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Most Sun Employees Own Macs

Posted by pudge on from the give-all-apple-users-suns-and-we'll-call-it-even dept.

An anonymous user writes, "Most Sun Microsystems employees use Apple when they're not at work. This leaves Jonathan Schwartz, executive vice-president of Sun's software group, hinting at a Sun/Apple partnership." This comes on the heels of Pat Gelsinger, senior VP and chief technology officer of Intel, claiming Apple makes the wrong decisions about CPUs. So it figures Sun, who Intel likely thinks wouldn't know a good processor if it came up and -- um, processed something, would like Macs.

6 of 164 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Sun Partnership? by jellomizer · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Are they so convinced that OS X is the future that they are giving up on Solaris and Licensing OS X? :)

    These are two different OS's with two different purposes. OS X is more of a desktop OS and a small server. While Solaris is almost entirely a Server OS designed to run on the big machines and it is ok for a workstation usage. Basically most Sun employees don't like the Intel platform and rather have something different. Also when they are home they are also tired of hacking computers and just want it to work and also have their command line interface.

    --
    If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
  2. Well, when you have an eye for quality... by pmz · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This doesn't suprise me. Really, the only reason UltraSPARC III isn't blasting away everyone else, I believe, is due to manufacturing constraints. Excusing Sun's very low-end equipment, such as the Ultra 5 workstation, their products are generally very solid, very well engineered, very practical, and not totally off-base on cost (when you do an apples-to-apples comparison (was that a pun?)).

    It is very understandable why they would prefer Mac OS over Windows, and Macintosh computers over white-box PCs.

    --
    Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
  3. This is no suprise. by nortcele · · Score: 4, Insightful
    - Take home Sun Blade
    - Install Solaris 9
    - Realize that getting the box to halfway resemble the functionality of your Sun box at work would take two onsite admins...
    - Take the Sun Blade back
    - Buy an Apple (cause its Unix and media capable)
    - Profit$$

    Remember, there's a reason that your local Sun admin doesn't have a Sun box at his house... (s)he's worked darn hard at getting the applications working off the network at work. Why would they want have to duplicate their efforts at home on the hardware and network they can afford? For what? It's just cheaper and easier to go Apple with the same satisfaction. Of course, if Linux and OSX did not exist and Windows was the only option... Sun employees would have Sun boxes at home. Even if it was just a Sparc2 running SunOS 4.1.1.

    1. Re:This is no suprise. by v_1matst · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I totally agree with this. Being a Solaris admin I have to say that last thing I want to do when I get home is sit in front of another Sun box and do my job all over again. I do own a Powerbook (running OSX) as my primary home computer and love it. Everything 'just works' which is exactly what I want to have happen after screwing with some LDAP problem or something all day.

    2. Re:This is no suprise. by elmegil · · Score: 4, Insightful
      Actually it is a huge surprise. I work for Sun in the field. Maybe the folks back in corporate are all mac heads, but I'm one of only two or three of the several dozen field folks in my major metro that I know owns a mac. And I know many others who have PC's like so many other people, both here and around the country.

      Sounds to me like this is just spin to try and push towards that nebulous partnership with Apple by giving them some good press. Oh, and did I mention I own more PCs than macs still?

      With regard to running SPARCs at home, that's just silliness. You don't run much quicken, unreal tournament, etc. on Solaris. It has nothing to do with "how hard" it is to get applications working on Solaris, it's that I have no need to run Oracle or Pro/E or a major webservice at home.

      As for Sun not knowing CPUs, if that's really what Intel thinks, they're stupider than their history makes them out to be. Sun "inherited" a bunch of talented CPU people from other companies that have joined the dustbin of history, and have had a few of our own along the way as well. How much longer than Intel have we had a working 64 bit architecture?

      --
      7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
  4. Duh... by analog_line · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So, the senior VP and chief technology officer of Intel, a company that Apple has refused to use the flaship processor from for years, thinks Apple not using the chips they make money on is a bad idea?

    And this is supposed to be at all surprising or interesting?