7 Things I learned at Microsoft BUILD 2016

1. I don’t care about Microsoft Ink.
2. The Ubuntu support is lit. In the keynote Microsoft only talked about bash shell, but basically Windows 10 now supports apt-get, so the Ubuntu userspace is right there. Node.js devs in particular were all excited about the news.
3. I changed my mind about Microsoft Graph after a great talk by Qi Lu, EVP, Applications and Services Group. The graph of ActiveDirectory, Exchange, Outlook, and Skype apps is an incredible, rich sticky asset, and Microsoft’s REST, JSON, WebSockets API direction makes all the sense. One end point to rule them all, indeed.
4. Tie that into bot frameworks with some machine learning and Cortana for voice and stuff’s going to get unreal.
5. Hololens is incredible. Tell me a specific time and then make me wait in line for 30 minutes? Grumpchips. One hour later and I was a kid full of joy and wonder. So immerse. So wow.
6. Microsoft’s IoT play is all about B2B scenarios. I know right – where the money is.
7. Xamarin – was like open source, nah let’s not do that anymore, then Microsoft acquired them and it’s all like MIT licensed. And now it’s free. More Test Cloud for more Azure. CI for mobile.

Obviously this is not the most extensive write up ever. But I wanted to get a placeholder down, so here it is. The good far outweighed the bad.