Microsoft .. love em or hate em (and I love em) has been making some big, big strides this past year. For a long time, I wondered (and I wasn’t alone) if they were “anti” web. But now they are coming into their own, joining the open source movement, going cross-platform and in general, getting their web and mobile-game into high gear.
I have to wonder … did they really “fight” the web this long and fight mobile this long or were they just playing the long-game to see how this would all settle down? Looking back on it, I can kinda see how they may have let all the other big boys run interference for them, do the big innovations, and take the biggest hits.
But now that the internet has truly matured, infrastructure supports so much more, and we have content devices that are everywhere .. what does Microsoft do? After banking money for years, raking it in on the largest OS install on the planet, and after being the last holdout for “free and open source software”, they have changed their conversation.
I picture it that if they could give everybody a call and leave a message for them it might be something like this:
Oh hey, how’s it going? This is Microsoft. Remember us? The guys you hated? (but secretly wished we’d join your club)
Just wanted to call and give you a pricing update. Our stuff is free now. And it’s kinda on more than just PC too.
Oh where you ask? Well it’s sorta … everywhere.
Hey funny thing happened too. You know all those developers that had to choose C# or Objective C? We gave them Xamarin, coding it one time, and get either language.
Yeah it will work on any device. Yes you heard right.
Oh yeah, which reminds me … about Visual Studio .. the most powerful IDE the world has ever seen? Yeah it’s free. No really, totally free … for anyone.
By the way, we’re rolling out a new version of ASP.NET that will run on all major platforms too.
Yep, even Linux. It’s gonna be awesome!
So anyway, just wanted to call and catch up.
This has been a message from Microsoft. And …
You’re welcome.
So what do you all think? Has Microsoft been playing the long game or are they just coming together at the right time?
I’m not employed by them but I do use their technologies to pay or organic food so I couldn’t be happier with where they are headed!