What has Microsoft been up to? As it turns out, quite a lot. The company’s more-than-three-hour keynote at its Build conference today covered a range of products: Office, Windows, Azure, and the unreleased HoloLens holographic headset and operating system.
HoloLens, it’s now clear, is not vaporware. Microsoft promised the assembled developers that it had more than a 100 HoloLens nerd helmets on-site for them to try. So, the theory that holographic Windows was some sort of premature April Fool’s joke, is out the window.
Myself and Frederic Lardinois hung around after the event to kick over a few things on camera. In case you missed the chaos, here is our recap.
What’s clear is that Microsoft wants developers to build for Windows, but it’s now giving them more tools than ever to do so, including new tools for porting Android and iOS apps to its Windows 10 platform. It also made a new (and free) code editor available to developers that runs on Windows, Mac and Linux, something that was unthinkable only a few years ago.
We didn’t hear all that much new about Windows 10 today, but maybe that’s understandable, given that Microsoft has been releasing new public betas of its latest operating system at a steady clip. We were a bit surprised, though, that the company didn’t announce a release date for Windows 10 yet.
Tomorrow, this publication is back onsite, covering the continuing developer confab. Unlike today, though, we don’t expect the company to make any major announcement.
