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Rumor for developers, developers, developers! Steve Ballmer to present at WWDC?

by Sang Tang May 27th 2010 at 10:00AM

Barron's reports, you decide: According to Trip Chowdry, an analyst with Global Equities Research, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will have seven minutes of stage time at WWDC 2010.

[Wait, what now? –Ed.]

According to Chowdry, Ballmer's topic will be Visual Studio 2010, Microsoft's development suite.The supposed announcement will center on VS10's hypothetical ability to write native apps for iPhone, iPad, and (gasp) Mac OS. Currently, such apps can only be created in Apple's Xcode environment.

There are a couple of schools of thought that might discredit or support this rumor. On one hand, the current Xcode-only development regime requires a Mac. As many of us know, once you go Mac, it's difficult to go back; these iPhone and iPad developers may go on to make great Mac apps, too.

The flip side of this is that requiring Xcode, and thus a Mac, serves as a large barrier to entry for many developers and the apps that they could potentially make. VisualStudio may attract users who wouldn't switch desktop platforms to develop for the iPhone or iPad.

Given the notoriously secretive nature of Steve Jobs's keynotes, it's difficult to imagine that information like this, if true, could slip out. It's also hard to reconcile the full-court press against other IDEs for the iPhone (the notorious 3.3.1 clause) with the idea of letting Microsoft deliver a fully supported development platform for Apple's crown jewel devices.

[Translation: Trip Chowdry may have some bad intel here. –Ed.]

WWDC will begin on June 7, 2010.

[via MacRumors]



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Barron's reports, you decide: According to Trip Chowdry, an analyst with Global Equities Research, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will have...
 

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Yannick

I am a developer, I own a Mac but I develop on Windows using Visual Studio. I hate xCode with a passion but I do love my Mac, iPhone and iPad. I would love to have the ability to develop for Mac from my Visual Studio.

May 27 2010 at 7:35 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
ilkyone

@Rego...

Your error is a priori

Adobe controls 96% of desktop web content with proprietary software. For them to claim that Apple is unfairly competing with them as a monopoly is a bit like China complaining that the U.S. is undercutting its labor costs.

May 27 2010 at 4:51 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Justin E Harris

And did someone forget about MobileMe? Is that going to be updated? Or Lala/iTunes?

May 27 2010 at 4:41 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Justin E Harris

Well maybe Steve or another Microsoft Rep will talk about developing on Microsoft Platform..

May 27 2010 at 4:25 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Twist

I would actually love to see Visual Studio and C# officially supported on Mac OS X and the iPhone OS (we really need a better name for this OS since only one of the three devices it runs on is a phone now).

I recently took a couple of C# classes and was blown away by the language and its frameworks and was very happy with the Visual Studio IDE as well (mainly its auto-complete and auto-formatting features, the WYSIWYG editor sucks compared to Interface Builder). C# is a much easier language to learn and use than Objective-C and now that I have experience with it I find myself constantly questioning why they did things the way they did in Objective-C (do we really need both @interface and @implementation when they could have been combined into a single unit?).

May 27 2010 at 3:00 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Rego

If MS software could be used to develop iPhone OS apps, with Apple's blessing, this would further dilute any Adobe claims about unfair competition.

May 27 2010 at 2:45 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Dan Pritchard

a Bing replacing Google deal would be pretty exciting. Lack of integration with the iPhone OS and Mac OS X is the main reason I haven't tried out Bing more.

May 27 2010 at 1:48 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Roberto

If Chowdry is correct, I will personally transfer all my AAPL to her.
It is going to be more likely that Obama gets on stage, The Beatles reunite, and Michael Jackson provides the closing musical act.

May 27 2010 at 12:42 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Roberto's comment
igepard

This one is the best! I am falling off the chair :-)))))))))))))))))))))))))))

May 27 2010 at 1:15 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Bryn Thompson

Utter rubbish, I could go into reasons but it's not worth warranting with such. Any VS developer will know the same. Plus to give stage time for this, a product to replace XCode... no. Can't believe this made it to an article.

May 27 2010 at 12:33 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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