I'm a Linux and OS X user all the way, but I don't agree with assertions like:
The even bigger problem, I think, will be the lack of dogfooding: most developers of the kind of apps Windows 8 needs don’t use Windows. .. or.. many of those consumer-product developers, now entrenched in the Apple ecosystem, to care so much about Windows development that they want to use Windows to develop for it.
It's easy to think that when entrenched in the progressive, UNIX-oriented crowd, as most of us on HN are, but take a little dive into the Windows world and the scope of even just indie developers working on Windows is mindboggling and totally eclipses the open source, Mac and Unix crowds, in my estimate (though this is truly just an estimate).
Microsoft is not on its last legs. It doesn't have a "developer problem". There are a lot of microsof-related jobs out there, more so than most web trendy technologies. It is a solid company with solid footing.
Yes, Bing did not beat Google. Yes, their phones have always been second-tier (until this latest batch which is pretty nice). Yes, there are a lot of things that they have failed at.
But the one thing they have that others dont is the user base. Everyone and their mothers has windows (unless you are or are related to a computer geek (like my dad who runs ubuntu)). This is the power of Microsoft, if it can translae all of that userbase from Windows 7/8 to the tablet/phone market, then the game is mostly over for Apple and Android.
Microsoft can do that with a top-notch product, and each new iteration they put out is times better than the last. They also can provide to most enterprises what Apple or Google/Android cannot: a seamless integration of all of their Windows-powered devices (which means that they can still keep their XP/.Net boxes running and integrate them with some API).
They are aiming for one OS to run on everything. Smart move. Takes time, but will ultimately will give them the edge. They have proven to be a dependable enterprise supplier, and giving enterprises more options to compete will just make them stronger.
Will developers write code for it? They already are. You just don't read about it due to the marketing snowball that Apple and Android are enjoying.
If you think about it, iOS and Android have only existed for less than ten yers. Windows has been here since Pangea. You think they survived this long by chance?
Edit: Please fix your webpage. It does not load properly without JS.
I thoroughly agree with all you wrote, save for the mother problem: iOS is the first platform where I've ever seen my mother seem in control and empowered by her computing experience. After five years those interaction models and expectations are seared in to a large number of people and it is going to take an absolutely incredible product to make her move to another platform.
I do not see Windows-ish or Microsoft-esque software to be an asset in the mobile field for the great bulk of consumers. It is not a desirable experience, just a now-familiar one.
...iOS is the first platform where I've ever seen my mother seem in control and empowered by her computing experience.
Absolutely. I experienced that with my father and wife. Ubuntu and iOS empowered them to not be afraid to try something new with the computer/device. When people are not afraid of "breaking windows" a wonderful thing happens: they use the device as a tool of empowerment rather than a tool to get some task done.
After five years those interaction models and expectations are seared in to a large number of people and it is going to take an absolutely incredible product to make her move to another platform.
That is why I said that Microsoft keeps iterating better products. I'm sure hey are about to hit it big. What will make people like your mother or my wife change back to Windows is the integration with the other Microsoft products. The majority of professions (my wife is a teacher) are tied down to MS. Giving them a phone that will integrate with that will just make the others look like Linux looks o someone who has always worked with Windows: foreign.
I do not see Windows-ish or Microsoft-esque software to be an asset in the mobile field for the great bulk of consumers. It is not a desirable experience, just a now-familiar one.
The bulk of consumers would pick something familiar over something new (or even better). They know Microsoft through Windows. They will pick Windows if given a trendy and functional phone that will inegrate wih their life (and not the other way around).
But it still be Windows. People will just sit down and learn it. Unlike my experience installing Ubuntu, where people feel foreign to the UI because it is not windows. Even though it is easier to use (My experiences cover Ubuntu/gnome).
I think the market has shown, with WM and WP sales and market share, that there is no halo affect from Windows. Simply put, [desktop] Windows doesn't matter in mobile. It is not preventing people from choosing iOS or Android over WP.
You are right. Thing is, like I said, MS keep improving its mobile offerings. With the strong brand name MS has, they could turn things around in no time.
In reality, if the platform looks like it could be successful, developers will suck it up and write software for it.
I'm sure many developers find Objective-C/Cocoa/Xcode to be a terrible development environment, but they do it anyway, because that's where the action is.
I don't think many people have the type of religious aversion to Windows or non-Apple platforms that Marco is alluding to.
(Also, are there really any high-profile iOS apps remaining that aren't already available on Android because the developer refuses to write software for Android? Instapaper and Flipboard were the biggest I could think of and it's not true for those 2 anymore)
I also think Marco seriously underestimates how many great developers still use Windows. Much as I dislike it personally, there are lots of reasons to: deep Windows experience, huge ecosystem of tools/companies/etc, games, targeting a Windows-heavy vertical, and so on.
Plenty of these people want to do more for mobile devices, too. Microsoft is in a position to give them an easy way to do that (especially given the shared base of Windows 8, Windows RT and Windows Phone 8). Will it work? We'll see, but if it fails it won't be because Microsoft failed to interest great developers If it fails, it will probably be because Microsoft failed to interest consumers.
There's a very large Windows developer community. And some of those developers have thought about "working individually, in smaller companies, or in startups, building consumer-facing apps or services", and then thought about having to learn a new language, and thought about having to learn a new development environment, and thought about having people seeing you with one of those phones (1), and decided that it wasn't worth the effort or pain.
So some of those developers are just the sort of people who might make the leap into the Windows 8 ecosystem. Microsoft has always looked after developers so I agree with fpgeek that it will be more about PR and marketing and image than the ability to attract developers. Indeed PR and marketing and reality distortion was what enabled Apple to become the dominant player in the smartphone market.
This article is spot on, but it is easy to read it incorrectly. MSFT has a problem that the best/most popular consumer apps are being developed for the web or iOS, then Android, then far down the road they MIGHT make it to WP7 and someday maybe, eventually they show up on Windows proper.
For the last 2 decades MSFT's whole company strategy is to get developers to make apps for Windows Desktop. Name the last big "Windows App" that made you buy a copy of Windows? The web killed that and iOS and Android made it worse.
Now Microsoft needs devs to make Windows 8 apps and they are hoping that the inherently huge Windows Desktop ecosystem will make it so cheap to port to mobile that developers will build tablet and mobile apps from their Windows 8 codebase.
The only problem is if you have a native app you are talking about 3 or 4 codebases to deal with - iOS, Android, Windows (and its variants), and the web. As it stands now most devs will stop after doing iOS, Android, and web. Who knows if Windows App Store is going to sell enough software for it to be worthwhile to add a 4th codebase.
The opportunity in this is for shops who are willing to port popular Apps to Windows. At this point the only apps that are worthwhile to build Windows first are games.
And every single one of those apps that developers have made for Windows 7 are not "Metro" and not eligible for the Microsoft App Store or to run on mobile devices. Only a few of them are even dotnet. The rest will require a near complete rewrite.
What he meant was: if Windows 8 sells like Windows 7, and it will, there will be a mind boggling number of users to target. Windows 8 market will quickly be bigger than Mac OS X market because Windows 8 will ship on every new PC being sold.
And since there are no apps, there are lots of opportunities just writing the same kind of apps that people have written in the past, except for Metro. It'll be a new gold rush and you can trust me, developers will rush for that new gold.
Well, I don't think anyone's expecting it to sell like Windows 7. They're expecting it to 'flop' like Vista. i.e. sell quite a lot but have a large user base sit on Windows 7 waiting for Windows 9 as people sat on XP after Vista.
I think the point here is that if you have a properly architected .NET application, porting to any of the platforms supported either by microsoft or mono is relatively straight forward. So that would include Windows (all flavors), xbox, windows phone, os x, iOS, Android, linux, playstation, wii, and whatever else the mono folks are cooking up.
Get real. IE is must have if you're a web developer. Last time I checked, IE was still over 50% of the web. Web developers still need to check their website in a bunch of browsers--including multiple versions of IE since a lot of users are stuck on IE 7 and 8 for whatever reason.
I'm not a web developer. Nor do I use Windows at home. I guess your point is that in the enterprise or web developer industry, you need Windows PC, I can totally believe that. Also, if you are an aggressive gamer, you will probably be more happy with a PC than a Mac. If you are outside of those areas, you'll probably be happy with a Mac or whatever else you want to use. If you are a consumer/non-gamer, then it doesn't really matter unless you are into Office; I mean, the must have apps are already on the web (facebook).
There were several programs in my college classes (enterprise bullshit) that I needed IE to run. I didn't say it was a good thing, but that is the way it was.
He vastly underestimates the dedication of .NET programmers and enterprise IT to Windows. Visual Studio / C# / .NET is still the best development environment I've ever used. Devs who love it will stick by it through thick and thin (see: WPF, Silverlight).
Windows 8 may not be successful in the consumer space, but I imagine it has a serious shot at doing very very well in the workplace.
Devs who love it will stick by it through thick and thin (see: WPF, Silverlight).
As someone who spends a good amount of my professional life in the Microsoft stack, let me say that there is a bit of a negative correlation going on -- the ones who have embraced Microsoft's failed initiatives (their failure predictable) have generally been, from my observations, mediocre developers. There are some core Microsoft technologies that are excellent, but there are various fire and motion initiatives that have been simply a waste of time.
Completely agree- Microsoft has solid line of business developers but their development community is sorely lacking people with rich UX skills.
Comparing the Silverlight community to the Flash community, the Silverlight community is much more concerned about architecture (MVVM, Dependency Injection, IOC, etc), while the Flash community seems to have much more of a focus on 'how to accomplish a visual effect. It's not quite that clear cut, but these are the general trends.
The other significant item is the cost to change development operating systems- Microsoft platforms have been stagnant for too long, HTML is fairly agnostic as a development platform so iOS has been pulling many people there. (Not to mention that a fair number of newer web technologies treat Windows as a second-tier platform).
Some of the larger costs for supporting development on multiple OSes, for a small company:
- Basic systems maintenance (OS licenses, user logins across machines, support, parallels?)
- Consistent development environment- sharing source control between systems, porting build/test scripts, etc
- Related tools- if you're doing a lot of UI work, may also need Photoshop or Illustrator on your new OS.
It is hard to believe that the majority of web developers are on the Mac since there are so many more ASP.NET jobs posts than Django or ROR jobs - at least here in the UK.
Having said that the main reason I chose Microsoft as the platform for my products was their commitment to backwards compatibility and the It Just Works policy. As an example, I have an Itanium server running Windows and my applications developed on x86 just work there, maybe not optimally but they do. I believe the same was true of Alpha machines. Windows 8 partly does away with this since the ARM version does not support Win32 applications.
Assuming that ARM is the winner in the tablet arena, any tablet application will have to be built from scratch which poses an interesting dilemma: Which platform should I choose for tablet development? The iPad, Android or Windows? At this moment Windows is the worst choice because it is not ready, there are no devices in the market and, what could be the reason to wait for it, my applications will not "Just Work".
Microsoft does not have a developer's problem but the times ahead are pretty rocky for anyone with a large investment in the platform.
Just for whatever it's worth: the majority of ASP.NET job listings are probably for line-of-business apps at non-technology companies.
Now, it's worth knowing that line-of-business dev jobs probably constitute a gigantic chunk, maybe the majority, of all programming jobs in the industry. So it's not nothing that those jobs are dominated by ASP.NET and J2EE.
But to Marco's point, line-of-business developers don't have a great track record of marketing applications directly to consumers. "Enterprise software" has picked up its connotations for a reason.
This is absolutely right. Techies often forget that for most of the history of computing approximately 90% of all software development has been making TPS reports, business logic, and data entry screens for database backends.
However, a lot of those folks who do J2EE and Dotnet during the day will have fun tinkering at night. So I predict there will be no shortage of amateurish and clunky apps for Metro platforms.
"line-of-business developers don't have a great track record of marketing applications directly to consumers"
This sounds like hearsay to me. If a gigantic chunk of the developers are working on ASP.NET and J2EE I would be surprised if they did not transfer those skills to their own business when they open one. Stackoverflow is one such case to give an example. So in my opinion, Marco's premise is wrong even though it may be correct within his circle.
...most developers of the kind of apps Windows 8 needs don’t use Windows.
The exception to this would be games developers, and I do think games are an important part of a mobile app store ecosystem.
Looking outside of mobile games, the majority of games are developed using Windows and Visual Studio. With Xbox Live Microsoft already has an established online gaming service.
Microsoft has some advantages that they haven't made use of in this niche.
Sure, but there are two types of game developers: those using high-performance Win32 native code game engines and everyone else. Everyone else is mostly using Java or Flash or something specific to iOS or Android.
So Microsoft has shut out the Win32 native code developers from the WP7 and mobile platforms by more or less requiring all apps be developed according to Metro specifications.
All the other developers will need to be given a reason to rewrite their app for managed code (i.e. C#) for Metro. The only real reason for professionals to undertake such a task is potential revenue, which isn't there until the users materialize.
Everyone else is mostly using Java or Flash or
something specific to iOS or Android.
That's not true, there's a large ecosystem of game developers writing in managed C#, in the form of the Xbox Live Indie Game market. It shouldn't be difficult to port those to Metro, assuming Microsoft doesn't shoot themselves in the foot somehow.
My understanding is that Windows 8 Metro apps are DirectX only, thus there's almost no chance that WP8 would support OpenGL ES.
(Rationale: WP8 is based on W8 core, WP7 doesn't support OpenGL ES and if they'd do the work to support OpenGL I'd assume that they'd do it in W8 first, since W8 is where the big money is).
I think there might actually be a subset of Win32 available (the same subset exposed to Windows 8 Metro style apps, or a further subset of that subset), they've not made any of this clear yet though.
You are right that the lack of OGLES support will probably continue to be off-putting to many mobile developers.
I'm sympathetic that they don't have all their decisions made yet, but as a developer it's a bit off-putting that they're asking everyone to develop for this platform for which there will be all these new limitations and restrictions but they won't say what they are. It's really difficult to answer basic questions like "do apps for Metro/WP8/WinRT/Windows RT have to be managed code?" Typically the information is provided like "Use Visual Studio 2012 to code in C++, C#, or VB ..."
I can't really take this article seriously. There are millions of Windows developers, and you can't make broad, sweeping statements like he does about a group that large. If there's money to be made, developers will target the platform.
As the dominant consumer platform shifted from the web to apps over the last four years
Did I just miss this memo or something? Yes native apps have been enjoying a strong growth curve, but they have yet to overtake web usage in any statistic I've seen. If anything the app fad seems to be losing steam.
...and Where is this statistic you are alluding to? Facebook is the #1 example of a company who gave HTML5 100% of the company's focus and realized it was seriously misguided and is now redoubling efforts to write serious native apps for each platform.
Comments such as these are seriously out of touch with reality.
For me it is actually rather interesting that they went with HTML first, considering that they had the resources to skip on the HTML version completely. And I'm sure that they did this, not because HTML was the fad of the moment, but because HTML has inherent advantages ... like, when Windows Phone 8 gets released, Facebook will be available for it from day 1, just as it is available on any phone that has a web browser.
And of course they had to go native. Developing web apps for mobile phones is extremely painful. For instance the last time I developed something for an iPhone, upload buttons in the browser were disabled. So basically in the name of user experience or whatever the hell reasons Apple is conjuring these days, they deliberately broke the user experience for web apps by not allowing uploads of photos. And considering this is the number 1 use-case for active users of Facebook, they were forced to go native anyway.
The alternative road, which both Facebook and Google took, was to wrap that HTML in an app container that would let them bypass the browser restrictions (like uploading of files). But this was a bad idea, at least because the web view on iOS has much worse performance characteristics than the browser. For Facebook at least it's amazing how they accomplished the feat of making the native app more sluggish than loading facebook.com in the browser (which is perfect btw, except that you can't share photos with it and it also doesn't have any mechanism for giving you notifications in real time, but I don't miss that because that's what email is for).
when Windows Phone 8 gets released, Facebook will be available for it from day 1, just as it is available on any phone that has a web browser.
Not really. Some amount of development effort will be required to ensure compatibility with any given platform browser. Certainly cross-browser compatibility has gotten better in the nearly 20 years of WWW existence, but it is not perfect. And additionally, you'll have to consider various platform issues such as the upload field on <iOS6 you mention. Alternatively, if Facebook were to work on a native Windows Phone 8 app, they'd potentially have it available from day 1. They have the resources and they'd likely have abundant support from Microsoft.
wrap that HTML in an app container that would let them bypass the browser restrictions (like uploading of files). But this was a bad idea, at least because the web view on iOS has much worse performance characteristics than the browser.
And at most because every other top-tier app which went native instead of HTML provided a vastly improved user experience. Facebook and Google web view apps look and behave antiquated in comparison. Not exactly putting your best foot forward. Google has moved faster, where the G+ app is now native on iOS, providing (perhaps) an improved user experience (at least a valiant effort at one, anyway).
I can't speak for everyone, but exactly how long are we supposed to wait for HTML to become a write-once environment that enables as-good-as native apps? We've had nearly 20 years to address those two issues on the desktop and still both issues exist. I just don't see that ever happening. And users will notice.
"And during that decade, almost every such developer I knew switched to the Mac if they weren't already there, partly because it was better for developing web apps."
This is the first time I've ever heard anyone make this claim, which seems dubious at best. How in the world is the Mac better for developing web apps?
Simple - the Mac was the only machine which could run all of the browsers you needed to test on. A Mac + VMWare (or Parallels) lets you test on Safari, multiple versions of IE, and Chrome/Opera/Firefox on both Windows, Mac and Linux.
Of course, the reason for this is that until very recently Apple wouldn't let any version of OS X run under virtualization on any other platform, so if you wanted to test in Safari you had to have a Mac. I think OS X can now be run virtualized, but that's a very recent change.
Aside from browser testing though, having a Unix-based operating system certainly makes development using the open source web stack much easier (though of course you can always run virtualized Ubuntu on Windows).
>so if you wanted to test in Safari you had to have a Mac.
There has been a Windows port of Safari for awhile so that point isn't correct unless you meant that you couldn't test Safari/Mac unless you had a Mac.
Easy, it's a POSIX-compliant OS and the vast majority of the web is deployed on servers with a similar environment. This is doubly true of the consumer-oriented web apps that Marco's talking about.
I'd disagree that this has any relation to it being 'better for developing web apps'. I write code and work with teams coding a multitude of languages and environments (on Windows, Mac, and various nix flavors), and the developer experience in the Microsoft toolset is pretty impressive.
I'd expect the shift to be more a function of cost, since it's a lot easier for a startup to spin up on OSS vs. procure Windows licensing, and it's also a lot easier to get free hosting deals like Heroku, etc. than Windows (although I expect BizSpark is changing some of that).
So I do agree that there are some appealing reasons to start projects on nix and OSS, but ease of development and quality of tooling (i.e. a 'better development experience') is likely not at the top of the list.
I'd disagree that this has any relation to it being 'better for developing web apps'.
As someone who dealt with the nightmare of trying to develop Ruby on Rails apps on Windows in 2006, I assure you that this was a significant issue.
I'd expect the shift to be more a function of cost, since it's a lot easier for a startup to spin up on OSS vs. procure Windows licensing, and it's also a lot easier to get free hosting deals like Heroku ...
This is also true.
In general, Windows was not an ideal environment for developing for the web.
Oh, no debate on trying to build Ruby apps on Windows (been there, done that - which is why I have a separate Ubuntu partition for that). But more the point that if I am building a web app in, say, ASP.Net MVC using Visual Studio 2010/2012, the tooling is excellent.
Since the article is talking about Windows Developers, it's probably fair to assume that most of them are knocking out code in Visual Studio. And regardless of one's opinions on Microsoft, it's hard to argue with the quality of their developer tools.
I'd agree then that Windows is not an ideal environment for Ruby development, but not all web dev is in Ruby, and windows is an excellent web development environment if you're building out on the Microsoft stack.
The article is talking about the 2004-5 time period. ASP.NET MVC didn't exist, .NET was still at v1.1, IE was still at v6, Windows was still at XP, etc.
(I'm probably an anomaly in that I actually switched to Windows - from Linux - a few years after that, around 2008)
I see pretty comparable numbers of listings for Python, Ruby/RoR, Java, and .Net (although if you add up all of the nix web dev jobs and bundle Python, PHP, and Ruby together vs. .Net, you're going to see a lot more of the former).
For web dev in general the split is pretty even, but if I am looking more at startups or small shops, the balance shifts towards Python/RoR (with Javascript being pretty ubiquitous whether you are on .Net, Java, RoR, or Python).
Still see this more of a tooling cost issue though, which makes sense. MS licensing is not cheap, although I've worked with a suprising number of startups that are on the MS stack, or using a combination of languages.
Do you think all those ASP.Net sites are more likely to be delivered on the web to a diverse selection of evolving, modern user agents, or on an internal network to only IE7 users until 2019?
One opportunity has a choice in development tools. The other doesn't, really. The former market for developer mindshare can and does change; the latter is Microsoft's entrenched base which is never really in jeopardy (nor very relevant to the growth of the tech field at large).
Apple fully embraced the open source community as a launch-pad for Mac OS X a decade ago. So the initial early adopters were all Unix/Linux enthusiasts that were establishing all the web technologies.
Plus, for the first time you could compile apache and use Photoshop in the same environment.
Then developers who were there early on because of that, started writing the tools that later became the standard. (eg. TextMate, Transmit)
Reminds me of that old quote
"social media had popularized non-fact based reality"
Macro is a mac developer, his friends are mac developers and he somehow determines Microsoft development is dead because he doesn't do it. And we are supposed to believe him in that.
Marco didn't hit the target here: beyond the risk to be an attractive platform from the point of view of the developer the speed of development in Visual Studio /.NET is superior than Eclipsr/XCode. Beyond average developers will feel comfortable with their platform of choice but below average developers can go to market very fast
I've been transitioning from Visual Studio/.NET/WPF/Resharper to Xcode/Vim this past month. While I feel like the microsoft programming environment is way more productive, at the end of the day an I care less about the development environment, and more about whether what I'm making will have an impact and make money.
I'm expecting many developers that long for a better dev. environment to buy 3rd party IDE's like IntelliJ IDEA & AppCode. They also cost less than what you'd spend on Visual Studio Professional (yes, i know i'm ignoring bizspark here).
Along with this, I'm just not excited about microsoft's pitch with surface as a laptop replacement. I want a tablet that replaces books and paper. Those aspects still require hardware design that feels good in "vertical" mode.
Your comment relates to the risk of developing for a platform without an interesting market. That is true and time will say how much market can Microsoft win in the mobile space.
If Microsoft increases their market share significantly, then "everyone" could go to market very fast with Visual Studio. In my opinion they will achieve significant success in less than 2 years.
Marco's projecting here. He's overestimating point #1. Developers have their preferences, but a total dedication to one company with which you have no (real) relationship is a huge mental blunder most of us do not share with him. The best app on the iPad (Paper) was created by former Microsofters. Marco is projecting.
Personally, as an owner of several Macs, an iPad 3 and an iPhone, (which I mention to indicate that I'm not predisposed to be biased in Microsoft's favor) after watching the product announcement footage for the Microsoft Surface, the Pro version does seem solid and appealing. The ARM version appeared flaky, maybe a year away from being ready, but the Surface Pro looked like something I might consider purchasing.
The product's portability, interesting design with a kickstand (brilliant!), that clever keyboard case, and the supposedly high-res stylus built-in make this a beast of a convergence device, and I think they may have pulled it off. I have a hard time believing that the non-Pro ARM Surface will be shipping anytime soon, however.
From a development perspective, I'm probably going to rely on the web browser to target this platform for the foreseeable future, though the resources at my disposal have largely made this choice for me. That said, I certainly wouldn't discount the possibility of developers getting a Surface for themselves, and eventually supporting the platform with their apps. They're a pretty sexy piece of kit.
Microsoft hasn't shown either beyond very controlled demos, so it's hard to say what the state of either is. Windows has been running on Intel a _bit_ longer than Tegra (even if you only count x64), so I wouldn't be surprised if the ARM kernel and drivers aren't totally ready yet.
Sorry, but Marco is mostly right. Microsoft's #1 problem right now is getting good consumer front-end developers to even install Windows, let alone write apps for their platforms.
The natural Microsoft developer community isn't someone looking to make the next killer app for the public, instead most of that community are inhouse corporate groups who make internal apps. Microsoft does a very good at supporting this community with tools and other goodies.
So the type of apps you're going to see for this platform aren't going to be ones sold in app stores, but internal mission critical apps. This community is also very much about supporting legacy and in no rush for the latest and greatest. And while this ecosystem may not be sexy it's very profitable and it's a focus that both Apple and Google are weak at.
Also Microsoft already has the sales relationships with these large companies so they will place orders. To me this is more about Microsoft going after the turf of companies like Dell and HP than anybody else. I have to wonder if we'll see Microsoft branded PCs and servers in the near future. In my mind this is in the same league as Oracle buying Sun.
You won't see Microsoft branded PCs unless Steve Ballmer found out that Dell and HP were ready to back stab MS. Ever.
If they came out with Microsoft branded PCs and made a hit on Dell/HP sales, Dell/HP will fight back and ship Ubuntu. 25% hit on sale would be ... devastating.
You want to know why MS branded PCs won't ever happen? Because Steve Ballmer said so with the above paragraph as an example of the business trade-off.
Tablet, on the other hand, is a different segment.
If Larry Ellison can stab HP in the back why can't Ballmer? And not for nothing HP was even talking about killing their PC devision not too long ago and Dell seems to be grasping at other straws. Also if HP and Dell went to Ubuntu I don't see them doing well with corporations that have an investment in Windows.
My gut tells me that this is the first act of a play, and my bet is that we'll see some more back stabbing before it's over. Although my bet is that Dell and HP will be running away from the PC -- or at the very least someone will have to go in that game of musical chairs.
Larry did not have mutual business/sales relationship with HP. That is the biggest flaw with your argument.
Second, Ballmer said it himself that it will not go down like that for PC business. Why do you think they have x86 and ARM?
I will take your bet when it comes to MS launching its own PC. MS will definitely not do that. I have the insider info up on my sleeve albeit a few years old but still recent.
Like I said, tablet or other devices, other than laptop and workstation, will be a different ball games altogther.
Everybody has too much to lose when it comes to workstation and PC.
IMHO, Microsoft could be seeing a similar problem as IBM 10-15 years ago. They couldn't hire and keep the Great Ones any more. First it meant getting out of the OS business. Then it meant buying software firms rather than developing software. They realized that they were an Enterprise Sales and Services organization.
The big difference here is that Microsoft owns a large segment of consumer OS, something that IBM did not (was stolen by Microsoft) in the past.
While I've heard or read prediction/assumption/guesses/perspective of MS smells like IBM 10-15 years ago (and they are legit, I'm not saying it has no merit), that difference alone is a huge (and fundamental) one.
Speaking of "great ones", there are plenty of great ones that work at MS, just like there are plenty that work for Google. It's just that the "great ones" solve different problems in different domain: most people only heard about smart people working at Google solving problems at scale, while the .NET team (Visual Studio, Compiler, IL, Libraries, etc) are not necessary "trendy" any more.
Judging MS engineers as "average" engineers are simply naive or too cocky without proper education at best.
The even bigger problem, I think, will be the lack of dogfooding: most developers of the kind of apps Windows 8 needs don’t use Windows. .. or.. many of those consumer-product developers, now entrenched in the Apple ecosystem, to care so much about Windows development that they want to use Windows to develop for it.
It's easy to think that when entrenched in the progressive, UNIX-oriented crowd, as most of us on HN are, but take a little dive into the Windows world and the scope of even just indie developers working on Windows is mindboggling and totally eclipses the open source, Mac and Unix crowds, in my estimate (though this is truly just an estimate).