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Sun and Apple Could Have Merged

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the getting-friendly dept.

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"

7 of 285 comments (clear)

  1. What was this article REALLY about? by eldavojohn · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    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 .... And Failed Mergers."

    --
    My work here is dung.
    1. Re:What was this article REALLY about? by jcr · · Score: 4, Interesting

      People at Apple won't say a thing about it. Those of us who've left Apple, on the other hand...

      I am so glad that Apple and Sun didn't do this. Jon Schwartz has done an enormous amount of damage to Sun.

      -jcr

      --
      The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
  2. more similarities betweeb Apple and Sun by chriss · · Score: 5, Interesting
    • Both companies were at one time the main producer of Unix workstations (Sun during the 90s, Apple today)
    • OpenStep was the result of a collaboration of NeXT and Sun to create an object oriented API based on NeXTSTEP. It ran on NeXTs Mach/BSD OS and Solaris. After the NeXT takeover by Apple in 1996 OpenStep became what today is known as MacOS X, still running on Mach/BSD.
    • Styling: Sun and Apple (and NeXT) released workstations in (almost) cubic (Sparcstation IPX, G4 Cube, NeXT Cube) and pizza box format (Sparcstation 20, Mac LC, NeXTstation)
    • Their Unix based operating systems are open source
    • Both are strong supporters of Java
    • Both are based in California
    • Both were founded in the context of Stanford university
    • Both tried (and failed) to grab a larger peace of the desktop market
    • Both were early integrators of network technology into their computers
    • Both have been declared dead several times
    • Both produced some of the first application servers (WebObjects, J2EE)

    Chriss

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  3. Re:I don't think they fit by Zemplar · · Score: 3, Interesting

    "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!

  4. Re:Apple could buy Sun by TheRaven64 · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I very much doubt that Steve Jobs has forgiven Sun for the OpenStep debacle. If Sun hadn't developed cold feet, then we would all have had a much nicer development environment for the last decade.

    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.

    --
    I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  5. Re:Still possible? by stevesliva · · Score: 3, Interesting
    The biggest challenge though, is probably insurmountable, and that's product line integration.
    Interestingly enough, IBM has needed to forge that path with its own legacy systems-- the S/390 now System Z mainframes, the AS400 now i5 midrange, the RS6000 now p5 RISC machines, and the x86 xSeries servers and blades. HP also dealt with Alpha and PA-RISC architectures... and HP-UX and whatever DEC's flavor of Unix is.

    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
  6. This line troubles me. by chobee · · Score: 3, Interesting

    "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.