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Sun and Apple Could Have Merged
Firmafest writes "The Register is running a story about Sun and Apple almost merging on three separate occasions. The information was revealed at a Computer History Museum event, where Sun's four co-founders spoke about the history of the Sun company. Bill Joy said that the two comp anies almost teamed on three different projects, including sharing a user interface and the SPARC architecture." From the article: "'As far as I know we also almost bought Apple once,' Joy said. 'We almost merged with Apple two other times.' Many Silicon Valley observers have long seen links between Sun and Apple. Both companies make slick, pricey hardware and are counter-punchers in their respective markets. They also have charismatic CEO figures and strong anti-Microsoft streaks"
So Apple and Sun almost merged ... however, the way the article is written makes it sound as though we're only concerned with one thing--iPods.
.... And Failed Mergers."
Is this the only product that Apple makes? I thought they also made fairly nice laptops.
Yes, I know iPods are the hot thing right now, but did it talk about any of Sun's products?
McNealy has an iPod, McNealy says iPods will be as archaic as answering machines one day, McNealy seems to think that all Apple has are iPods.
My god, they weren't merging their mp3 players, they were talking about merging architectures and file systems.
Is McNealy really so shallow to as to say, "I bought your media player and it's pretty good but it's going to be obsolete someday and that's why we won't merge."?
This is the computer science industry, everything becomes obsolete! Apple is not losing money on iPods and they have other technologies to rely on.
What do iPods and their long term reliability have to do with a merger!?
Perhaps this article should have been titled "McNealy Speaks Out About the Mediocre iPod
My work here is dung.
Chriss
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"Apple is all about style, Sun is about rock solid workhorse machines. I think they're both better off as separate companies."
On the hardware side, perhaps you are right. However, and this is a big one, I firmly believe that if Apple and Sun collaborate OS X desktop UI and applications on top of Solaris 10 that is would be an awe inspiring DESKTOP AND SERVER OS for both to use on their respectivley designed hardware niche.
Imagine the inroads the new hybrid OS could take into corporate computing!
Now that Apple is switching to Intel hardware we will know the truth. I think we will see similar hardware in apple and non-apple platforms, and we will see the prices, and truth will be told.
Personally I believe people who buy into Apple pay a premium for their hardware and their OS. It is simple economics - smaller market share, they have to make a higher yield per machine to make enough money to stay afloat, whereas Microsoft/Dell/*insert notebook manufacturer here* can stay afloat on much thinner margins by sheer volume.
One thing Sun does have which Apple needs is a fast kernel. OS X has a horrible system call overhead (caused largely by Mach port overheads, and by multiple indirection in traps), and is by far the slowest kernel I have had the opportunity to work with. Aqua on top of a Solaris kernel would be close to my ideal system. If Sun had not dumped OpenStep, I would probably be using an OpenStep/Solaris box now instead of a Mac.
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If Snapple were to take a page out of IBM's book, Solaris would run on all the Sun hardware, OS/X on all the apple hardware, and Linux on everything. Truly overlapping hardware capabilities (SPARC/G5 AMD+Sun/Apple+Intel) would eventually be merged, but unique hardware capabilities (T1) would be allowed to stay in a given product line. But what is most interesting is the extent to which disparate product lines can be maintained over decades and produce steady revenue from happy customers. Don't tell them they have to change anything, and if they want a new box, it'll run everything the 15-year old doorstop chugging away in the closet did.
If Snapple were to take a page out of HP's (Carly's?) book, they'd try to to migrate everything to Itanium, and trade all the Alpha (err, Sparc) designers to Intel.
Who do you get to be an expert to tell you something's not obvious? The least insightful person you can find? -J Roberts
Sun buying out Apple or Sun merging into Apple?
In either case, I think that would have spelled disaster for these companies.
Apple doesn't have the mindset to enter the server market. Apple's server offerings have been novel toys in the industry, but few would agree that Apple has truely offered any server product worth its salt. Having Apple absorb Sparc and Solaris server technologies probably would have killed off those Sun products.
Sun would have destroyed Apple's innovation and creativity. Sun spent the better part of the 90's innovating through litegation, bringing MS to court as a way to try and compete with the behemoth rather then creating any good and innovative product to fight against MS. Sun stagnated developing the Sparc and Solaris lines as they dumped money trying to sue MS for anti-competitive business practices. Java suffered for about 5 years because of this, instead of improving the technology, Sun simply crippled it on the world's most dominant platform. Sun's current method of innovation is to create OEM PC Linux desktops and tweak a Linux distro to be more Java friendly.
Would Sun want to enter the consumer electronic's market? Would Solaris technologies enter OSX? Apple would not have embraced Linux the way Sun has. Apple wouldn't embrace Open Source the way Sun did. Open Office probably would have been turned into AppleWorks for retail sale. I can't see two more different companies in terms of overall motivation coming together.
The only thing that is common with the two companies is that they are fledglings trying to gain marketshare against Wintel. But any form of a SNAPPLE company would have failed because of just too many difference of opinions. In fighting between execs from both companies probably would have thrown the resulting company into chaos. Both Sun and Apple have STRONG opinions about their relative companies, I doubt Steve Jobs would have handed over much control to Scott McNealy, and vice versa.
The bottom line is, has Sun and Apple ever partnered or cooperated on ANYTHING?
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
"There's a pendulum thing where stuff is on the client side and then goes back into the network where it belongs," McNealy said. "The answering machine put voicemail by the desk, and then it went back into the network." While I do understandthe pendulum analogy, I think the answering machine is a terrible example. When I get home and want my messages I want the ease of hitting a button, pushing forward button to go to the next message, erase button to get rid of it etc. I don't want to have to pick up my phone, hold it to my ear, take the phone away from my ear to push 7 for next message or 76 to backup or 84 to delete or whatever combination needed to navigate. I have this service on my phone right now. I finally convinced some tech at the phone company I DIDN'T want this crappy service. I only have it cause the bundle I buy has it and its still cheaper than buying unbundled. The way the tech fixed the problem is he set my answering option to answer after 99 rings or something. I really hated picking up the phone and hearing the stutter dial tone saying I had a message and I knew I was never going in that system to get it. I hate to sound like an apple commercial but I just want shit to work. My life is complicated enought without dealing with the remote answering machine.
I doubt that Apple really wants Sun's Monolithic kernel. The dicision to use Mach was an architectual one, as they generally provide more stability. The trade off was made, slightly less performance for a more stable environment. This argument has exsisted for ages, but with todays modern speedy hardware, I believe Apple did the right thing in going their kernel.
I've seen such comparisons over and over in this forum, and the Macs almost always come out on top for overall value. When you include all the hardware specs the prices are close; Macs are perhaps a couple hundred more. That's putting quality issues aside -- just put a cheap 20" LCD monitor next to the one that comes standard on the iMac and tell me you're getting the same deal. You're not. Then add in the software and the price difference is negligible if it exists at all. That's TCO aside -- Macs are not just prettier than their Wintel counterparts; they are made to last longer and break less. An Apple laptop will take a lot more abuse than a cheap windows laptop. When Jobs announced the intel iMacs someone posted this same ridiculous comment and was proven wrong with actual hardware comparisons. I'm sure you will say such things add "false value" but that's ludicrous; what is false about having to buy a new computer in 2 years? What is false about not having to pay for OS X (even assuming you could run it on your windows machine, which you eventually will be able to)? What is false about getting a better monitor?