Last week, Microsoft had its semi-regular Professional Developers Conference. I was impressed by the amount of new material it put out, much of it unexpected, including:
- LINQ — language enhancements to C# and Visual Basic to ease the "impedance mismatch" between data access and object-oriented programming
- The overhauled user interface of Office "12" — they've finally decided having 35 toolbars was not a good idea
- The return of Sidebar to Windows Vista, with a new twist to compete against Apple and Yahoo/Konfabulator
- Expression Studio, a new graphics and design suite which is focused on building web sites and Windows user interfaces, a different focus from Adobe or Macromedia
- Atlas — Microsoft's cross-platform answer to supporting Ajax
- A subset of Windows Presentation Foundation that will run on Mac OS X, among other platforms
- Windows Workflow Foundation, formerly Windows Orchestration Engine, for building complex workflow apps
And then that weekend, both Business Week and Forbes had cover stories on how Microsoft has become bloated, slow, and unresponsive, while Google poaches its best employees — which unintentionally became a great segway to Microsoft's reorganization announcement.