Has Microsoft been approaching successful iPhone developers, offering "a bucket of money" for them to port their popular apps over to the new Zune HD platform? That's what Daring Fireball is hearing:
I got an email from the developer of an iPhone Twitter client. He was contacted by Microsoft a few months ago, with an offer to port his app to the Zune in exchange for “a bucket of money”. He turned them down, but assumes, as I do, that Microsoft reached out to the developers of multiple popular iPhone apps.
Smart move by Microsoft, since they're trying to compete directly with the iPod touch and apps are a huge part of the iPod touch's appeal.
Since the iPod touch has had a public SDK and apps since version OS 2.0 was announced and subsequently released over a year ago, Apple's platform has a huge lead and Microsoft is again left more competitive with previous years' offerings.
(Here's hoping Microsoft does release a public Zune HD SDK of their own at some point -- and that they finally, finally, decide to share a consistent platform between Zune and Windows Mobile 7...)
No way of knowing
