PC vs Mac or Microsoft vs Apple??

Well this has nothing to do with the Ads..:)

I was doing some googling to see how my PDC 2008 Video Viewer and Downloader is positioned and came across this interesting post by Peter Schneider.

http://channel9.msdn.com – Watch all PDC sessions for free. http://developer.apple.com/products/video/wwdc08/index.html – Pay $999 for all session videos.

This does give you a feel for how the respective companies feel about their developer communities. I think Apple wants to be more in the consumer space rather than the technology space. The more you build your developer communities the more support you gain from them and more support your products get. The more supported your product is, the higher the chance an enterprise will want to run its business on that technology.

Obviously, this is not how MS was a couple of years back. I remember the times when TechEd and PDC Videos we sold on DVDs and were around 50% cost of attending the conference (Remember these DVDs usually land up around 3-6 months after the conference). I think MS has learnt a couple of things from the Open Source movement and community.

There still are events that MS conducts for which you need to purchase DVDs, esp the Sharepoint, BI conferences. I assume the discussions are usually around who would attend a conference when you can get the vidoes a few days later for free. For me atleast, attending a conference is as much about the sessions as the chance of actually meeting people face to face. Obviously, conferences also give you the opportunity to interact with component vendors etc and understand some of the stuff and innovations happening in the Microsoft Partner Eco-system. And some people may still purchase the DVD to get the other contents and keep everything in one place.

I hope MS continues to enhance its community of developers and supports them with more information that is easily and freely accessible.