Steve Ballmer to speak during Apple's WWDC keynote?

As pointed out by the Boy Genius Report, Barron's is reporting quite the rumor regarding the relationship between Apple and Microsoft. Less than 24 hours after reporting that Apple has overtaken Microsoft has the world's most valuable tech firm, rumors of a Steve Ballmer appearance at Apple's World Wide Developers Conference have begun swirling. According to the post, an analyst from Global Equities Research, Trip Chowdhry, claims that a seven minute chunk of Steve Jobs' June 7th keynote has been reserved for a Microsoft presentation.

According to the analyst, Steve Ballmer himself may be the one giving the presentation. Rumor has it that Microsoft's suite of development tools, Visual Studio 2010, will be discussed. The gist of the presentation will be geared towards developing native applications for the iPhone, iPad, and Mac OS with Microsoft's tools. Should Ballmer not be the one to make the presentation, it's possible that Microsoft's president of the Server and Tools Business, Bob Muglia, will.

While the analyst thinks Ballmer is showing up to talk about Visual Studio 2010, specifically for the creation of apps, it seems more likely that he may be showing off their upcoming Office Suite for OS X. When Steve Jobs released his open letter about flash he specifically said "we know [the] painful experience [of] letting a third party layer of software come between the platform and the developer" and "this becomes even worse if the third party is supplying a cross platform development tool."  As such, it seems impractical that Steve Jobs would openly discredit third party tools and then immediately reverse that decision and promote Visual Studio 2010.

For now, this is nothing but a rumor. However, Gizmodo points out that it wouldn't be the first time we've seen a Microsoft CEO making a guest appearance at an Apple keynote. Back in 1997, Bill Gates was shown on video during Apple's MacWorld keynote. It was there that he assured the Apple community that Microsoft would continue developing its Office suite for the Mac platform.

Apple's WWDC keynote will be presented by Apple CEO, Steve Jobs, on June 7th. There, it's expected that he will unveil the next version of the company's popular iPhone smartphone.