Microsoft investing in iPad apps ?

[alexalex]

If you can't beat them, join them ? :-)

How one Microsoft team is developing its own HTML5 iPad app

The MSN team, like another of Microsoft?s Online Systems Division units ? the Bing team ? has been developing apps for the iPad. In May, MSN launched ?Onit,? a men?s lifestyle app for the iPhone and iPad. But it sounds like that?s just the tip of the iPad iceberg.

I stumbled onto a software engineer job posting that mentions another new iPad app in development by MSN that is aimed at the site?s own content editors. The post explains how the team is approaching the task of architecting an HTML5/CSS app. One key and telling step: ?removing all the Windows dependencies.?

Here?s the post:

Software Design Engineer, Senior MSN

Job Category: Software Engineering: Development

Location: United States, WA, Bellevue

Job ID: 750877

Division: Online Services Division

....Our plan is simple. Develop one state of the art web app that delivers all the functionality an editor needs. We?re talking MVC3 with Razor views, jQuery, HTML5 & CSS3. Yeah, we have to deal with the existing apps while we build out the dream app, but we are being smart about it by re-engineering things as we go. A couple of challenges that you can come help us solve are removing all the Windows dependencies so we can enable Mac, Safari and iPad users, enabling ADFS (Active Directory Federation Services) so we can authenticate with LiveId and Windows Authentication over the internet, consolidating our existing four Feed management apps into one, implementing true WYSIWYG editing, the list goes on and on....

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/how-one-microsoft-team-is-developing-its-own-html5-ipad-app/9947

[instant.human]

Well, it's only logical.

Also, I like that because MS-Apps for iOS usually are quality! If I used Bing, I would use the Bing app because it's awesome! :) Well designed and thought through. :)