So, why 37signals? 280 North likewise makes web applications well and their Objective-J model is better for making applications (vs. web pages with ajax) than 37signals' model. 37signals is great, but they don't make competitors for things like Visio or PowerPoint. 280 North is in that arena.

And Objective-J wouldn't be hard to swallow for Microsoft. They'd have to replace the widgets with less Apple-esque ones, but it wouldn't be too hard. And it would give them a base akin to Google's GWT.

Microsoft probably does need to get into the webapp world, but 37signals doesn't compete with Microsoft's lineup and Rails really isn't the toolkit to create a Visio-killer.