Microsoft may suck at life but they understand developers
Yes, giving away free laptops to developers is desperation. But it's the same desperation every platform vendor should be feeling.
Microsoft
24 Nov 2009
Last week, my friend Mike Downey (who now works at Microsoft) tweeted:
Wow - can't believe we are giving away free laptops to all paid PDC attendees! Very cool! #pdc09
As a Flash developer, I'm happy whenever anyone licenses anything Flash for any purpose whatsoever. It strengthens a platform that I love developing for. However, the news that Microsoft has licensed Flash Lite for its Windows Mobile phones doesn't excite me too greatly.
Flash Lite definitely has its place on mobile phones but that place is not to play back web-based Flash content. Flash Lite plays back Flash Lite content specifically created for phones and other devices like the Chumby. The best uses of it that I've seen are to build interface elements and other apps that integrate into the phone's operating system. Flash Lite cuts down development and testing time (and thus costs and time-to-market) considerably for such use cases.
Typical, I spend the morning with my accountant and the blogosphere erupts with news of Microsoft's take-over bid for Yahoo!