Visual Studio to support iPhone?

Interesting rumors floating around in the past few days.

First, Steve Ballmer of Microsoft was rumored to appear during the Keynote at Apple's World Wide Developer's Conference alongside Steve Jobs.  The nerdgasm quickly dissipated as that rumor was debunked.

The reason for the alleged appearance is even more intriguing, however -- Support for the iPhone in Visual Studio 2010. Kaboom!

While this seems contrary to everything Apple has done in the past few months -- in particular, banishing 3rd party development tools -- the idea of Visual Studio pumping out iPhone apps is too enticing to ignore.

• Would this allow people to develop for the iPhone on Windows?  Right now you must have a Mac.
• Would Visual Studio 2010 support Objective-C?
• Could you write native iPhone apps using C# or VB.NET?

The mind spins with the possibilities.

In the end, I'd say this is a long shot.  While the cold war between Apple and Microsoft might be winding down in the face of a bigger threat -- Google -- I still can't see Steve Jobs endorsing Windows programmers writing VB.NET apps for his beloved iPad.  Then again, stranger things have happened...