We should never forget that Ballmer got his start marketing soap for P & G.

>One of the most interesting ways of developing an app for Apple is MonoTouch -- open source, but not possible without MS's engineering assistance, given not out of altruism (well, I think some of the leads for this are altruistic, but certainly not Ballmer (I would NOT buy a used car from that man <s>, but I would put him in a David Mamet play <g> -- "coffee is for closers.")
>
>>I agree that MS has done a really good job for developers for a long time, not through altruism but because it represented a real "win-win".
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>>But IMHO things are changing very quickly. In the portable device arena which is where we *are* headed, it's not proprietary MS vs the world, it's proprietary Apple vs the world with MS hanging off the side with confusing win6.5/7. In this case "the world" seems likely to do very well: already you can pre-order an Android tablet similar to the iPad for <US$150. The top end seems to be segmenting into cool Apple dudes and dudettes for whom Apple's proprietary interface is a Sneetch star. MS really doesn't seem to be part of that equation and has canceled its own tablet project. I hope they can sort it all out: a strong MS is in the interests of people who want to develop software in the first world, even for those who have joined open source.