Build 2015: From HoloLens to iOS in Visual Studio, Microsoft is finally bringing it all together to 'empower every developer on the planet'

Robots and SQL and apps, oh my

Microsoft delivered a blinder of a keynote at Build in San Francisco today, covering as technically diverse topics as SQL data warehousing, native iOS application development in Visual Studio and some genuine business cases for the HoloLens AR visor hardware.

The company also finally unveiled the name of its new internet browser - Microsoft Edge - as well as spilling a few new details about Windows 10.

But the overall feeling was a of a company that's finally beginning to fulfil its promises of the past couple of years. CEO Satya Nadella didn't even need to repeat his "cloud first, mobile first" mantra today - it was clear and evident in every announcement.

Nadella began by stating that Microsoft's wish is to "empower every developer on the planet" by continuing its commitment to offer "a service" rather than individual, siloed software products.

Showing a Raspberry Pi, Nadella stated how it's important to look at Windows - and software in general - from an experiential viewpoint rather than "the mobility of the device".

This signalled a raft of announcements, the most enterprise-focused of which were:

Azure SQL Data Warehouse takes on AWS

Microsoft obviously had Amazon's Redshift in its sights with its first big announcement of the day. In fact, the two cloud data solutions were directly compared, with Microsoft contrasting Azure's adjustable compute and instating growth/shrinking of storage with AWS's fixed compute and "hours to days" to resize hosting size. The hybrid nature of storage - offering Azure and on-premise versus Redshift's AWS-only approach - was also highlighted.

Visual Studio now runs natively on Mac and Ubuntu

This is a tool called Visual Studio Code, which allows .NET code development on Linux and - quite amazingly - Mac OS. Nadella said it will be "incredibly lightweight" and it can already be downloaded for demonstration.

The announcement got developers in the room particularly excited, and seems as a good an indicator as any as to just how serious Microsoft has become about platform agnosticism - if Apple still insists on maintaining its walled garden, Microsoft is happy enough to parachute little Apple enclosures into its own growing ecosystem.

As VP of Microsoft cloud and enterprise Scott Guthrie said, "disruption is changing the economy in a fundamental way", and Microsoft's clearly not afraid to join in with the disrupting. It's just got to be positive news for IT teams.

iOS-centric Objective C and Android-favourite Java and C++ support in Visual Studio = more apps for Windows 10?

This announcement is in a similar vein to the above, but with so many IT leaders and rollout managers telling Computing that sluggish uptake of Windows 8 devices lies behind the ongoing tumbleweed-like status of Windows Store, this could be a game-changer.

The gist of it is that Microsoft claims developers will be able to "reuse nearly all" Java, C++ and Objective C code in Visual Studio, effectively leading to quick and cheap development of Windows apps. With the cross-platform nature of Windows 10 that's promised, this could effectively mean effortless porting of almost anything straight to Windows, and quickly.

Nobody went deep with the specifics on stage, but King's Candy Crush Saga was apparently ported to Windows Phone using this very technique.

If Microsoft's promises bear fruit, Windows 10's app store may actually come fleshed out with a good number of useful applications, unlike last time.

Windows Store for Business - will it bring back the masses?

Call us cynics, but the Windows Store for Business announcement sounds quite similar to the Apps for Office push in 2012, of which we have heard little since.

Apps for Office was an attempt to hardwire an app store inside Microsoft's productivity suites via VBA, letting companies build and sell add-ons for Microsoft applications in an internalised version of the main Windows Store.

The Apps for Office layout and offerings could also be customised by businesses.

Windows Store for Business is the same idea, but on the scale of the entire Windows Store, complete with a facility for taking direct purchase orders - again, supporting that idea of letting businesses "do it for themselves" rather than go through the middle man, à la iOS.

"Businesses and schools can customise the Windows Store, highlighting applications from the public catalogue that they want to make more easily discoverable and they want to recommend to their employees or students," said Microsoft executive VP of operating systems, Terry Myerson.

Windows Continuum brings mouse and keyboard to phones

As fans of weird and wonderful ways to carry out mobile working, this one pushed Computing's buttons. While Continuum for Windows 10 on a desktop basically just allows features such as tearing off a Surface keyboard but using touch and stylus during a Win32 application session - which corporate VP of operating systems Joe Belfiore showed again today and is still very impressive - it was the announcement that this feature is coming to phones that boosted the signal for us.

Still mourning the tragic death of Ubuntu Phone, we were excited to see Belfiore attach a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard to a Windows 10 Phone and effectively start using it like a desktop PC, noting that the Office applications featured were "exactly the same" as the desktop versions.

One man hitting Ctrl-V has never raised so many cheers from an audience, but that's the magic - if it all works exactly as Microsoft says it will.

HoloLens finally convinces us

The real-world application examples of Microsoft's HoloLens headset made considerably more sense than Google Glass ever did.

With Windows Holographic, which will run standard Windows 10 applications through HoloLens, the practical possibilities came into focus.

From arranging and resizing applications windows in the physical space around you (and having, say, a video conference or calendar session physically follow you around your house) to drawing virtual boundaries for a household robot, we watched HoloLens tackle some legitimate ongoing human-machine interface issues that technology has never come so close to addressing.

A quick promo video also showed architects viewing entire augmented reality buildings before putting them up, and an on-screen demo showed a medical student pulling apart a human body to examine bones and organs up close and personal.

There was no word on price, specs, power or anything remotely grounded in cold reality during these demos, but that did not detract from the general feeling that Microsoft might actually be onto something here.

But what do you think? Has the above - or anything else you took from Build's opening day - made you feel more positive about Microsoft, or is it all a load of hot air? State your case in the comments section below.