Robert Scoble posted an article about 1989; the year that Apple released the Macintosh II. He argues that part of Apple's lack of market penetration is due to a lack of developer tools, whereas Microsoft focused heavily on the developer aspect of their platform. He also talks about HyperCard.

This got me reminiscing about the good 'ole days. Sometime in junior high, my parents bought me a Mac IIci. What I remember most is that I had HyperCard on it. I used to sit in front of my Mac and build HyperCard Stacks 'till the wee hours of the morning. My Dad would have to come in and literally turn it off for me to go to bed. I also remember a program called Resource Explorer, which would allow me to edit the resource files of Mac software. At one point, I went in to Photoshop and changed one of the author's names to my own.  I know, shame on me, but I thought it was the coolest thing ever.

I loved it. It was my first taste of programming, and I was hooked. I even remember thinking, not to sound like Al Gore, but what if I could connect my HyperCard stacks to HyperCard stacks on a friend's computer, maybe across a phone line? I spent an afternoon thinking about how this could work. Unfortunately, there weren't the plethora of Internet resources that there are today to be able to do this, but it was fun thinking.

The problem with HyperCard is that per their agreement with Bill Atkinson, they had to distribute it for free. Given this, they didn't pour the resources into it that maybe they should have. It never 'took off.'

On a side note, I wanted to go back and take a look at HyperCard and some of the stuff I had done back then. I dusted off (literally) my old IIci and attempted to fire it up. Doh! It won't turn on. I guess that's what happens after 15 years of storage and being banged around. If anyone has a IIci with HyperCard that they are planning on throwing out, give me a shout.

Fast forward 18 years. Apple is still trying to hold on to a minority share and the new iPhone, as Robert said, doesn't seem to indicate that Apple has gotten the message about developer transparency. But imagine this: what if Apple took the time to create a Mac based CLR, based on the available public specification, which allowed me to run .NET apps on a Mac? The .NET framework is already what I would call multi-platform-ready. The IL is meant to be portable. One of the major complaints about the Mac platform is the lack of software for it. I think if Apple were to provide a CLR for .NET apps to run on its platform, the results would be phenomenal.

And on the enterprise side, the biggest argument I have heard for the use of Java from enterprise folks is its portability. And although I doubt any enterprise company is going to switch platforms when they already have millions invested in hardware for it, they seem to believe so. What if I could not only build .NET apps for the Mac, but also for UNIX based systems such as AIX? Imagine the potential for market penetration into the enterprise environment.

I think the lesson for Microsoft here is to learn from Apple's failures and make sure they don't undercut the efforts of developers, and expand the reach of its already powerful developer experience to other platforms. I think with the FOG (Fear of Google) that is going around, Microsoft could look like a hero.