Another Development Conference Delayed
Back
in May, we reported on the surprising postponement/cancellation of the Microsoft
Professional Developers Conference (PDC), which had been slated to take place
in Los Angeles in October. Microsoft at the time stated that the change was
due to the fact that many key bits were already in developers' hands in preview
form. We suspect that the real issue went deeper than a simple scheduling gaffe,
and might have something to do with the slow and uneven progress out of the
Live group over the past 18 months.
Now, RDN columnist and Redmond magazine Executive Editor Peter
Varhol is reporting that Microsoft has pushed its popular WinHEC conference
back a
full six months. As Varhol notes, WinHEC has been an incredibly valuable
and informative confab over the years, often presaging major advances to the
Windows platform. On its
WinHEC page, Microsoft is citing "industry feedback" for the delay,
though Peter and I share a certain skepticism on this point.
Could it be that the pace of hardware change is slowing down? Given the rapid-fire
advancement of multi-core processors, critical-mass adoption of virtualization
technologies and proposed high-bandwidth successors to standards like USB, that's
kind of hard to believe. What's your take on the future of PC hardware and how
it affects your development plans? Send me your thoughts at mdesmond@reddevnews.com.
Posted by Michael Desmond on 11/21/2007