Same strategy as always. Rebrand current products and call it new. This is not Visual Studio as known from Windows but Xamarin Studio rebranded. Title should be Microsoft release Xamarin update...
Perhaps quality? Having developers who know the environment they are developing for instead of a lot of one-size-fits-all apps.
You can do it if you're the only supplier of a given service but as a customer you will not get my money in a multi player game if I smell you took the shortcut or have no idea what my platform is capable off.
Because Windows is loosing as a dev platform for web and mobile. Enterprise developers are in control as enterprise already did their lock-in with the Office365 platform and surrounding technologies. Don't worry they close down again when enough have come back.
Why is this being discussed like Ubuntu is the only Linux edition available? You seriously think CentOS, Arch or *BSD users will jump ship because of this?
You clearly don't work with Microsoft on a daily basis in a enterprise setup...
I'll fill you in. The new lock-in is Office 365 with Intune/SCCM and Azure. We are in the extinct phase of having better management options in Intune for Office and surrounding technologies and enterprise IT will see this as an advantage over choosing another MDM/MAM vendor. Step one done for still controlling productivity apps and device management. Now it's getting developer mindshare and focus back on the Windows ecosystem. Pretty easy in enterprise as we just did a lock-in with Office 365/Intune. They still throw their weight around and their key/technical account managers must have missed the memo saying to be more open for other vendors/partners. So they may look nice but don't make the mistake of thinking there isn't a plan behind.
Indeed. When you get out of your small "coder" box and into the enterprise layer where the negotiations and implementations are happening you will know nothing has changed in the way Microsoft is doing business. Their TAM and KAM layer is exactly the same as the use to be. They are just moving the layers for vendor lock-in now.
I'm used to paying $0 for the OS X stuff needed to do development. This includes the Enterprise Professional Plus Home edition of both OS X and Xcode. In the lifetime of my Mac I have upgraded the OS 2 times and soon 3 for $0. So $307 is a bit significant for Windows 10 Pro (need BitLocker = Home is no go).
If you could have done the same on your Windows platform then please give me your Windows stuff contact person as he is clearly much cheaper than the ones I usually deal with.
But just for being in the Apple is ripping you off mode I did pay a bit more for the initial purchase of the hardware (around $205 more in todays prices than a comparable Dell XPS 13).
My day job is doing software management on the Windows platform so I'm fully aware of the licensing cost here. Including the price of operating a Windows developer above Visual Studio community level with their VS Pro/Enterprise editions, MSDN subscriptions, Team Foundation servers, and $2,500 HP workstation laptops (initial consumer price for lowest configuration). Seeing these prices almost causes a heart attack each time...