Microsoft posted, and then pulled back, an announcement that it is bringing the Visual Studio coding platform to the Mac. While the general public might not find this interesting, developers know this is a big move on the part of Microsoft.
The Redmond firm originally intended to make the announcement on Wednesday at its Connect() developer conference, but The Verge noticed a posting by Microsoft announcing the move. (That Microsoft blog post has now been removed.)
While Microsoft has long attempted to lock developers into its Windows platform with a Windows-only version of the app development platform, the company has begun shifting its money-making focus from Windows to its cloud operations. The platform-agnostic move comes as developers move away from locally hosted apps to using cloud-based servers, such as those offered by Microsoft’s Azure platform, and Amazon’s AWS offering.
With a cross-platform capable Visual Studio, Microsoft opens its development tools to professionals who want to create on any operating system. Microsoft’s new Mac development environment makes use of the behind-the-scenes tools of the Roslyn Compiler Platform and MSBuild, and is based on the Xamarin Studio app development platform. It will offer Mac-based developers the ability to develop for Windows, without the need to purchase a Windows machine, or setup a virtual machine to use Visual Studio.
Microsoft should officially announce the release of Visual Studio for Mac at their Connect(); conference later this week.
