Miguel De Icaza running Silverlight  and XAML based graphics using his Moonlight port to Android at Mix 11 with a Motorola Xoom Tablet and another Android Phone device.

Hmm interesting idea port Moonlight as a player to Android and iPhone for their own “apps” platform.. I know Apple will stop this idea in it’s tracks because well they are Apple, but Google ? Not so sure.. Wouldn’t it be interesting if this hit and you could create a Windows Phone app and port it to moonlight to play anywhere. Why Microsoft isn’t making a commitment to do this is beyond me.. I thinks it’s a mistake if they don’t..

Why do I think this ? Two very good reasons:

1. Microsoft is a software company.. They make software and help software. They aren’t Apple who makes hardware and really shouldn’t be (outside of consumer). The way to win the App war have your apps playable everywhere.. Not just on your OS.. Considering they still make Microsoft Office for MacOS they should know this and go back to their roots and act like a software company again.
2. Whoever has apps that run on all app platforms and all app stores win. This is the way to dominate here, So what if Apple won’t let Visual Studio cross compile their apps. Make a stand alone “Microsoft Player” for Microsoft Apps that runs everywhere. It would be like a fancy runtime, heck put it in the Bing App for IOS if you have to. In-App apps that are like a container is the answer here. If the other folks don’t like it too bad. Sue them for being anti-competitive just like other music delivery services did when apple wouldn’t play fair and wanted iTunes only on their iPods and wouldn’t let other music stores in until they had a strangle hold on the market and were forced to..

Showing that Silverlight  can indeed be done on other devices like android  further irritates many Silverlight developers out there because it shows Microsoft’s major reluctance to take .NET technology across operating systems platforms.

In a world where companies like Apple are going very proprietary I think it would be cool if Microsoft showed the world that HTML 5 wasn’t the only answer out there and Ballmer and Sinofsky weren’t drinking the Steve Jobs’  “kool-aid” so much.

I would so much and they weren’t afraid to say they had a better solution than what the other side does. It’s sort of what’s happening to our President who seems to be being routed by folks who have another plan completely. Microsoft had and has had better technology but are giving it up for HTML 5 instead of fighting back. Not smart for the Microsoft .NET platform..