Will Steve Ballmer Speak At WWDC Keynote?

truthsearch writes "An analyst reports that not only will CEO Steve Jobs return to Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference stage — he missed last year for medical reasons — but he will be joined there by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdrey said that Microsoft has been given seven minutes during Jobs' keynote to talk about Visual Studio 2010. Chowdrey said that a new version of the development tools software will support native applications for the iPhone, iPad, and Mac OS." Update: 05/27 19:17 GMT by T : As reader theappwhisperer points out, Microsoft has responded to this rumor via the company's Twitter feed with an unequivocal No.

Comments

huh?

[s73v3r]

Is it April already?

In all seriousness, I might welcome Visual Studio for the Mac.

Re:huh?

[Altus]

This doesn't sound like they will port it to the mac. In fact I think that would be pretty bad, the UI is just totally in apropirate. It sounds more like apple is trying to find a way to let people develop for the iPhone and the iPad (and maybe the mac as well) using a PC. This could be very useful for iPhone developers.

While I'm not sure developing mac applications on windows makes much sense, it could be very nice for setting up automated build machines in a mixed platform development environment.

Re:huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ballmer is Jobs in a fat suit.

Re:huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

more like .NET for mac os x & iPhone

Re:huh?

[WrongSizeGlass]

In all seriousness, I might welcome Visual Studio for the Mac.

I guess they're going to add a compiler for Obj-C? "Obj-C.net, horrible syntax isn't just on the Mac anymore! Get your copy of @interface Windows *[@implementation Visual_Studio 2010] today!".

Re:huh?

[binarylarry]

They're both very afraid of the waking Linux juggernaut, so it makes sense they'd team up to combat it. They've both recently has their asses kicked separately by it via Google and co, so they probably realize they need to work together.

Kind of like The Joker and Two Face teaming up to take on Batman.

Re:huh?

[Philip K Dickhead]

Look for the upcoming merger/acquisition.

Re:huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

They're both very afraid of the waking Linux juggernaut

You didn't really just say that, did you? Are you fucking retarded? In other news, Disney and Dreamworks will be teaming up, as they're afraid of the walking juggernaut that is me, since I just installed Blender.

Re:huh?

[0100010001010011]

With a truckload of epinephrine.

Re:huh?

[rwa2]

I kind of like the idea of rivals being friendly with each other. Better than the alternative... extremism. Not really sure what an OS extremist would do, though.

Anyway, I'm sure MS Office is still pretty big on Mac OS.
And iTunes on Windows probably pulls in a decent amount of money for Apple.

So there are plenty of benefits to being able to play well with others.

Re:huh?

[binarylarry]

Have you ever heard of Android or Google search, my anonymous bitch?

Re:huh?

[Rockoon]

You are replying to a person whos signature is a link to 10 reasons why Java is better than .NET.

I'm pretty sure "fucking retarded" is an understatement. Its like listing 10 reasons why a Toyota Camry is better than a Harley.

Re:huh?

[Rockoon]

Apple could add an object-C compiler for Visual Studio any time they want. Visual Studio does not restrict what compilers can be on the backside, for instance ICC and GCC both work well under VS.

Re:huh?

[binarylarry]

How so? Anyone who's used both know .NET is a knock off of Java (not to say Java is entirely original itself, but it's clearly .NET's main inspiration). I understand your confusion though. For non developer types, Microsoft has a done a great job making it unclear what .NET was/is.

It's like saying a Chevy is better than a one off secret uber car from the guy who designed the Hindenburg.

Re:huh?

[Rockoon]

Anyway, I'm sure MS Office is still pretty big on Mac OS.

Microsoft is a software company, after all. They have pretty much always provided software for Apple computers, dating as far back as the Apple II. They even saved Apples ass once.

Re:huh?

[Low Ranked Craig]

juggernaut

a massive inexorable force, campaign, movement, or object that crushes whatever is in its path

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Re:huh?

[MBGMorden]

Heck I'd LOVE Visual Studio for the Mac. Just from a personal preference standpoint, I find Visual Studio far easier to keep things straight in comparison to Xcode.

Re:huh?

[xfurious]

Right, so Apple changed their developer agreement to not allow .NET just in time to partner with MS to introduce the only sanctioned .NET implementation, thus cutting Mono out.... I don't really see the benefit to Apple for having .NET on iPhoneOS, especially since they don't need Microsoft's cash handouts (see the recent news about Apple's worth). Don't get me wrong, they should do it, but the double standard just ain't gonna last.

Re:huh?

[pushing-robot]

Not really sure what an OS extremist would do, though.

This comes to mind.

Re:huh?

[TheRaven64]

For what it's worth, clang already builds with visual studio, and can compile Objective-C code for that platform. I believe it can also be used from the IDE (it isn't used to do syntax highlighting or autocompletion though, so that might be what this announcement is about), and it can already be used to create iPhone binaries, if you have the headers installed.

And horrible syntax? What, having each parameter explicitly named is bad now? Or are you just complaining about the separation of interface and implementation? I really hope I never have to maintain your code...

Re:huh?

[TheRaven64]

Anyway, I'm sure MS Office is still pretty big on Mac OS.

Not as big as OpenOffice.org. Fortunately, new Macs ship with 4GB of RAM or more...

Re:huh?

[ICLKennyG]

Dance Monkey Boy, Dance!

Re:huh?

[ColdWetDog]

Look for the upcoming merger/acquisition.

Don't Bogart that joint, my friend. Pass it around.

Re:huh?

[dwiget001]

Hmm, no.

Well, the fat thing is right on, but Ballmer will never be even in the same universe as Jobs was/is.

What does Steve have going for him?

Toxic Pit Stains (TM), and that's about it.

Re:huh?

[Rockoon]

How so? Anyone who's used both know .NET is a knock off of Java (not to say Java is entirely original itself, but it's clearly .NET's main inspiration).

Anyone who uses both knows that .NET passed Java a long time ago in features. Its not even a cloe contest on that matric any longer.

The point is that they are not directly comparable, just like a Motocycle vs a Car. They dont fill the same roles.

Re:huh?

[goombah99]

Objective C is what C++ should have been. It is true that the unconventional syntax drove people away. If you look at the concept of java and compare it to the implemention of java you can conclude that a lot of the late binding ideas of java were fantastic but something went wrong (I am reminded of this every time I look a my process list and see all the big real-memory apps are java, and they take ten times longer to start than they should.)

Objective C has the finest elements of java, but lacks the overwrought clumsiness of C++. objective C is very lean. But it leverages a lot of late binding and messaging ideas to allow the language to grow sophisticated idioms (e.g. why should I have to write the get-set methods for attributes by hand?) Those "@" you ridicule are saving you a lot of possible syntax errors and make the code a lot shorter.

Objective C is also had the benefit of maturing in isolation where it can avoid having as many crufty libraries and 5000 different idioms for the same thing.

Re:huh?

[binarylarry]

Lay off the crack bro.

To say that Java and .NET "don't fill the same roles" is hilariously retarded.

You've even managed to beat the fox news article I read earlier for FUD and stupidity!

Re:huh?

[Dog-Cow]

I think the GP was complaining about all the @ signs before the Objective C keywords. They serve an excellent purpose (which is to unambiguously denote invalid C), but they are a bit ugly.

Re:huh?

[tuvman]

I signed up to slashdot today just to post this comment because as a long time window and mac developer I'm infuriated by these non sense posts and hypothetical scenerios. Its not true because 1. VS2010 is already released. It was in beta for many many months. 2. Do you have any freaking idea of the work it would take to get objective-c and cocoa working in vs. 3. MS is pushing managed languages. 4. how would you test an app..I'm sure MS wants to encourage developers to buy Macs and iphones 5. why would MS spend all that effort trying to kick windows and windows mobile 7 in the nuts. Wasn't vista and windows mobile bad enough. 6. Have you not been paying attention to what steve says. No means no. he hates cross platform compilers. So if your dreaming of ways this could be true that also means no silverlight. But maybe I'm wrong and ballmer really wants to see if Bill has the guts to fire him. I should start a blog and say Santa and the easter bunny will be at WWDC.

Re:huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

90 of those reasons are not even true... also links don't work

Re:huh?

[geminidomino]

Hell, I'd love it on Linux (I know, I know, keep dreaming)...

I really don't like Eclipse and the only other IDE that I like enough to pay for (Komodo IDE) is only for scripting languages (Perl, PHP, TCL, Python, Ruby).

I'd love a nice full-featured non-eclipse raw C/C++ IDE. =\

Re:huh?

[diskofish]

I would agree that the syntax is horrible.

I find Obj-C's verboseness from named params and other language features more difficult to read. With named params, the first param name is omitted, which makes certain kinds of functions look very strange. For example, a setVector method might look like this:

[obj setVector: x, y: y,z: z]

To develop apps for iphone, you need to mix C function calls with Obj-C so things start looking even stranger.

UITextField *username =[[UITextField alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(24.5, 65, 270, 30)];

Re:huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazing how completely and utterly stupid and Uneducated you are.

Android = Linux.

If you dont think linux has already overtaken OSX and is starting to overtake microsoft.... Then you are either completely and utterly stupid, or have no more than a 4th grade education...

I take that back, I apologize to all 4th grades out there for insulting them by comparing them to you. You are far more stupid.

I am flat out amazed at your raging stupidity.

Re:huh?

[Lumpy]

Just wait, Glenn Beck will come on and redeem the Fox news stupid award.

Re:huh?

[spongman]

why is this an excellent purpose? C++ doesn't bother with this, neither does Java. why bother?

Re:huh?

[mini me]

While I'm not sure developing mac applications on windows makes much sense

Cocotron allows you to target Windows (and other platforms) with your Cocoa application, like OpenStep and YellowBox have done in the past. Cocoa seems to finally be realizing the dream of OpenStep and is becoming the de-facto standard for interface development on all platforms (web, mobile, desktop, etc.) It is the natural direction for Windows developers to head*. Having an application that runs on the Mac with just a recompile makes it that much more appealing.

* I have a hard time believing Microsoft would get behind the movement though.

Re:huh?

[HaZardman27]

the fox news article I read earlier

That's all anyone needed to see...

Re:huh?

[mini me]

There is a strong argument, based on what is being seen in recent Xcode releases, that Apple is moving to a managed language, like .NET, for iPhone binaries. This would explain why Apple is requiring the use of Xcode-supported languages to ensure that everyone is able to move to the new intermediate language with just a recompile.

I personally have my doubts that Apple would base their work on .NET over their own implementation, but I suppose anything is possible. Say what you will about Steve Jobs, but one thing he is intent on is allowing access to content on all types of devices, not just Apple-branded ones. Cocoa (OpenStep) itself was originally designed to run on multiple platforms, not just NeXT systems. A move to .NET could open up some interesting doors.

Re:huh?

[s73v3r]

Whoever wrote that method did a poor job of naming it. The proper way to do so would be:

[obj setVectorWithX: x, Y:y, Z:z]

Re:huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Obj-C and C++ are about as similar as Python and Lisp. C++ has the capability to do OOP, but rather awkwardly -- there are better languages for that, like Obj-C. C++ hasn't been about object-orientation ever since it evolved past C-with-classes.

Personally, you can keep Obj-C. Programming OOP style leaves me with the same distaste I feel with non-typesafe dynamic typing. Both tend to have exponentially rising fallibility with evenly rising complexity.

Re:huh?

[Hijacked Public]

Not really sure what an OS extremist would do, though.

A 4 digit UID and you don't recall the good old time distro flame wars here?

Point releases of Debian were announced as if Linus himself had handed them down on silicon tablets. Slackware people would descend on the story like Visigoths on Rome. If you didn't compile from source Gentoo people didn't even consider you a Linux user at all. If you missed typing "GNU" RMS would log in via vterm and personally correct you. Those of us who prefer a BSD flavor were either ignored or flamed, not for our OS choice but its license. RedHat users were the Ubuntu users of today, obviously just trying to be cool enough to show up at a LUG but would reboot to Windows at the first sign of a command line.

Think man. Back when it was actual News for Nerds this place was ground zero OS extremist training camp.

Re:huh?

[jeremyp]

Technically, Objective C's parameters aren't named, they are just embedded in the method name.

[obj setVector: x y: y z: z] is a different method to [obj setVector: x z: z y: y]

Also, your assertion that the first parameter name is omitted is completely spurious. No Objective-C programmer would name the method as you have done. They would use

[obj setVectorX: x y: y z: z];

Re:huh?

[mini me]

Objective-C is a superset of C, so it needs symbols like @ to tell the compiler which parts of the code are C and which are Objective-C. Java and C++ are completely different languages, with only similarities to C. They are free to implement their syntax however they wish, without any dependencies on C implementations.

Objective-C is actually quite a fascinating language. It cleanly mixes an object oriented, dynamically typed, message passing language which is very similar to Ruby (both Objective-C and Ruby are based on the work of Scheme), with the statically typed procedural language that is C.

Re:huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

And Jobs is Howard Hughes in a turtleneck.

Re:huh?

[chromas]

He's got TPS? Did anyone cover that report?

Re:huh?

[nomadic]

Not really sure what an OS extremist would do, though.

Or this.

Re:huh?

[Altus]

Oooh, very interesting. I'll have to check that out. I had been hoping that Apple would support such a thing back when OSX first came out, but it doesn't make as much sense for Apple even though it would be pretty good for the development community at large.

Thanks for the info.

Re:huh?

[diskofish]

Right, so you can see what my problem with the syntax is. setVectorWithX and setVectorX are both goofy and awkward.

[obj setVectorWithX: x, Y:y, Z:z];
[obj setVectorX: x y: y z: z];

C++
obj->setVector(x,y,z);

In my opionion, name parameters handled using another operator like :=.

Re:huh?

[hrimhari]

(...) C++ are completely different languages, with only similarities to C (...) without any dependencies on C implementations.

Although I'd be lying if I said I was a C++ specialist, last time I worked with it I had the impression that we could transparently plug C code into C++ code. It sounds like your description of Objective-C.

Re:huh?

[TheRaven64]

You're assuming that it's obvious to someone reading the code that the parameters are x, y, and z. They might equally be r, theta, phi, describing a vector using radial coordinates. With Objective-C, you can see the difference easily. You'll see:

[obj setVectorWithX: a Y: b Z: c];

Or

[obj setVectorWithPhi: a theta: b r: c];

In C++ what does this mean?

obj->setVector(a,b,c);

In your example, the variables were x, y, and z, but what if they are the result of functions and not assigned to a temporary? Then you don't get this information. This C++ example is particularly hideous because setVector() could be:

• A member function defined on the class of obj.
• A virtual member function defined on the class of obj but actually implemented on the subset that you have.
• A C function pointer stored in a field in obj.

Without knowing the type of obj, you don't know this. The amount of information required to understand that one line of C++ is huge. In contrast, you can typically look at a line of Objective-C code in isolation and know what it's doing. I use both languages regularly (I implemented, for example, the GNU Objective-C runtime support in Clang, which is written in C++), and I spend vastly more time cross-referencing code when using C++ than I do with Objective-C, and far more time consulting API documentation when reading code. It's rare to come across an unfamiliar ObjC message send and not know what it does. It's rare to come across an unfamiliar C++ method call and not need to check what it does.

Re:huh?

[Lars T.]

(...) C++ are completely different languages, with only similarities to C (...) without any dependencies on C implementations.

Although I'd be lying if I said I was a C++ specialist, last time I worked with it I had the impression that we could transparently plug C code into C++ code. It sounds like your description of Objective-C.

Of course you can - but if your C code uses any C++ keywords, there is not telling what will happen.

Re:huh?

[TheRaven64]

(both Objective-C and Ruby are based on the work of Scheme)

I assume this is a typo - both are based on Smalltalk. So is Java, although Java teaks the Smalltalk object model slightly. Semantically, Java and Objective-C are very similar. If you don't do any pointer arithmetic in Objective-C, then you can translate it into Java automatically.

Objective-C was originally created as a way of packaging C libraries. The idea was that you'd take a big blob of C code, and then use Objective-C for the interfaces. This extra layer of dynamic dispatch made it possible to change the implementation without altering the ABI at all. Faster computers meant that it gradually got used for the internal bits of libraries as well. This meant that interoperability with C was the primary design objective for ObjC.

As a concrete example, consider the pointer to the current object. In C++, it's called this, and is a keyword. That means that you can't have a variable called this in a function. If you have a C function that contains a variable called this, it is not a valid C++ function. In Objective-C, self (the equivalent) is a hidden parameter and obeys the same scoping rules as other parameters. This means that you can have a variable called self outside of an Objective-C method - in a function, or the global scope - and it is still valid Objective-C.

Java was actually based heavily on Objective-C. A lot of the people who worked on Java either came from NeXT, or worked with NeXT on OpenStep. If you go from Cocoa to Java or vice versa, you will find a lot of the APIs strangely familiar. The language uses the same modified Smalltalk model, with static typing and interfaces. Java adds garbage collection on top (not possible in Objective-C, because it needs to be compatible with C, but hacked on in some newer versions) and makes the static type system compulsory, but in a silly way (you can still circumvent it and get run time exceptions, just as you can in Objective-C, you just need a lot more explicit casting to tell the compiler that you know better than it).

Ruby was created by people who looked at Smalltalk, a language with elegant semantics and beautifully clean syntax, which can be fully described on one piece of paper (it was created as part of a bet that such a thing was possible), and said 'this is nice, but what it really needs is Perl-like syntax.' I still do not understand the mindset that would come up with that line of thought.

Re:huh?

[hrimhari]

Wow... I used to stand Visual Studio's UI until I started working on Eclipse. Visual Studio has become a real torture since then.

Re:huh?

[Elektroschock]

Cocoa and Openstep seems virtually the same. OpenStep is the spec. But with GNUstep you can also develop applications for Cocoa that run on other operating systems. Pretty awsome. I wish Gnustep would implement Cocoa.

Re:huh?

[MBGMorden]

Try out MonoDevelop. It's not quite as polished, but it's essentially a Visual Studio clone for Linux. You still have to use GTK+ and such for your GUI widgets, but overall it works pretty well.

Re:huh?

[mini me]

I wish Gnustep would implement Cocoa.

What is wrong with Cocotron?

Re:huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

You have got to be the stupidest fucker on Slashdot, which is no small feat.

Re:huh?

[Noughmad]

KDevelop 4 has been released recently, did you try it?

Re:huh?

[GigaplexNZ]

I've heard of Android, but so what? Everywhere I look*, someone is either using an iPhone (or occasionally a Blackberry) and very rarely do I see anything else. I've yet to actually see an Android based phone.

*Everywhere consists of Melbourne.

Re:huh?

[RulerOf]

Android = Linux.

And if I could, I'd install Windows on my phone without a second thought.

I know that makes me an idiot, especially around these parts, but it's just too awesome of a concept to pass up.

Of course, the one time I'd dial 911 for a real emergency I'm sure the modem/GPS drivers would cause a BSOD, but that's a different story =)

Re:huh?

[binarylarry]

I'm sure you don't see modern plumbing much either.

Re:huh?

[rwa2]

Mmmm, I was thinking more along the lines of the "ping of death" and flood ping'ing the Windows lusers back in the day, as sort of a way to "promote" Linux (but mainly just because we could).

Today it's all botnets and stuff, but not exactly for any sort of evangelical reasons. I was sort of expecting some sort of OS boot-sector virus by now that would hijack a Windows box or something and install Linux or something and join it to a cloud and congratulate the user. But I suppose the passive botnets are more effective, where the poor user doesn't even notice they've been subverted.

DoJ dodging

[TheKidWho]

Seems like they're trying to dodge the DoJ by adding "competition."

Regardless this is pretty nice, it means I can developed for my iPad/Phone/Pod on my core i7 desktop rather then my 4 year old iMac.

Re:DoJ dodging

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Seems like they're trying to dodge the DoJ by adding "competition."

No one has yet explained what dev tools have to do with competition law for a platform with 20% of the market. This is just another rumor based upon speculation about other speculation. Don't hold your breath.

well

[geekoid]

there goes all those virus free user experience.

ballmer - monkey man

[johnrpenner]

hope he doesnt pull one of these!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvsboPUjrGc

Rubbish

[DavidR1991]

It won't be MSVC. It'll be the new Office for Mac introduction.

Re:Rubbish

[Yvan256]

And maybe also official Windows 7 support via boot camp. Why else give him seven minutes?

Re:Rubbish

[dc29A]

Or Bing as default search engine for Safari ... The enemy of my enemy is my friend you know ...

Re:Rubbish

[$RANDOMLUSER]

Six for dancing and sweating, one for talking.

Re:Rubbish

[Cronock]

I will die a little inside if this happens. I do suspect Apple to do something like this, but I know I'll be changing it right away. Even though Google is staring to become the Evil it once denounced, it's still a great search engine.

Re:Rubbish

[inKubus]

Yep, with Exchange finally. And Apple admitting that they lack an enterprise suite. Yeah, Xserve IMAP Mail is not going to cut it in the year 2010. Thank god, because I've got 50 mac desktops at work and Entourage wasn't cutting it ;) Apple doesn't give a rat's ass about email, so they might as well let Exchange in. Plus Unified Communications is going to be huge on the consumer front (already getting big in business) and the iPad is one more convenient format to get your video phone in.

Re:Rubbish

[Anonymous Coward]

where is the chair?

Re:Rubbish

[Anonymous Coward]

I really don't care for their latest redesign. Even worse, "groups" no longer means usenet, it now means "forums". Some info is only available on usenet.

Re:Rubbish

[Anonymous Coward]

No chair throwing?

Re:Rubbish

[mlts]

I'd love to see enterprise applications available for XServes. Having Exchange, Active Directory, SQL Server, Sharepoint, and other items that are a core part of a company running on an other OS than Windows would be nice. If only for the fact that having a non mainstream OS means that Joe Script Kiddie won't have an exploit for it, and exploits that work happily on Windows just wouldn't work on OS X.

Exchange is the de facto standard for communication in businesses. Having it be able to be run (with its requisite, Active Directory) on a non Windows platform would be great.

Of course, I'd like to see it available for all UNIX variants, but OS X is a start.

Re:Rubbish

[Otterley]

Why? Bing has a fine search engine, no worse than Google's nowadays.

Re:Rubbish

[yabos]

Why would they announce a new Office at a developer keynote? That doesn't make any sense. That said, Ballmer being there for any reason doesn't make sense either.

Re:Rubbish

[Anonymous Coward]

...Bing as default search engine for Safari...

What a hideous thought. But Balmer doesn't need to make a speech at an Apple developer's conference for that to come about.

Re:Rubbish

[Anonymous Coward]

Google is staring to become the Evil

You fucking catchphrase bandwagon jumping retards crack me up. So, what evil are you talking about, troll? Google is winning its market share by delivering a great product that people want to actually, you know, use. No bundling, stifling competition, lock-in, or otherwise shifty bullshit that your precious Apple and MS do. They have a hell of a long way to approach the multiple levels of Evil that is MS or Apple. But, keep on riding that bandwagon of hate and keep on sucking off Steve and Steve. I'm sure they both really do love you.

Re:Rubbish

[Idiomatick]

What's Google DONE that is evil lately?

Re:Rubbish

[xfurious]

Albeit I haven't invested the time to really know Bing, I can say that any time I end up using a search engine other than Google (usually when I'm fixing someone else's computer who prefers something else), I actually have to craft my search query and look through maybe 10 results to find what I want. Maybe Google just knows what I want because I've used it so much, but it seems sometimes like I can type "my little pony" and it will recognize that I wanted the PHP reference for the substr function. And I did!

Re:Rubbish

[xfurious]

I agree, I don't think it's Office. Maybe it's not really VS either but it's definitely not Office.

Re:Rubbish

[TheRaven64]

There's an add on that lets you change the default search engine in Safari. Mine is set to use DuckDuckGo; nice UI, decent search results, good privacy policy, very silly name.

Re:Rubbish

[Anonymous Coward]

Come now, this is Ballmer we're talking about. ... seven minutes for dancing.

Re:Rubbish

[Anonymous Coward]

They've had that since OSX 10.6 -- I'm running Windows 7 Professional (x64) just fine right now on my original unibody macbook. It works better than XP Pro 32bit ever did -- no glitchy sound.

Re:Rubbish

[geekoid]

I can't decide, is that 6 minutes too many, or 1 minute too much?

Re:Rubbish

[Anonymous Coward]

Why? Bing has a fine search engine, no worse than Google's nowadays.

You say that, but other people have a different opinion on the matter. Hmmm... Let's see, should I believe some random loser on the internet (that would be you) or the senior vice president at Microsoft that actually, you know, runs Bing?

I think the latter. I'll just quote Yusuf Mehdi, senior vice president of the Online Audience Group for Microsoft Bing here:

we missed the boat early on, that the focus was about the long tail. We actually focused a lot on the head of the queries.... It turned out the long tail was much more important.

Even Microsoft admits Bing isn't as good as Google. Persist in the fiction if you must but you are deluding yourself.

Re:Rubbish

[Virmal]

Too bad for Ballmer, WWDC is sold out completely. Chairs in short supply...

Re:Rubbish

[Anonymous Coward]

No time to throw a chair?

Re:Rubbish

[$RANDOMLUSER]

Hee hee. Both.

Re:Rubbish

[Lumpy]

Exchange is the de facto standard for communication in WINDOWS BASED businesses.

Fixed that for you.

Google and IBM are far bigger companies than you ever worked for and they don't use exchange. I can also name many more big ones that don't use exchange. They are hardly the "de-facto standard".

Re:Rubbish

[Dracos]

Jobs told Ballmer he'd get seven minutes, but really it'll only be 6.1.

Re:Rubbish

[Anonymous Coward]

Boot Camp already officially supports Windows 7 since version 3.1.

Re:Rubbish

[Anonymous Coward]

IBM uses Notes. Google has their own in house system. Of course there are other companies that use Notes or other systems. But that tends to be the exception than the rule. There are a lot of businesses whose core infrastructure for E-mail is Exchange, and because of that, their core infrastructure will be Windows.

Exchange has the most marketshare of any E-mail system. The Exchange team blog says they now have 65% of the marketshare (http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2009/08/17/451974.aspx). An ancient 2005 Radicati Group report showed 57%. In any case, Exchange is a major player, and is the core of many businesses. This shows that in any business, you have a good chance of encountering Exchange, thus the de facto standard.

Re:Rubbish

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course it's not Visual Studio. VS is literally the only reason to keep developing on the Windows platform. And this tool is so crucial that it there isn't even a hesitation when deciding on OS. Visual Studio is basically the CAD of the professional programming world.

Re:Rubbish

[Arthur Grumbine]

What's Google DONE that is evil lately?

Become hugely successful. Don't you know how evil that is? It's so evil that it controls the minds of the jealously unsuccessful, forcing them to spread FUD with out-of-context quotes and conspiratorial accusations - with about as much relevant supporting evidence as the truthers/birthers movements.

Re:Rubbish

[Anonymous Coward]

"Exchange is the de facto standard for communication in businesses" The hell it is. Well, for small businesses, maybe. Larger businesses by a large majority use Lotus Notes. (I am a consultant, so I have a fair chance to work in many different random companies).

Bound to be a big win

[$RANDOMLUSER]

I feel certain that most Apple developers would rather stick needles in their eyes than use Visual Studio. For one thing, it's more visually appealing.

Re:Bound to be a big win

[Anonymous Coward]

I feel certain that most Apple developers would rather stick needles in their eyes than use Visual Studio. For one thing, it's more visually appealing.

Yes, but only for the people watching the developers stick needles in their eyes.

Re:Bound to be a big win

[Ares]

having used apple's developer tools after spending years using microsoft's, let me assure you that apple's ease of use advantage ends when you open up xcode. sure you get used to gui design in interface builder, but vs is still orders of magnitude easier. therefore, the only developers who would rather stick needles in their eyes than use microsoft tools are those who have never used microsoft tools to begin with.

this, of course, makes no commentary on the quality of code that ultimately results from the use of the respective tools, just the ease of use of the tools themselves.

Re:Bound to be a big win

[Monkeedude1212]

Basically what you said, I think its not so much about Apple Developers choosing Visual Studio, but Visual Studio developers being able to work on Apple Applications.

Re:Bound to be a big win

[$RANDOMLUSER]

I was just talking about the visual aspects themselves, not necessarily the "user experience". Seriously, I find it hard to believe that Microsoft has gone whole-hog using Apple's widgets and UI paradigms; more likely, they've put an abstraction layer between VS's native Windows widget calls and the OS's widget services.

Re:Bound to be a big win

[Anonymous Coward]

No - switching after years of working on something is ALWAYS going to be hard. Sure it was hard to learn XCode after I have been using Eclipse for years, after a year in XCode I'm quite happy with it.

Give a new developer XCode and Visual Studio - see which he likes better.

Re:Bound to be a big win

[Ares]

exactly. its hard to complain about a free product, and i doubt there will be many mac os/iphone/ipad developers who will rush out to spend several hundred dollars on vs for the mac to replace the xcode that apple gives away for free in their development environment.

more likely, microsoft sees the app store for what it is, a cash cow for apple. its thinking may well be that by moving vs to the mac, it can capitalize on developers' existing code bases necessitating only a build step for those developers to target windows mobile and its own app store. is microsoft ever going to divulge this to apple? hell no, but i wouldn't be surprised if that's what they were thinking with this.

Re:Bound to be a big win

[johnrpenner]

> having used apple's developer tools after spending years using microsoft's,
> let me assure you that apple's ease of use advantage ends when..

you're used to a homogenous environment for years, and then when you enter a new land -- nothing in a sensible world makes sense to you -- because you're already pre-damaged by borg-think. ;->

--
even every strange land is a home for someone else (jrp)

Re:Bound to be a big win

[Anonymous Coward]

MacOS X 10.5 added kernel-level hooks for a kext to handle CLR launching. Seeing as this is WWDC, not some random consumer-level show, I'd bet Apple has finally decided to integrate Mono (or possibly a direct port of .Net) into MacOS X 10.7, and they're getting Microsoft to show off VS2010 for the Mac (since VS2010 is substantially rewritten in WPF/WCF/W-some-other-.Net-library-that-replaces-Win32-cruft). If there is a Mac edition of VS2010, it will support VB, C#, F#, ASP.NET, and DLR support. Maybe the SQL Server client stuff too. But you can bet your left nut that C++ isn't going to happen. Also, Cassini won't happen, as it would require partially porting IIS to the Mac. (Cassini is the built-in VS web server that runs locally when you're developing ASP.NET sites without IIS.)

Apple would go along with this because it gives them one more way to lock down the iPhone development landscape (everything must be .Net!) while allowing a Flash-alike (Silverlight), but not actually allowing Flash (thank god).

Microsoft would benefit by indoctrinating that many more programmers with .Net and the VS tools. (Only a fate worse than death if you're a Lunix fanboi.)

Re:Bound to be a big win

[Ares]

Give a new developer XCode and Visual Studio - see which he likes better.

that'd make a hell of an experiment.

Re:Bound to be a big win

[yabos]

The only hard concept for me was hooking the UI up to code. In VS you double click on some UI element and it creates the action code for you. With IB and XCode you create the action code manually and CTRL+drag a link from the widget to the code. A little more work but once you get used to it it's not so hard.

Re:Bound to be a big win

[Monkeedude1212]

while allowing a Flash-alike (Silverlight), but not actually allowing Flash (thank god).

Now THAT is an interesting idea.

Re:Bound to be a big win

[FictionPimp]

I honestly like xcode better then visual studio 2005 (the last version I have used). Personally I like the thinnest IDE I can get. I find xcode to be a little heavy sometimes, but I find VS to be in my way most of the time.

Re:Bound to be a big win

[Rockoon]

VS2010 is much cleaner than the previous versions. Built on Presentation Foundation instead of WinForms. You might want to check it out.

Re:Bound to be a big win

[hatchet]

This would benefit microsoft - getting bunch of new developers and enterprise customers. And it would also help apple, by getting tons of applications that run (without recompile) on both platforms. This would be simply amazing. And close partnership between apple and microsoft is direct take on google.

Re:Bound to be a big win

[Anonymous Coward]

The express editions of VS are free and I have a feeling most iphone app developers are small teams and therefore would opt for the free versions. If anything, allowing iphone app development in VS would be to get more developers (college students in particular) used to developing in the VS environment.

Re:Bound to be a big win

[mcgrew]

I've had needles stuck in my eye. Twice. And I paid for the privelede! Beats being blind, and it's relatively painless. Especially if it's a surgeon sticking needles in your eye.

Re:Bound to be a big win

[xfurious]

That would be a con worthy of Microsoft, for sure.

Re:Bound to be a big win

[TheRaven64]

Are you sure that you are not talking about the hooks that allowed the kernel to load (but not run) PE binaries? The hooks that were added for EFI support, but which caused a lot of speculation that Apple would ship a WINE build because 'the Mac kernel can now launch Windows binaries!111eleventyone'

Re:Bound to be a big win

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, right.

having travelled first class after spending years travelling economy, let me assure you that first class's ease and comfort ends when you travel first class. sure you get used to the champagne and caviar, but economy is still orders of magnitude better.
therefore, the only passengers who would rather stick needles in their eyes than travel economy are those who have never travelled economy to begin with.

Re:Bound to be a big win

[xfurious]

The insanity goes much deeper than Xcode.
The C# way: obj.CrapInShed (true, "hrm");
The ObjC way: [obj didTakeACrapInTheShed:true withParameterNamedSomethingLikeBob: "hrm"]
I spent 3 months working on Cocoa stuff and my hands still haven't recovered from the torture.

Re:Bound to be a big win

[ColdWetDog]

while allowing a Flash-alike (Silverlight), but not actually allowing Flash (thank god).

Now THAT is an interesting idea.

Because replacing one non-native, slow, bug infested framework written by one of your major competitors with another non-native, slow, bug infested framework written by your other major competitor just makes wonderful sense? Your ideas intrigue me and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

Re:Bound to be a big win

[Altus]

Its more likely that this will be about VS on windows being able to compile applications for the iPhone/iPad (maybe MacOS but that seems less likely) than a port of VS to the mac.

For one thing, porting a UI that complicated to the mac, would be a ton of work with fairly little pay off. On the other hand, giving windows developers the ability to write apps for the iPhone has a lot of value and lots of people who want to make iPhone apps who dont already own macs (and do own VS) would rather just install an iPhone SDK (including gcc compiler) on their windows box than go out and buy a mac.

This is more likely apple dealing with the developer demand for iPhone tools on windows (which you hear all the time) rather than developer complaints about Xcode (which you hear less often, despite its issues).

Re:Bound to be a big win

[Altus]

I might not mind Xcode's UI too much but as a development environment it has a number of serious shortcomings and Apple isnt exactly rushing to fix them either.

Not that VS is a saint either usability wise, but it is more reliable in a lot of ways.

Re:Bound to be a big win

[EMB Numbers]

There are real problems and objections to "code behind" a.k.a. click to code. In short, code behind encourages violation of "separation of concerns" and promotes placing application logic in the user interface. Cocoa uses the Model View Controller design by default, and Interface Builder reflects that.

http://dotnetaddict.dotnetdevelopersjournal.com/exploring_the_mvc_pattern_in_wpf.htm
http://dotnetaddict.dotnetdevelopersjournal.com/ide_greenerpastures.htm
http://dotnetaddict.dotnetdevelopersjournal.com/tags/?/cocoa
http://dotnetaddict.dotnetdevelopersjournal.com/iphone_sdk_negative_response.htm

Re:Bound to be a big win

[Monkeedude1212]

Wasn't MY idea, but you grazed exactly my point. What if Apple DOES? Is that anti-competitive?

Re:Bound to be a big win

[Fri13]

Sticking needles to own eyes? Well... some people keeps skin piercing visually appealing..

Re:Bound to be a big win

[Anonymous Coward]

Visual Studio Express is free.

Re:Bound to be a big win

[Atomic Fro]

If I had mod points, I would have modded you funny.

Re:Bound to be a big win

[s73v3r]

I happen to like the Objective-C way. Because it lets me know what the parameter should be while I'm calling the method. With the C# one, I have no idea what the second parameter is or what it does. Someone might have written documentation on the method, but its even more likely that someone just ran a doc generating tool on it and I'll find out that its a string.

Re:Bound to be a big win

[Anonymous Coward]

I concur with this. A large majority of iPhone developers obtained a Mac for iPhone development only. VS->iPhone deployment will remove this incentive. But what I don't understand why Apple would tolerate this move -- is the outcry that large?

Anyway... VS team just went through a seriously long and arduous process of porting VS to .NET WPF. I am extremely skeptical they will be welcoming of another even more major port. VS10 almost became too ambitious for them to pull off successfully.

Re:Bound to be a big win

[Anonymous Coward]

His C# example was one of bad code. Good code is self-documentating, making named parameters redundant.

For instance, obj.save_to_directory("location") is clear already.

obj.CrapInShed(true, "hrm") could be clarified to obj.CrapInShed(LargeDump, Shed("shed_name")).

When you have multiple parameters in a function call, using multiple rvalues in that call generally makes it unreadable. So, you could also use lvalues for this instead.
auto shed_name = "name";
obj.CrapInShed(SmallDump, shed_name);

Incidentally, C++ has a named parameter library in the Boost set. I haven't used it... usually this issue can be solved by redesign.

Re:Bound to be a big win

[Altus]

I don't think Apple has as much to gain in mac sales to a handful of developers (especially since you don't need a new machine every year or 2 just for iPhone apps) as they have to gain from having the absolute biggest and richest app collection for the iPhone/iPad.

I believe they are gambling that the iPhone and iPad are going to be the future of the company. Besides, after now, how many more developers are really going to pick up a mac just to develop for the iPhone and how much would apple really make on those Mac Minis?

Re:Bound to be a big win

[Ares]

agreed. it takes a lot of discipline to keep things separate. at the same time, ib knows what class corresponds to the underlying controller so double clicking a button in ib to get at the event handler shouldn't be a problem. that's just mho though.

Re:Bound to be a big win

[Lord Kano]

I feel certain that most Apple developers would rather stick needles in their eyes than use Visual Studio.

If Jobs tells them that Microsoft is the new ally in the war against Google, the Fanbois will immediately start singing Microsoft's praises and buying Zunes to match their iPods.

LK

Re:Bound to be a big win

[xfurious]

Haha, no. It's unclear exactly what you are doing there in your "clarification". Are you trying to use enums for LargeDump? Because if you are, it's Dump.Large. Are you trying to say that there is a class called Shed or a method? If a class, you need new Shed("shed_name"). Beside all that, you are assuming a lot about what the CrapInShed (haha) method paramters are. Let me "clarify": public function CrapInShed (bool flush, string message); There.

VS for OS X

[Anonymous Coward]

Did Hell freeze over?

Re:VS for OS X

[ClosedSource]

MS is just following the money like they've always done.

Re:VS for OS X

[Rockoon]

Because they can. Thats one of the benefits of being a software company. They could even start kicking out closed-source Linux programs if they wanted.

Apple's success or failure rides on the brand itself. In each of their markets (aside from ITMS) they are the terminating link in the chain. Its a great place to be when you carry The Big Brand, but its also precarious. Plenty of Big Brands have come and gone while the markets they once dominated have persisted.

They don't have to worry about the DOJ anymore

[ClosedSource]

They've learned their lesson and are now paying "protection" money in the form of political contributions.

Re:They don't have to worry about the DOJ anymore

[spydum]

Sadly, I'm not sure this comment warranted a troll rating..

Re:They don't have to worry about the DOJ anymore

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

From ClosedSource, yeah I think it' a troll. Apple has always made political contributions to both parties, mostly democrats. The implication is Apple has changed who they contribute to or how much since the DoJ announced they were making an investigation, but since nothing has been provided to support that claim, he's probably just trolling for responses without anything behind his statements.

Re:They don't have to worry about the DOJ anymore

[ClosedSource]

Actually, I wasn't implying anything about Apple. I was just making the point that before the DOJ actions against them, MS wasn't making any political contributions while their competitors were. Naturally the complaints from their competitors got more attention because they had already "buttered the bread".

Ticketmaster had a more credible monopoly than MS ever did, but somehow the DOJ never showed any interest in pursing them.

Re:They don't have to worry about the DOJ anymore

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Actually, I wasn't implying anything about Apple.

You wrote, "They've learned their lesson and are now paying..." Was the "They" not Apple in your sentence? You were replying to a comment about Apple and MS had not been mentioned.

I was just making the point that before the DOJ actions against them, MS wasn't making any political contributions while their competitors were.

And your theory is that they were "targeted" because of this?

Ticketmaster had a more credible monopoly than MS ever did...

Ticketmaster may have monopoly influence, but they haven't been leveraging that into other markets. Simply having a monopoly is not illegal.

Re:They don't have to worry about the DOJ anymore

[ClosedSource]

"You were replying to a comment about Apple and MS had not been mentioned."

I guess that's a matter of interpretation. My interpretation was that the entity the post claimed was dodging the DOJ was MS and I guess you assumed it was Apple.

"And your theory is that they were "targeted" because of this?"

Yes.

"Ticketmaster may have monopoly influence, but they haven't been leveraging that into other markets. Simply having a monopoly is not illegal."

Ticketmaster made the same sort of lock-out deals with venues that MS made with OEMs. In fact getting a rival OS on a PC was merely inconvenient, but getting a top act in a major venue in the US without Ticketmaster involvement was impossible.

Re:They don't have to worry about the DOJ anymore

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

"Ticketmaster may have monopoly influence, but they haven't been leveraging that into other markets. Simply having a monopoly is not illegal."

Ticketmaster made the same sort of lock-out deals with venues that MS made with OEMs.

You seem to be under the mistaken impression that MS was in court for "lock-out deals" instead of illegally tying IE and Windows. In order for Ticketmaster to be in the same situation they would have not only had to have a lock-in on venues as they do, but bundle a "free" beverage coupon for their new line of beer which they require all venues they do business with to carry at the bar.

I guess I can't give your pet theories about influence brokering much credit because you don't seem to understand antitrust law well enough to even know what's going on. You should really read a bit on the topic, heck just read the wikipedia page.

Re:They don't have to worry about the DOJ anymore

[ClosedSource]

"You seem to be under the mistaken impression that MS was in court for "lock-out deals" instead of illegally tying IE and Windows."

I suggest you actually read the courts "Findings of Fact" on the case if you think that MS's behavior toward OEMs were not a factor.

I wouldn't be surprised.

[Cronock]

I wouldn't be surprised if they decide to do some type of strategic alliance to scare Google a little bit. Now that both Apple and MS see Google as a threat to their interests, it's a very interesting turn of events, for sure.

Re:I wouldn't be surprised.

[MightyMartian]

Because Apple can hope to achieve victory by teaming up with a company that couldn't even topple Yahoo during its days of glory.

Re:I wouldn't be surprised.

[Cronock]

This would be more advantageous for MS, of course. Apple could have better allies. I would predict this this would be more of a shot across the Google's bow than actually productive for Apple.

Re:I wouldn't be surprised.

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple has been MS's lapdog for many years now. It's just the old guard circling the wagons. Ever wondered why every single bit of Apple's user-facing software that is cross-platform only works on Mac and Windows computers? iTunes, Safari, QuickTime. And the other way around: Silverlight, Office. Fuck them both; I hope Google eats them alive.

Re:I wouldn't be surprised.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever wondered why every single bit of Apple's user-facing software that is cross-platform only works on Mac and Windows computers? iTunes, Safari, QuickTime.

I thought they did that out of kindness for Linux users.

Flash is de debbil

[mark72005]

Based on Jobs' comments about Flash, he probably feels Ballmer is a pioneer and great friend of freedom and openness, and should be welcomed with open arms.

Maybe they will make all the Apple stuff adopt silverlight too! JOY!

Good thing there is still eought time left

[zill]

It's not too late to bolt down all the chairs yet.

Google

[MDMurphy]

My first thought was: Apple & Microsoft start to team up to combat Google.

Think Russia & U.S. vs. Germany in WWII.

Considering Apple's become more like Big Brother in recent times, why shouldn't they be buddies?

Re:Google

[Anonymous Coward]

Think more along the lines or the German / Russia alliance before the war proper began. I can't imagine it will be long before the old enemys stab each other in the back.

Re:Google

[TheRaven64]

I was thinking more Russia and Germany vs Poland in WWII...

Re:Google

[shadowrat]

Achievement Unlocked! Compare Google to Nazi Germany!

In this corner...

[Quiet_Desperation]

I'm guessing an eight round electrified cage match with Jobs and Ballmer in Mexican wrestling masks and refereed by Chuck Norris

It will be inconclusive for seven rounds until Jobs seriously injures Ballmer with a flying clothesline after Ballmer cheats with a folding chair strike to Jobs' liver. Ballmer will tag in Bill Gates, but Jobs will tag in Phil Schiller. Schiller will then proceed to completely own Gates and win the match with a shining wizard followed by a dragon whip and atomic crotch punch.

The result will be Apple's market cap continuing to stomp on Microsoft's, and the kickoff of Phil's worldwide "Schillermania" tour.

Re:In this corner...

[mark72005]

MPU!

Re:In this corner...

[MiddleHitter]

"Referee" inferse some sort of lack of predestination, knowledge and control by Chuck Norris. I believe a better term is "allowed" by Chuck Norris.

Re:In this corner...

[Anonymous Coward]

i feel like comparing their market caps is kind of ridiculous to anyone who knows anything about the company. they both are making money in extremely different ways. there's no reason to compare market caps for reasons of saying one is superior to the other. if you broke it down and showed who is selling more OS software, etc, etc. then maybe it'd make sense. However, Apple is making money off of iPods and iPhones (and now iPads, but I'm not sure what percentage it accounts for). Microsoft gets its money elsewhere. Why are we comparing them? I feel if anyone trots that out as something that means something either doesn't understand what they're talking about OR they're just telling propaganda knowing it's meaningless.

Re:In this corner...

[psbrogna]

IMO they are being compared because CxOs & MBAs enjoy vying for King of MarketCap Hill and because these are the same decision makers that command advertising dollars, the mass media tags along.

Re:In this corner...

[pushing-robot]

I wouldn't put odds on Jobs unless his new liver came from a radioactive spider.

Re:In this corner...

[Quiet_Desperation]

You know, I tossed that market cap comment in there just to see if anyone would actually take themselves too seriously and go off on it despite it being in the middle of a silly wrestling goof post. I actually allowed myself to believe no one would. Ah well...

Re:In this corner...

[$RANDOMLUSER]

...an eight round electrified cage match with Jobs and Ballmer in Mexican wrestling masks...

Oh, for a big bucket of saltwater.

if i am to

[nimbius]

suspect anything its that Ballmer will be releasing his ususual song and dance, accompanied by a free copy of Microsoft Office Chair for one or two lucky attendants. dont worry, it is definitely "Mac compatible."

Obligatory....

[idiotnot]

Developers Developers Developers Developers Developers!

I can only imagine what Ballmer will say.

[Cronock]

"Now that Apple's market cap has surpassed us and we're tanking in just about every market we're in, maybe we will try to ride their wave!"

Re:I can only imagine what Ballmer will say.

[HerculesMO]

Well Yahoo, AOL, and Pets.com also had high market valuations at one point too.

Look how that turned out.

All it says is that Apple owns all of its own manufacturing and equipment and makes a LOT of expensive hardware. MS sells software, mostly.

Re:I can only imagine what Ballmer will say.

[Anonymous Coward]

No. Microsoft made almost three times as much net profit last year than Apple. The market cap is just speculative. Like oil.

Re:I can only imagine what Ballmer will say.

[Rockoon]

All it says is that Apple owns all of its own manufacturing and equipment and makes a LOT of expensive hardware. MS sells software, mostly.

Apples strategy is not as (industry bullshit term coming) agile as Microsofts. If demand for iPhones and iPods dries up, then Apple will be in serious trouble yet again. Apples suppliers will just supply the next trendy device.

Unlike 14 years ago when Apple needed to be bailed out by Microsoft, this time they do have the ITMS revenue stream which I dont see going away any time soon (even if iPods and iPhones stopped selling.) Their computer revenue stream is still insignificant and cannot by itself support the company, just like before.

Re:I can only imagine what Ballmer will say.

[TheRaven64]

Yup, Apple completely owns the desktop operating system, office suite, and game console markets.

Re:I can only imagine what Ballmer will say.

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple doesn't own its manufacturing. It uses FoxConn for that.

Re:I can only imagine what Ballmer will say.

[Xest]

Microsoft still made much more profit than Apple last year. MS made $14bn, whilst Apple made $8bn. Also, Microsoft has $77bn of assets with Apple holding only $47bn.

This should demonstrate why market cap is a stupid thing to extrapolate fantasies about Microsoft's destruction from. Effectively all the market cap tells us is that Apple is perceived to be a better investment opportunity than Microsoft, it tells us nothing about Microsoft's strength of existence, nor Apple's because in fact Apple is actually much more vulnerable than Microsoft due to having much fewer assets, and making less profit.

At best market cap tells us the perception of investors, and that does mean Apple has more room to play, but if with that extra room it's not manage to boost it's profits to the level of MS then that cap will quickly drop. Effectively all the market cap means is that Apple has now been given a chance to grow to the size of Microsoft, but it's not going to be easy.

For reference it's probably worth pointing out Google made $6.5 billion of profit, and has $40bn in assets, so in this respect Google is actually far closer to passing Apple, than Apple is to passing Microsoft in terms of cold hard, company strength and longer term viability. Just to give some other figures for comparison, HP made $9bn profit, and has $52bn in assets, whilst Dell made a mere $1.4bn in income and has $33bn in assets.

It's these figures that really matter in telling us how a company is doing- as you can see, the only real company that's at risk in the longer term right now is Dell, the other 4 are still raking in the profits. At a decreased rate for MS and HP compared to previous years for sure, but still at a faster rate than Apple and Google.

Re:I can only imagine what Ballmer will say.

[Anonymous Coward]

Macs make up about a third of revenue, so hardly "insignificant". Apple would still be a very large company if iP*s stopped selling--but how the hell would that happen anyway?

And honestly, "agile" isn't the first thing that springs to mind when I think of Microsoft!

XCode for Windoze?

[pak9rabid]

Instead of this, why doesn't Apple just release XCode for Windows? Seems to me that would make far more sense than getting in bed with MS.

Re:XCode for Windoze?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ballmer will get 7 minutes to present the latest Zune and his developer tools and then Jobs will present his alternative stuff, Zune vs. IPod, MSFT tools vs. Xcode. After the show Ballmer will get another 20 minutes for a press conference when he will go nuts over the citical question from journalists and throw chairs.

Re:XCode for Windoze?

[syntaxeater]

Windows developers are already intimately familiar with the Visual Studio. My guess is the adoption rate would be fairly low if it not only required learning the new framework, but replaced everything familiar about developing on windows by requiring a new IDE.

Re:XCode for Windoze?

[StikyPad]

Three words: iTunes for Windows.

Apple is great at a lot of things, but writing/porting applications is not one of them. It makes much more sense to extend the functionality of MS's (far superior, IMO) Visual Studio. The extensibility of VS means they don't really even need MS's cooperation or approval... which is pretty fucking ironic when you think about it.

Re:XCode for Windoze?

[TheRaven64]

They did, back in 1997. Well, back then it was called Project Builder, and it was part of Yellow Box for Windows, back before Yellow Box was called Cocoa. Before then, NeXT released an earlier version, called OPENSTEP Enterprise, which sold for some ludicrous amount (some multiple of $10K/seat, as I recall).

Re:XCode for Windoze?

[EvanED]

Between Quicktime, iTunes, and Safari, IMO Apple has shown that using the software that it ports to Windows is about as fun as beating your head with a hammer.

Re:XCode for Windoze?

[Anonymous Coward]

The horror... the horror...

Re:XCode for Windoze?

[ChaosDiscord]

Have you seen the software Apple releases for Windows? iTunes on Windows, is a festering sinkhole of crap. Slow, buggy, and pisses all over the Windows UI conventions and guidelines. If that's the best they can do (and I'd hope that their most popular Windows application does get the best they can do), porting XCode over will just convince millions of Windows programmers that Mac fans are all deluded by a shiny surface under which lurks garbage. (Not that it's necessarily true, but that will be the impression.)

The real reason I can see they are doing this.

[Anonymous Coward]

People are moving to iPhone/iPad development platform. In order do that you need to get a Mac. Newbies will get boot camp I am sure, but with Steam allowing to switch to OSX there is very little reason to have boot camp.

I am sure windows7 is light years ahead of previous windows versions, but I would spend hours a week fixing someones machine in windows. When I got my mother a mac mini a year ago I have only had to help her once and that was to show her how to use the scanner.

This is the dumbest rumor I've heard in years

[paulschreiber]

There is no way Apple will let you develop for the iPhone OS using MS' developer toolchain. No way whatsoever. I'll bet Trip Chowdrey $500 right now this doesn't happen.

Re:This is the dumbest rumor I've heard in years

[jo_ham]

Why not?

Xcode is free, you just need to pay the $99 to be able to sell apps on the store (which you would have to do on either platform) and opening up the machines you can develop on means potentially more apps in the store. Maybe it might even drive a few Mac sales, by choice rather than necessity.

I have to admit it's a bit out of left field, but stranger things have happened (like Apple going Intel, or Steam being released on the Mac [Valve 6 years ago: "Half Life will NEVER be ported to the Mac" Valve yesterday: "Half Life 2 for Mac!"]).

Re:This is the dumbest rumor I've heard in years

[TheRaven64]

Clang already builds on Windows and can be used from Visual Studio. Adding Objective-C syntax highlighting and code completion to Visual Studio wouldn't be too hard (the code for doing it is in clang already, it just needs connecting up to hooks in Visual Studio). Letting people develop for the iPhone without buying a Mac might be a good strategic decision for Apple, and only having to maintain an Interface Builder port for Windows, rather than a complete XCode port, would save them some money.

Re:This is the dumbest rumor I've heard in years

[KarmaMB84]

Actually, I'd bet that eventually it will happen if not at WWDC just to ward off any anti-trust issues with iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch development being tied to owning at least one Mac computer.

Re:This is the dumbest rumor I've heard in years

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Actually, I'd bet that eventually it will happen if not at WWDC just to ward off any anti-trust issues with iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch development being tied to owning at least one Mac computer.

How would that constitute an antitrust issue? Tying is not illegal in the general case. Buy Blamo brand shampoo get a mini bottle of Blamo conditioner for free. Whee they're bundled. It's perfectly legal until you gain dominance in one of the relevant markets.

so...

[hitmark]

microsoft is heading back to its proverbial roots? It started out by selling ms basic to just about everyone, after all.

will we see them scale back windows (including mobile), focusing on xbox, exchange and development tools?

Re:so...

[spire3661]

Microsoft will become less and less important in the years to come when we can easily break their lock-in with all manner of mobile internet appliances. MS days as the 10,000 lb gorilla are coming to an end. They have to reach out or die a slow and horrible death as the need for Office or even the need for a desktop dwindles. I imagine the future where your desktop is more server then client.

Re:so...

[Anonymous Coward]

I doubt Microsoft would be capable of this. The culture seems so stuck on how to keep the grains of sand from falling through their fingers. with new and better lock ins. that people can see right through. how hard can it be for them to do a ground up rebuild of a new os, with a vm fro xp/windows 7 mode? They have the money but not the ability to allow something like this to happen. it threatens their corporate structure too much.

Re:so...

[VGPowerlord]

The culture seems so stuck on how to keep the grains of sand from falling through their fingers. with new and better lock ins. that people can see right through.

Non-tech people are notoriously bad at seeing these.

Besides which, this article is about how they're going to partner with another company that follows the same principle.

I didn't find Xcode in any way deficient

[melted]

And I had been using Microsoft tools for 15 years before looking at them. Sure, it's jarring at first, but you get used to it. Apple's APIs on the other hand, completely blow Microsoft Win32 out of the water. It's not even close.

Re:I didn't find Xcode in any way deficient

[Ares]

And I had been using Microsoft tools for 15 years before looking at them. Sure, it's jarring at first, but you get used to it.

definitely. and it doesn't take a terribly long time for it either. i was looking at it from the perspective that apple has traditionally concentrated on ease of use in its entire environment. having to manually set up outlets and actions in the code so that they can be referenced by ib seems counterintuitive to that history. with vs on the other hand, it "just happens". i.e., double click on a button in the ui view and you get its onclick event handler. if it doesn't exist, it gets created.

Apple's APIs on the other hand, completely blow Microsoft Win32 out of the water. It's not even close.

you ain't kidding on that. even compared to mfc, apple wins. how microsoft managed to promote mfc for years without registry and security attribute classes representing critical aspects of the underlying operating system is beyond me.

Re:I didn't find Xcode in any way deficient

[nmb3000]

Apple's APIs on the other hand, completely blow Microsoft Win32 out of the water.

That's hardly a fair comparison. The Win32 API is 15+ years old. It was built to support the previous 16-bit Win16 API. It spans the development of about 8 major operating systems.

Newer portions of the Windows API being introduced with Vista and Win7 are a lot better than most of the older stuff and the integration of .NET into Windows has pretty much given you a completely re-written object-oriented approach to the Win32 API (still lacking some of the more low-level stuff, but interop exists for the few cases you need those).

Re:I didn't find Xcode in any way deficient

[Anonymous Coward]

>>even compared to mfc, apple wins

Ah, those MoFuClasses is an abhomination. how can any one say "even compared to mfc" when it is one of the worst things to compare...

Re:I didn't find Xcode in any way deficient

[UnknowingFool]

Apple's Carbon APIs are by comparison at least 9 years old when Apple moved from System 9 to OS X around 2001. However if you count legacy, Cocoa is based on NeXTSTEP and OPENSTEP which go back to the 1980s. The deprecated Classic API goes back to System OS which also goes back to the 1980s as well.

The difference between MS and Apple is that Apple went through the APIs during the transition and cleaned them up. I remember reading somewhere that they reduced the number of APIs from 8,000 to 2,000. Apple having been written off by many back then had fewer developers to migrate. MS code has a lot of legacy and with iteration, it gets harder for MS to remove legacy parts and so the code bloat continues.

Re:I didn't find Xcode in any way deficient

[EMB Numbers]

Apple's Cocoa frameworks started out as NeXTstep in 1988 (22 years ago) and have changed only incrementally since. Microsoft should have been embarrassed to ship Win16 let alone Win32.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXTSTEP

Re:I didn't find Xcode in any way deficient

[TheRaven64]

That's hardly a fair comparison. The Win32 API is 15+ years old

And Cocoa is older. It is a linear evolution of the NeXTSTEP APIs, that first shipped in 1988 - many of the classes and methods from then still work. It is a full implementation of the OpenStep specification, published by Sun and NeXT in 1994 (and mostly finalised in 1993). A lot of Mac apps don't step outside of the classes defined by OpenStep, although there are a lot of new APIs outside of that.

Windows 3.11 was introduced the same year that the OpenStep spec was created, and only one year before it was finalised. If you wrote an app using OpenStep in 1994, then you'd need to redo the nib files (Interface Builder can't open nibs from NeXT anymore), but it would still compile and by fully integrated with the Mac environment, including things like using the systemwide spelling and grammar checker, using the system services mechanism, pasteboards, drag and drop, and so on. You wouldn't need to change any of the code. How much modification would it take to turn a Win16 app from 1994 into a modern Win64 app?

OpenStep was designed to be endian-independent from the start, and as long as you didn't do anything stupid most apps written to it tend to be 64-bit clean. You can take an app written for OPENSTEP on m68K or i486, OPENSTEP Enterprise on Windows NT on x86, or OpenStep on Solaris 7/SPARC, and compile it on a modern 64-bit PowerPC or Intel Mac. Except in a few cases, you wouldn't even be using deprecated APIs (the big counterexample is a few string handling methods that don't make the encoding of C strings explicit).

Re:I didn't find Xcode in any way deficient

[Altus]

I just wish they would fix all the bullshit with sub-projects in Xcode. The fact that I cant reliably know if I'm going to hit a break point or not because I may or may not have the sub project actually open is really not ok. Plus the inability to search in sub-projects is really unacceptable.

Its not so much the usability that bothers me and overall I actually like Xcode, but I really wish they would fix some of these issues.

Re:I didn't find Xcode in any way deficient

[Altus]

Much of the Cocoa API comes from NeXTSTEP which came out in 1989. Sure its been changed over the years, but its not exactly a spring chicken either.

Re:I didn't find Xcode in any way deficient

[ckaminski]

The two biggest issues I had with using XCode initially was qmake not properly specifying the include directories (maybe my fault), and not properly setting the include path to the boost libraries I was using - I had to specifically hardcode the libraries.

Again, maybe my fault, but I'm pretty used to gcc -I and -L working as advertised.

Other than that, the editor is awesome, except it's propensity to Uppercase every filename I'm working on...

I understand the Mac is not case sensitive, but just leave my case alone, please. Windows doesn't go and change it willy-nilly. :-P

Re:I didn't find Xcode in any way deficient

[Anonymous Coward]

XCode is fine, especially for something that's free, but I find a lot of little bugs or misfires in it all that time that add up to wasted time and effort on my part. Auto-complete in the latest versions has gotten just plain silly, recommending shit I've never used over terms I've used hundreds of times - e.g., UnsignedWide when I start writing unsigned, or NSAssertionHandler when I start writing NSAssert (and without a partial completion option). Version control integration has always been hackish - back to when it used CVS - and I find myself usually keeping a terminal window solely to deal with its failures. Project-level find often changes its settings even though I only ever use that same plain-jane text search. Running in debug no longer changes the build to debug; maybe it's a "feature" that you can try to use the debugger with the release version of the app, but it's a really inconvenient feature. And on and on and on...

My list of complaints about VS was much shorter; I didn't know it nearly as well as I do XCode, but I hit on all the areas above and the only place where it was worse was that outside version control was a given rather than a fall-back. That was also six years ago or so now.

Re:I didn't find Xcode in any way deficient

[Dog-Cow]

It's not quite as automatic as in VS (which probably inherited a bit of the GUI designer from VB), but you can create the outlets directly in IB. I don't know anyone who does that, though.

VB and Delphi (which copied and improved on VB's GUI designer) have set the benchmarks as far as I am concerned.

Re:I didn't find Xcode in any way deficient

[rabtech]

having to manually set up outlets and actions in the code so that they can be referenced by ib seems counterintuitive to that history. with vs on the other hand, it "just happens". i.e., double click on a button in the ui view and you get its onclick event handler. if it doesn't exist, it gets created.

You hit the nail on the head. Xcode's integration with Interface Builder is absolutely terrible. I'm sure it works if you design UI by committee and have everything drawn out in detail before anyone writes a single line of code, but for rapid development or prototyping (with functionality, not just the GUI look) it really sucks. You spend a lot of time switching back and forth and dragging lines between various bits (often in the reverse from the order you logically think about things hooking together).

Plus I hate Objective-C. Not the features - protocols, message passing, et al are just fine and have definite benefits. But the awful syntax just drives me insane. I'm not just talking about the endless nested brackets and the resulting bizzaro-land way all statements turn into infix notation 47 bracket levels deep because you've gotta rearrange the messages *just so*... I'm also talking about the hilarious way you define an "interface" (class definition), public/private, properties, etc. Who needs curly braces to organize components of an object into one place? Just slap random lines of code wherever the hell you want. Who needs namespaces either?

It is obvious that Objective-C is just an extremely thin shim on top of C - they didn't even go through the trouble of having a single message to create and initialize a new object.

Re:I didn't find Xcode in any way deficient

[Anonymous Coward]

Win32 was introduced in 1993 - 17 years ago. You can't really compared a modern API from Apple to it - try comparing to .NET 3.0, for example. These are about on par, or, in some cases, .NET is actually better.

Also, I've been on Microsoft tools for over 10 years, and XCode was pain (still is) to use. Just look at the non-standard cursor behaviour when using keys to move around - no one in the entire universe does it the way Apple did it (i.e. try hitting page up key a couple of times, and then decide you want to move up - guess what, the cursor stayed at the original line, so XCode scrolls all the way to the bottom, and goes up a line from your *original* location. That's just a pathetic interface, if you ask me - sure, you can get used to it, but that doesn't mean it's good).

Re:I didn't find Xcode in any way deficient

[NJRoadfan]

having to manually set up outlets and actions in the code so that they can be referenced by ib seems counterintuitive to that history. with vs on the other hand, it "just happens". i.e., double click on a button in the ui view and you get its onclick event handler. if it doesn't exist, it gets created.

XCode and IB remind me of developing with Borland C++ circa 1995 or so. Create the GUI in a seperate app and then load a project in the main IDE to code and compile. VS.NET (And VB before it) simplify it. Create GUI objects, double click on the object and access the code for the events behind that function.

you ain't kidding on that. even compared to mfc, apple wins. how microsoft managed to promote mfc for years without registry and security attribute classes representing critical aspects of the underlying operating system is beyond me.

MFC was a joke. I never bothered to learn how to program with it. Win32 isn't exactly intuitive to build an OO framework on. Borland managed to do it somewhat better with VCL, but it was never popular. dotNet works well, but having to do anything low level with Win32 requires some ugly looking code.

Re:I didn't find Xcode in any way deficient

[mini me]

they didn't even go through the trouble of having a single message to create and initialize a new object.

Actually, NeXT originally used the [Object new] convention for most objects, but found that alloc/init provided greater control for the developer. new does still work for most, if not all, Foundation classes.

I can see it now...

[sophomoric]

I can see it now... Steve Jobs walks on stage after Ballmer finishes and says: That's great Ballmer, but unfortunately we're not going to be able to accept any apps created in Visual Studio, but thanks anyways.

Re:I can see it now...

[Anonymous Coward]

P.S. Suck our market cap, loser.

People actually like Visual Studio?

[tylersoze]

One of the most surprising aspects coming out of this rumor (which is complete and utter BS BTW, I wish I could get a job where I could just spout crazy BS all day, as opposed to just doing it for fun on slashdot :) is learning that people actually *like* Visual Studio? Who knew? I mean XCode has its problems, but I can't wait to get home after a day of working with VS and open up XCode and have some fun do iPhone coding.

Re:People actually like Visual Studio?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but XCode isn't drool-proof, and the devs that love VS need that feature.

Re:People actually like Visual Studio?

[revlayle]

Personally VS2005 and 2008 are my favorite dev environments (can't speak for 2010, haven't used it much), I can get a lot done very quickly with those tools. In fact, I know a lot of devs (.NET fans or not, MS fans or not) that particularly think VS is one of MS's best software offerings they have ever made. I also know people who like BOTH XCode and VS. Of course, these days I have to work with RAD (yes, I just threw up in my mouth a little bit).

Re:People actually like Visual Studio?

[Anonymous Coward]

I use both everyday at work and personally I prefer VS over xcode. It all boils down to VS was written for developers and xcode is a set of free tools Apple grabbed and wrapped their GUI around. Free is nice, but time saved using the right tools saves money over a longer time.

Re:People actually like Visual Studio?

[TheRaven64]

Mostly, people who have only used one IDE like it. It takes a few weeks of constant use to stop hating the second IDE that you try. It's not until you've used three or more that you realise that they all suck, they just suck in different ways. Eventually, someone might design an IDE that's actually good. So far, Bracha seems closer than anyone else, but still not very close.

Re:People actually like Visual Studio?

[Anonymous Coward]

XCode is GARBAGE and VS is the best IDE on the planet. Say what you will about MS but they make the best developer tools in the business.

Re:People actually like Visual Studio?

[ckaminski]

Visual Studio was awesome before they converted massive chunks of it to .Net and performance went in the toilet. I would argue that VS 7.0 was that last "great" version of VS.

Sort of like what happened to SQL Enterprise Manager when the .Net-ified it... went from a great MMC-based tool to a siloed Piece. Of. Garbage.

Re:People actually like Visual Studio?

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, I run MSVC10 on an AthlonXP I bought sometime in 2001-2002. It runs fine. Intellisense is slower than before, but it's also much more powerful -- it actually works on massive template libraries now. If I wanted, I could turn Intellisense off, and VC10 would run as fast as VC2005 did.

Re:People actually like Visual Studio?

[Anonymous Coward]

How to respond to this question? It isn't worthy of an answer. This is like asking, do people actually like Photoshop? Any business you walk into, if they are involved in desktop programming, they use Visual Studio. It's just that simple.

Before you claim their ignorance, many of these same employed programmers are considered leaders of their field. In fact, I know of at least two C++ committee members that use MSVC regularly. (They also use GCC occasionally - no doubting that.)

Re:People actually like Visual Studio?

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the most surprising aspects coming out of this rumor (which is complete and utter BS BTW, I wish I could get a job where I could just spout crazy BS all day, as opposed to just doing it for fun on slashdot :) is learning that people actually *like* Beer? Who knew? I mean Water has its problems, but I can't wait to get home after a day of working with Beer and open up Water and have some fun do water drinking.

Re:People actually like Visual Studio?

[Anonymous Coward]

IMHO Development tools and environments are about the only thing MS do right. Well that and standards erosion. Oh and lockin, but Apple do that way better. Anyway, my suprise is people really believe Apple and Microsoft are enemies. Sure they compete in a few markets, and there's those stupid ad campaigns, but they also collaborate regularly enough (ie. Office, bootcamp, iTunes etc.) that I thought it was obvious they conciously avoid stepping on each others toes too much and try to work together.

Re:People actually like Visual Studio?

[Anonymous Coward]

What?

That makes no sense. MS has varying software quality from product to product, sure, but VS is absolutely not one of the pieces of software they produce that is at all good.

Meanwhile XCode is actually one of the most developer-friendly environments out there.

Ballmer

[AndrewNeo]

Intellisense, Intellisense, Intellisense!

After all the recent fanfare...

[yabos]

...about Apple changing it's developer TOS to say that only apps that were originally written in Objective-C or C/C++ then linked directly to the iPhone SDK APIs are allowed on the store, does anyone really believe that they'd now let VS compiled apps on the iPhone? I find it hard to believe that Microsoft would have created a complete IDE for the iPhone SDK to match the TOS as it is now. More likely they'd port the .NET runtime to the iPhone and then their IDE would develop .NET apps like it does now. This is the same as Adobe tried to do with Flash and we see how well that worked out.

Re:After all the recent fanfare...

[VGPowerlord]

Fun fact: Visual Studio 2010 includes Visual C++ 10, just like Visual Studio 2008 includes Visual C++ 9.

Re:After all the recent fanfare...

[yabos]

Yes and like I said, MS would have to add a lot to link to the iPhone SDK APIs since it currently is mostly used for Win32. No one is going to code an entire iPhone app in raw C++. Even in a game, you are going to use the OpenGL view classes plus other UI widgets from the SDK.

Re:After all the recent fanfare...

[TheRaven64]

They don't need to. As I've said in other posts, you can already compile clang on Windows and use it from Visual Studio. Apple would have to port Interface Builder, but the rest of the cross-compile toolchain already runs on Windows. It wouldn't take much to connect up clang's autocomplete and syntax highlighting libraries and allow Visual Studio to be used for Objective-C development.

Which, by the way, would be really fantastic for the Windows port of GNUstep, as clang can also happily target the GNU Objective-C runtime and produce native Windows binaries.

Tech-Ed != WWDC

[AwaxSlashdot]

Yeah sure, Steve Ballmer will very likely speak about VisualStudio 2010 on June the 7th. But this will be at Microsoft Tech-Ed, developper and IT professionnal conference.

How a miss-informed analyst can shake the web by spitting improbable rumours.

(I won't talk about the fact that VS10 is deeply oriented towards the introduction of .NET 4.0 and corresponding C# evolutions, that VS has currently no ObjC parser — and will never include GCC even if it is Apple reference compiler — and that VS GUI editors are built for WinForms and WPF/SilverLight, not Cocoa, so this just ends leveraging their syntax highlighting text editor)

Re:Tech-Ed != WWDC

[Anonymous Coward]

In a tweet from Microsoft's official Twitter account, the company has denied a claim that CEO Steve Ballmer would be speaking at the keynote for Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) on June 7th. Quote: Steve Ballmer not speaking at Apple Dev Conf. Nor appearing on Dancing with the Stars. Nor riding in the Belmont. Just FYI.

Developers, developers, developers...

[Minwee]

If Steve Ballmer is giving it, wouldn't that make it the WWDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDC keynote?

MS + Apple - now the odd ones out....

[yossarianuk]

It is only a matter of time before these 2 companies get together and give each other 'patent agreements'. after all they have a joint love of evil and control

Today most major tech companies (in the mobile sector mainly) are working with Linux, particularly hardware manufacturers

HP, Dell, acer , LG, Intel, google, Motorola, NEC, Panasonic, and Samsung, Vodafone, Nokia, HTC (the list goes on for quite a while) are all working on some form of Linux system or device, even Sony is (although they obviously hate Linux - and everything)

As time progresses how are Apple and Microsoft going to compete - even it they join forces...

Consumers are slowly waking up to the fact that if you buy an Apple product you are not in control of it, Apple is., judging by the increase in sales in Android it looks like the start of the end for apple (i hope)

As for Microsoft, they seem to becoming increasingly irrelevant (I haven't used any product of theirs - except a friends Xbox - since 2002, so for me they are already irrelevant and thank god for that..)

Re:MS + Apple - now the odd ones out....

[mjwx]

As time progresses how are Apple and Microsoft going to compete - even it they join forces...

And people look at me strange when I say...

Merger of this decade, Microsoft and Apple. Neither company has had to compete in over 20 years and I seriously doubt either could handle it. Eventually both will get into enough trouble that a merger will be the only way forward for both companies, especially when Jobs leaves. Microsoft will merge with Apple, MS maintains the office and business line whilst Apple maintains the consumer lines. Fanboys will turn up their nose at the idea of the Microsoft Iphone and businesses will turn up their nose at Apples enterprise support.

Verbatim from "Thoughts on Flash"

[AwaxSlashdot]

"This becomes even worse if the third party is supplying a cross platform development tool."

now explain me how this fits with "VS10 for iPad/iPhone dev".

Turtlenecks!

[masmullin]

Turtlenecks Turtlenecks TUrtlenecks TuRtlenecks TurtleNecks Turtlenecks TurtlenEcks Turtlen3cks TurtleneCks Turtlene(ks !!!!!!!!!!

GIVE IT UP FOR MEEEEEEEEE.

There are already tons of apps coded in C#

[codepunk]

All of my apps are coded in C# and there are thousands of others that I know of. It cannot be a big leap for visual studio to add support as well. The real question is how is apple going to handle the not requiring a mac to compile or publish.

Re:There are already tons of apps coded in C#

[Fri13]

Where I can find those so I can use? I only know F-Spot, Tomboy and Paint.Net. And I remind. I do not search applications by their coding. But I find out from what I use. And C# seems to be be still very rare.

Re:There are already tons of apps coded in C#

[DannyO152]

Dynamically duck-typed superset of C with optional garbage collection that compiles to native assembly versus versus static typed, managed, and garbage-collected language that compiles to byte-code.

Well, they do both have "C" in the name, so there's that to be said for their innate compatibility.

Re:There are already tons of apps coded in C#

[Culture20]

As long as they require iTunes, then there's a chance a developer might start buying songs or movies via iTunes, and Apple will get their sweet, sweet profit. Remember, restaurant managers dislike it when people order water. The food nets less profit than the drinks (even soda).

Will he?

[Anonymous Coward]

Will he not? Who knows! Let's post a news entry every day, speculating about whether and why Steve Ballmer will appear there! It's about Apple, after all!

What would his role be?

[twoears]

Will he be chairing the conference?

Re:What would his role be?

[nomadic]

FINALLY an actually funny Ballmer chair joke. It's only taken a few years.

You call that "speaking"?

[Locke2005]

I thought he was just going to dance around and shout "developers!" over and over again... let's just make sure all the chairs are bolted to the floor first!

Developers Developers Developers!

[chrispdx]

I'd pay for a WWDC ticket just to see Balmer do the monkey dance on the stage.

<head explodes>

[StuartHankins]

<head explodes>

But, seriously, I'm still running Tiger so this would give me an opportunity to try developing for the iPhone / iPad. I've been sweating the upgrade to Snow Leopard because this is my primary machine, my hard drive's almost full and I would need to purchase upgrades for several apps. I've thought about purchasing a new HD then using CarbonCopyCloner or similar software to image it and copy it over. It all seems like a lot of work though...

A few details ...

[PPH]

... have yet to be nailed down.

Like the furniture.

This is Anti-trust karma

[goombah99]

Look for the upcoming merger/acquisition.

Wow, the last time When bill gates was there to invest a chunk of change in apple development it was partly motivated by MS trying to avoid the Antitrust abyss by making sure MS was not a monopoly (at least on the commercial side).

Now it's a role reversal. MS is at this point in time a Fscked company (Win7 blow on touch devices, WinCE is on life support on phones, xbox360 has lost it's pricepoint sweet spot and is now squeezed by nintendo and Playstation, the big payday product, Office, is seriously threatened by cloud savvy products better for mobile communications, the latest office is not better than the old one so why buy it, and Win7 hasn't exactly got anyone excited.) Basically MS cannot execute. It would probably actually be good for them to downsize and re-grow.

Now the apple lesson has two parts to it. 1) It does not matter how great your company once was, your company can die faster than you think 2) A once great but sick company can comeback if it can find it's mojo again.

The sick part here is that development and office environments that microsoft created for the original mac was what lead to it losing market share. I personally suspect that Windows did not succeed as an OS until Office succeed and made Windows the preferred platform for running this killer app. Here we go again!

Re:This is Anti-trust karma

[Anonymous Coward]

and Win7 hasn't exactly got anyone excited

What do you mean? Possibly the most well received Microsoft OS ever.

Re:This is Anti-trust karma

[Anonymous Coward]

and Win7 hasn't exactly got anyone excited

What do you mean? Possibly the most well received Microsoft OS ever.

yawn. Win 7 is fine if you already use windows. It is not bringing in new market share is it? People are using linux variants more and more on mobile devices and eventually they are not going to want to have 2 OSes in their lives. The office killer app is no longer so assured-- there are compelling enough reasons to step outside the once neccessary MS .doc compatability envelope these days. Companies don't see any need to update from XP. MS is forcing this by not supporting XP but so the migration is all push from MS not Pull.

Sure it's a comparative pleasure to use given XP's age. SO yeah it's well recieved. The bar is pretty low given what a dud vista was.

But Win 7 from what I have read is not the re-write they needed. they dropped many new technologies. Besides .Net being more integral is there really much new under the shiny hood?

Re:This is Anti-trust karma

[Philip K Dickhead]

And Robbie Bach - Windows Consumer, XBox, WinMobile - just announced his exit from MSFT.

Re:This is Anti-trust karma

[Elektroschock]

Vista looks good to me, Win 7 is Vista SP3. But sure, also Ubuntu 10.04 is on equal footing if not better usability wise. All operating systems suck. Mac OS X gets overrated.

Makes sense, considering office 2011

[Bysshe]

Makes sense since Microsoft is adding VBA support to Office 2011. They left it out of Office 2008.

I predict MS to use Apple's Grand Central Dispatch

[EMB Numbers]

Grand Central Dispatch is a high level C based technique for distributing computation of heterogenous cores such as GPUs and CPUs. It is open source, but having vendor support from MS might be the key to wide adoption and standardization.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Central_Dispatch

VS2010Pro $799, MacMini $599

[AwaxSlashdot]

Do i need to say more ?

Re:VS2010Pro $799, MacMini $599

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

Xcode upgrades: $0
VS Upgrades: Bend over.

Re:VS2010Pro $799, MacMini $599

[Anonymous Coward]

And who needs Pro?

QuadCore i7 2.66GHz required for an iPhone dev ?!

[AwaxSlashdot]

So you need a quadcore 8-threaded 2.66GHz CPU to dev applications targetting a single threaded 600MHz device with a 480x320 screen ?
This tells a lot about your integrated development environment.

Been there; done that!

[EMB Numbers]

It was possible to write Openstep (now known as Cocoa) applications on Windows before it was possible on Mac.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenStep#OPENSTEP_Enterprise

Re:QuadCore i7 2.66GHz required for an iPhone dev

[TheKidWho]

Ehrm, it's at 4ghz you insensitive clod!

And no, I don't NEED it, but I prefer it!

Does anyone else think of Homer Simpson

[obarel]

Does anyone else think of Homer Simpson wearing the WWJD bracelet when he sees the initials "WWDC"?

Re:Does anyone else think of Homer Simpson

[ducomputergeek]

What Would Jobs Do?

MS Official Twitter account says Nope

[genghisjahn]

"Steve Ballmer not speaking at Apple Dev Conf. Nor appearing on Dancing with the Stars. Nor riding in the Belmont. Just FYI."

http://twitter.com/microsoft

Confirmed bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

Why must we feed these lie spewing would-be analysts who know nothing of technology?

Oh, confirmation via Microsoft Official Twitter Spewer.

I'll believe it...

[sootman]

... when I see a banner over Moscone West that says "WWDDDDDDDDDDC"

What I want to know about VS2010...

[CondeZer0]

Will it support Google Go? ;)

Of course, if Apple allowed writing apps for the iPhone in Go, I might even going through the appstore kafkian bureaucracy. ;P

Official: Balmer will not be at WWDC 2010

[EMB Numbers]

http://twitter.com/Microsoft/status/14850981422

Possibly true

[Anonymous Coward]

If this is real -- and that's a big "if" -- it's not about Visual Studio supporting the native Mac development cycle. It's about Steve Jobs announcing a native runtime for Silverlight on the iPlatforms. That's the only way this rumor could have a shred of truth to it. I present five reasons Steve Jobs might do this, for your conspiracy theorising pleasure:

1. This sticks a thumb in the eye of Adobe Flash by helping its underdog-but-technically-superior competitor.
2. Apple and MSFT have a long and weird history of occasionally assisting one other.
3. We haven't really been hearing Steve Jobs diss' Silverlight the way he has Flash.
4. Apple can't offer anything in the way of interactive multimedia development for the iPlatforms that's as cool and powerful as Flash / Silverlight.
5. Last, but probably the most important... one word... "Froyo".

All cappy

[Anonymous Coward]

What on earth does the ownership of manufacturing / making your own equipment have to do with market cap?

Not exactly a reliable source

[gyrogeerloose]

To put things into perspective, this rumor was started by the same guy who predicted two years ago that Apple would bring the iPhone to Costco to sell for $149 and then, last October, predicted that Apple would launch a “SmartBook” device for $899 with an OLED screen and a Cortex-A9 processor.

Microsoft has denied it.

[jamrock]

From Microsoft's official Twitter feed about 40 minutes ago:

Steve Ballmer not speaking at Apple Dev Conf. Nor appearing on Dancing with the Stars. Nor riding in the Belmont. Just FYI.

Cocoa Design Patterns

[EMB Numbers]

See the following explanation for WHY two stage initialization: http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1339553

http://www.amazon.com/Cocoa-Design-Patterns-Erik-Buck/dp/0321535022/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1260805943&sr=1-1

Huh? Monkey boy can speak already?

[Hurricane78]

I still can remember how happy he was when he learned his first word: DEVELOPERS, DEVELOPERS, DEVELOPERS! ;)

Really, Slashdot? Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

This was a brain dead rumor from the beginning. One could expect some of the more marginal sites to repeat that Ballmer would appear at Apple's developer conference to announce Visual Studio for iPhone OS. But, Slashdot? You're supposed to have a little more technical acumen than that. For shame. For shame!

Re:I predict MS to use Apple's Grand Central Dispa

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would MS want to implement Grand Central Dispatch? MS has their own parallelization libraries supported by .NET and C++ available for Windows with full tooling support which is infinitely more functional.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd504870(v=VS.100).aspx

And Grand Central Dispatch isn't for GPUs, just CPUs. And Apple decided to use proprietary syntax in c and C++ to represent task closures, whereas Microsoft followed the proposed C++0x draft syntax for lambdas. And Microsoft doesn't require you to shell out for an OS upgrade, it's fully supported on Windows XP.

Re:QuadCore i7 2.66GHz required for an iPhone dev

[AwaxSlashdot]

Sorry for "only" 2.66 but that the lowest speed for the i7 and I didn't know which one you had.

Delete!!

[Anonymous Coward]

If a rumor is posted, fine. That's lame. If it's debunked shortly after being released on the front page, just remove it. Blatant flamebaiting / trolling of your own community is lame.

Re:QuadCore i7 2.66GHz required for an iPhone dev

[TheKidWho]

You're correct technically, it is an i7 920, however it's running at 4ghz not 2.66 :-P

Oblig. Ballmer

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMU0tzLwhbE&feature=fvw

developers

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple developers! Apple developers! Apple developers! ... ...........

Elance

[Anonymous Coward]

I think this is great news. I also have some other great news about a great way for current Apple iPhone OS Developers to get more projects for money. Go and visit Elance.com and find all the projects you want to bid on. I did about 6 months ago and I am now actually turning down project because there are way too many for me to handle. I have also made a ton of money doing this part time. Don't take my word for it, go visit yourself. Just one developer to another!