A couple weeks ago, I committed to a blog about the implications of Apple’s iPad on software developers, but I came down with a case of writer’s block, so I’m late. (Please refer to my first blog this year about my schedules for blogging.)
My writer’s block was solved when I read something unexpected in a blog from Mary Jo Foley, whose full time job is to report about what is going on inside Microsoft.
I was planning to write how if you split software developers into two camps – i.e. one set of developers expert at writing smart phone applications, and one expert at writing desktop applications, because you give them different toolsets, then the toolset provided for the new tablet computers will influence how many developers you have writing software for that tablet computer.
The toolsets offered by Microsoft for desktop development and mobile development aren’t that different, but there are differences. I don’t know Apple’s toolsets well enough to comment on them (that’s why this post was delayed – I thought I would learn the details about Apple’s toolsets, but I never had time, and I probably never will).
The fact that the iPad’s operating system is based on the iPhone platform implies that Apple is looking to leverage their iPhone developers. Conversely, Microsoft’s success so far with NetBooks, was because those little laptops fell into the domain of the desktop application writers, of which there are more of than there are Windows smart phone developers.
Since I announced plans for this post, Microsoft unveiled “Windows Mobile 7” – their new mobile software environment, featuring a new user interface. And then, in Mary Jo Foley’s blog, I read rumors about Microsoft taking the user interface of Windows Mobile 7 and possibly porting it as the user interface for desktop computers. As radical as this seems, I think the tablet computer platform is at the heart of such a theory.
Moving the new Windows Mobile 7 interface to tablet computers makes sense because it’s a better design than Windows 7 for people who will interact with the device using their finger tips. You’ll probably see Microsoft do some combination of the following two things:
1) Promote to developers the logic of developing applications for the new Windows Mobile software.
2) Provide tools to desktop developers, extending the same tools they use today, to develop applications with this user interface running on Windows 7.
Supporting the Window Mobile 7 user interface on Windows 7, given the right tools, could therefore pull in more of those Windows 7 developers to produce Zune-like applications and run them on Windows 7-based tablet computers.
Don’t expect the Windows Mobile 7 user interface on all computers – you don’t just take away something as commonly known around the world as the Windows desktop user interface and replace it with something as different as the Zune user interface. But you may have options to select between the two, or you’ll see computers that are essentially the same systems, marketed with different names, to different markets, with different user interfaces.
Phones running the Windows Mobile 7 user interface won’t appear until late this year, but the implications of Windows Mobile 7’s success will finally ripple over the wall separating the mobile and desktop markets. Early rumors are that Silverlight, Microsoft’s latest technology for building rich websites, and XNA, the tools Microsoft provides for building Xbox applications will play key roles in this new landscape. How this shakes out will define what Windows-based tablet PC’s and possibly desktop PC’s will actually look like.
