A lot (and I mean it) was announced over those two days of keynotes. Regardless, here are the things that I thought were the biggest and that had people talking. Due to the scope of the event I am likely leaving something off the list by accident.

BASH Shell – Long story short, many developers were using Max OS X or Linux machines to do Windows and cross-platform development on because Windows 10 had no decent solution. This disparity was recently revealed with the recent Stack Overflow survey that noted 26% of developers were now using OS X (up from 22% a year earlier) and that by next year developers who use Windows could drop for the first time to below 50%. Now, developers can live in Windows full-time while coding for all platforms. Needless to say, this is a huge win for developers and Microsoft in the long term.

Xamarin for free – Xamarin, recently acquired by Microsoft, makes developer tools that make it easy to port over apps written in C# to other platforms. It's not a 1:1 system meaning developers still have work to do with the port, but it does get a lot of the core stuff out of the way. Developers love Xamarin as the tools are highly respected. The issue is their expense. Xamarin started at $300 for a basic license but quickly jumps to a few thousand when you bump level and multiply that per developer. Many developers often had an 'Is it worth it?' discussion on the financial merits of investing in Xamarin. For large enterprises, it is a no brainer but for indie devs was a significant cost. Microsoft made Xamarin free and part of Visual Studio. Developers were thrilled. Not only are they getting these great tools for free, but Microsoft gets a lot of devs coding in C#. We call that a win-win. Combine free Xamarin with BASH and Microsoft just pulled off a massive coup. Get devs to use your platform and code in C# to port new UWP apps to iOS and Android. Oh, and you can still use Islandwood to port from iOS to UWP. Now that's a win-win-win.

Bots - Bots are like app snippets, and Microsoft thinks they are the future of computing. Why? Because there are thousands of one-off apps out there that are unnecessary and expensive to develop and maintain. Think of an app to buy tickets for a ferry. Convenient? Sure. But how often are you using it? Bots, when combined with something like Cortana (on all platforms) can jump in to do these (trans)actions without you needing a dedicated app. Apps are cool, but a hundred apps on your phone most of which only get used a few times a year? Microsoft thinks we can do better.

The rise of AI and 'intelligent' apps - For years, artificial intelligence, computational cog sci, computational linguistics, and more were stuck in academia. Everyone know they were the future, but not figured out how to mainstream it. The problem was cost. Any company could incorporate AI or 'intelligence' into an app as nothing stopped them from doing it. However, the company would have to hire a team of experts and code into their app a proprietary system to complete the job. At Build, Microsoft "solved" this by creating Microsoft Cognitive Services. They took the science and made it into a platform that any developer could buy into and incorporate into their app. Do You want some intelligence in your app? Just sign up and hook in Microsoft's prefabbed tools and you'll be on your way. Needless to say, Microsoft here pulled off a big advancement for computing by bringing very advanced research within the reach of a million developers if they want it.

Digital Ink - The Surface line has always been about the power of the pen, but Microsoft never gave it the OS support it needed. At Build, the company announced open developer plugins that will let any developer add inking capabilities to their apps with just a few lines of code. Think of this move as a doubling-down on digital ink as the move will let other OEMs quickly create hardware and apps that support the new interface option. Get ready, folks, as there should be a small explosion of digital inking built into your favorite apps later this year.

Windows 10 Anniversary Update - We all know about 'Redstone', but now it has a commercial name: Windows 10 Anniversary Update. Whether it is an updated Start Menu, chaseable Live Tiles, richer notifications, or more we now know the name of the update. The question is what do they call the next Redstone update due in early 2017?

HoloLens is here - Announced over just one year ago HoloLens is now actively shipping to developers in a slow rollout. What makes this exciting is frankly there seemed to be skepticism that Microsoft would ship any hardware because it was too good to be true. People are used to 'concept' devices, but HoloLens just did not seem like something that could be a reality, and yet here we are. We're still a few years out before a HoloLens consumer-edition is mainstream, but make no mistake that holographic computing is a reality as of March 30, 2016. Combined with the power of UWP and now developers can start creating apps and experience for the new genre.

Xbox apps - Starting this summer, consumers will begin to see universal Windows 10 apps on their Xbox One through the new Windows Store. Microsoft's inclusion of the Xbox One in the UWP model is very exciting. We've already heard that there are a lot of companies interested in targeting the Xbox One for apps with some big titles coming soon. Not only is that good for the Xbox it is good for Windows 10 as it is just some minor coding to get that Xbox One app onto Windows 10 for PC and Mobile.