There is a lot of chatter about Apples’s WWDC on 6/7/2010-6/11/2010. Most in the tech crowd feel that there won’t be much new news announced. An iPhone 4G was lost/leaked/stolen, etc. and a 2nd version turned up overseas giving us a little more insight into the case (perhaps).
One of the more interesting bits of speculation that has come out in the last couple of days is that a Microsoft presentation may be in the works. In fact, it may be part of the keynote. What I am hearing is that it has to do with Microsoft Visual Studio and would be considered pretty big news. According to the news, VisualStudio will allow developers to write native applications for the iPhone, iPad and Mac OS. This could be great for Microsoft and bad for… Adobe
A Slap in the Face to Adobe (ADBE)
My take on the backing of the VisualStudio platform has a lot to do with the battle with Adobe. Apple and Adobe aren’t exactly getting along. Steve Jobs has gone out of his way to disparage Flash and Adobe and even went so far as to call them ‘lazy’ for not working to improve Flash. For those who don’t know, it is a resource hog. By enlisting Microsoft to work on tools to develop for Apple’s platforms they are needling the current leader in the development space.
Adobe owns a couple of markets right now and one way to put another dagger in their heart (or back) would be to push into their market. The fact that Apple would consider doing this with Microsoft is a surprise. Imagine if Microsoft is able to move Visual Studio (or some variation of) toward becoming a product that web developers would consider in lieu of Adobe’s Creative Suite (Dreamweaver). That would put them back on their heels a bit more. As a developer, I would have to look long and hard (and probably wouldn’t waste the time to do so) after Microsoft’s past attempts to build tools for the web space. Microsoft’s Frontpage was an early leader in this area and lost the game due to the horrific code output and some of the non-standards compliant touches that Microsoft allowed in the product.
In the end, there is a chance that Apple is simply using Microsoft to tighten the screws on Adobe. After all, the cultures at Adobe and Apple are much closer than those at Apple and Microsoft.
Apple’s WWDC could be a big event, or it could simply be another one of their events that make you say “That is about what we thought they would come out with…”.
As always, time will tell!