product was discontinued - they had to port their application to build with a different set of code tools and learn how to use a different IDE. (This was on top of issues around Carbon vs Cocoa.)

Microsoft and Apple would be directly competing with the quality of code built by their compilers. If Apple supplies the SDK, Microsoft won't need to "keep up", except in generating code to make better use of future processors (which they could know well in advance, given the ARM product line is well defined).

As much as I dislike their TV ads i would be more inclined to Bing than google if it became the default search engine on Safari

Office for iPad. *yawn*

I'd rather be pleasantly pleased than sadly saddened. :-)

Maybe Ballmer gets up on stage and says "We just can't win against Apple", referring to Bill Gates saying that Steve Jobs couldn't "win" a decade ago

Quite possibly... but I think it would be so much fun if Apple decided to support SilverLight, and probably a good business decision, too.

Ballmer is gonna set all of our files to -rwxrwxrwx


The first thing that popped into my mind when I read this was SB on stage dancing like Chris Elliott in Cabin Boy... while the crowd chucks Zunes and Kins at him..

He wasn't saying that iPhone apps are always crappy apps. He was merely repeating what Steve had said in his letter about Flash regarding apps created in Flash and ported into iPhone code. If those are lowest common denominator and suck, why would people coding in .net and being converted into obj c be any better?

It is not even worth it to see and read their posts..

I hope he runs out jumping up and down screaming at the top of his lungs to get the crowd excited...

This Visual Studio rumour sounds a terrible idea.

Office for iPad on the other hand would be great (not that i use office, but many do).

I hope Bing doesn't become the default; I don't like it.
While I'm not a developer and if this rumor proves true, it doesn't make me want to use Microsoft software.

Shifting alliances are the way of the world. I don't like "Bullet-head" Ballmer any more than the next guy, but Microsoft and Apple have a long history together. There is a tacit acknowledgement that when they can help themselves by helping each other, they will. In retrospect, Gates was never the devil that many of us liked to cast him as. He and Jobs were the original Pirates of Silicon Valley after all. The two young dudes who revolutionized personal computer technology worldwide. There is an underlying camaraderie on the human level--born out of a common experience. Like old soldiers, even on opposite sides. Despite the competition, I think the two had genuine respect for one another. On the other hand, Ballmer is just a tool.

If we're looking for a new enemy, look no further than Google. I thought Schmidt's cloning of the iPhone after sitting on Apple's board was corporate treachery of the highest order. I still scratch my head that Apple hasn't made stronger legal moves on that front. The lost iPhone episode pales by comparison. Wish they had kicked in HIS door and seized his personal communications!

Adobe makes a lot of noise, but they know what side their bread is buttered on. They are not even close to the threat Google is.

You know, we used to make fun of Gates, but Ballmer? I just can't stand him in all seriousness. Not only that, I think that man as absolutely no vision. He's presided over some huge disasters at M$, from Longhorn's delay and complete do-over, to Vista's release. He's constantly derided Apple and the iPhone as well. And, he's a sweaty, screaming ape.


Now that I like. Actually, I would give it about 10 years.....

(May, 2020)

Microsoft, having been broken up by the Obama Justice Dept 2013, lies in ruin. Windows has gone from 95% market share to 30%. Apple commands 65% of the operating system market, 50% of the mobile phone market, and 90% of the digital media market. Microsoft is still working on Windows 8.....

(WWDC--June, 2020)

Jobs is standing center stage. He details the battles between M$ and Apple over the past 40 years, finally wrapping up with the famous phrase..."and one more thing..."

Suddenly, Gates walks across the stage. Jobs stands there, then motions for him to come over. He folds his arms. "Now...kneel. Kneel before jobs." Gates signs, and reluctantly bows. "Finally" jobs says. "Take my hand and pledge eternal loyalty." As he does, Jobs grabs a cattle brand with the original Mac smiley logo. He thrusts it into Gates chest. Gates howls in terror, and disintegrates into nothingness. The crowd goes wild.

Here's a good comparison of the two: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009...ur-needs-best/

It seems like silverlight might have some potential, but the lack of audio support is a little concerning. It seems like programming in silverlight is better though. It says silverlight supports only VC-1 codec along with some wmv codecs.

All in all, it might just be another thing Apple dismisses as a resource hog.

Umm.. Applesoft is Microsoft. Know your history.

Oh woops lol.

So is that how VS 2010 will do it? Convert from .net to objective C? I was under the impression they would just support the framework altogether. I think it was 2006 that last had support for J++. It's not beyond MS to include support for languages other than vb.net and C#...

This would be a horrible move. Silverlight is a terrible, proprietary, patent encumbered, Microsoft technology designed to move Microsoft's illegally obtained desktop monopoly onto the web and non-Microsoft platforms. It is designed to lock developers and consumers into yet another layer of super expensive, proprietary Microsoft technology. No thanks, i will pass.

Well, a couple of points.

1. Xcode was ported to Windows years ago as part of NeXT's OpenStep initiative, which also included a complete OpenStep (basically, Cocoa) runtime for apps. Apple kept alive and continued to develop their Intel port of OpenStep as Mac OS X developed, so it's not entirely far fetched that they've kept Xcode up to date on Windows. Integrating Interface Builder and at least some Project Builder functionality into VS probably wouldn't be much of a technical challenge, either, but, although I don't work in VS at all, I imagine the development process requires a completely different workflow, and developers still have to learn the frameworks, which is the biggest hurdle, so it's hard to see exactly what benefits developers derive from that.

(OpenStep on Windows was actually an interesting cross-platform initiative. Essentially, you just created special .nib files, using Interface Builder, for Windows -- renaming menu items, rearranging menus and dialogs, to make them more Windows like -- and, if memory serves, you could actually compile "universal" apps where one version would run on both platforms, picking the correct .nib, or .nibs if your app was localized, depending on the platform.)

2. The amount of money Apple makes off hardware sales to developers who are only buying Macs is probably negligible. On the other hand, the number of (good) developers they would gain by not requiring a Mac is probably also negligible. The downside would be that the likelihood of these developers moving into Mac development declines if they don't have Macs, although, the pickup there is probably small to begin with. Mostly a wash, Hard to see any direct benefits for Apple here, or Microsoft, for that matter. The biggest benefit for Apple, of Windows hosted CocoaTouch development, is the image factor, as it "looks" like they are opening up development while it's still smartly restricted to proper tools.

3. A search announcement seems much more likely, and 7 minutes isn't a lot of time to devote to a developer tools announcement if it's something as different as CocoaTouch support in VS. Barely enough time for a demo, let alone any to talk about it.

4. It's possible that there is something going on in development tools, like Xcode for iPhone OS on Windows and a search related announcement, and that could probably fit into 7 minutes fairly simply. And maybe this information got jumbled along the way until it became the current rumor.

5. It's also possible that it's just crazy bullshit.

Yes. Sounds like bogus rumor. Apple shut off the 3rd pary runtimes prior to adobe CS5 launch.

This seems correct to me. It seems to be the most likely explanation.