A Programmer's Take on Tablets
Andrew Brust is a guru's guru, at least when it comes to Microsoft development. So while I've written plenty about Windows 8 and you've had your say through your e-mails and postings, platforms ultimately live or die based on their apps. In the early day it was that one killer app -- VisiCalc, Lotus 1-2-3 or, on the case of Windows, Excel.
These days it's quantity and quality -- and Microsoft wants both to work with Windows Store Apps.
First, Brust recognize that Apple has a massive 2.5 year lead on Microsoft, something Microsoft is more than used to.
This time Microsoft has a different approach to fighting uphill. It is actually embracing the competition. In the past, Redmond had a proprietary approach to development by promoting its own tools and its own targets. But here Microsoft is open to Apple's iOS, giving developers tools, apps and storage services that let them live in Apple and Microsoft worlds simultaneously. And Microsoft third parties, perhaps with Redmond's blessing, are creating tools that developers create iOS apps using techniques they learned with Windows. The message, perhaps a bit subtle, is Microsoft doesn't mind a world where apps are common to the iPad and Windows 8 devices, and wouldn't really care if Windows developers became iPad developers as well.
Posted by Doug Barney on 11/09/2012 at 1:19 PM