Programming Windows: Highs and Lows (Premium)

2010 was an interesting year for Microsoft: in the wake of Apple’s iPad announcement, it had some high-profile product launches and dealt with some even bigger failures. Each in its own way would impact the development of Windows 8.
.NET Framework 4.0 and Silverlight
Microsoft had launched the .NET Framework 3.0---originally branded as WinFX---alongside Windows Vista in late 2006, and it followed that up with version 3.5 in 2007, adding support for LINQ and Visual Studio 2008. Then, in 2010, it shipped .NET Framework 4.0 alongside Visual Studio 2010, which had a new user interface built with the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF).

Neither of those releases was particularly momentous in terms of new features and functionality---.NET Framework 4’s biggest change was security-related---but that may have been because the .NET team’s focus was on what was, at that time, its most successful offering by far: Silverlight.

Announced as Windows Presentation Foundation/Everywhere (WPF/E) at PDC 2003---the Longhorn PDC---Silverlight was a subset of the full WPF framework and the full .NET Framework. It was, in so many ways, the quintessential Microsoft developer solution, a .NET-based alternative to Adobe Flash that would let Microsoft-focused developers create rich, multimedia solutions that were deployed at scale on the web.

More to the point, Silverlight is a rare example of Microsoft successfully subverting the open standards of the web: Silverlight wasn’t just capable, with a steady stream of major updates following its launch in 2007, it was also hugely successful, with major, high-profile adoptions from key players like NBC, which used Silverlight to stream the 2008 Summer Olympics and the 2010 Winter Olympics, Amazon Video, and Netflix. Silverlight was so successful that Microsoft used it as the basis for app development for Windows Phone 7, which was set to launch in late 2010. Deployed on the web as a plug-in, just like Adobe Flash---an accepted and common form of browser extensibility in the day---Silverlight was installed on roughly 65 percent of web browsers at its peak.

And they just might have gotten away with it if it weren’t for those meddling kids. Er, ah, Steve Jobs. Who enters this story now for the last time.

As a quick reminder, Steve Jobs is a pivotal figure in the history of Windows. Upon his return to Apple in the late 1990s, he managed to silence his ego long enough to let Microsoft save the company from bankruptcy with a key investment and a promise to continue developing new versions of Microsoft Office for the platform. He leapfrogged Microsoft’s NT-based Windows versions with his NeXT-based Mac OS X and then ruthlessly mocked Microsoft for its ongoing Windows Vista delays, feature copying, and subsequent quality problems. He upended the music industry with the iPod and the iTunes Music Store, easily defeating, in turn, Microsoft’s Windows Media, PlaysForSure, and Zune competition. He ...