I have to steal something from C|Net that is so well written that
it needs to be posted here.
Right after the news broke that
Sun made an offer to buy Apple, I
started having recurring
nightmares. The dreams began
with me playing Myst on a Mac.
All of a sudden the beautiful graphics would fade and I'd be playing Myst from
the command line! And all the commands would be in Unix! I'd wake up in a cold
sweat wondering, "Why the heck would Sun want to buy Apple anyway?"
Then it hit me--Sun doesn't want to put Unix on a Power Mac, Sun wants to put
System 7.x, Apple's stellar operating system, on SparcStations! Think of it: the
Macintosh has a significant share of the computer market because it makes
systems that are productive, easy to use, and beautiful to look at. A shotgun
marriage to Sun may be just the thing.
Just who are these Sun people?
CEO Scott McNealy is a certified
nutcase who has pushed the Sparc
platform for nearly 15 years. He's
a hard-core practical joker who
plays hockey to relax and
continually attacks Microsoft's
products. There's this gem, for example, from Investor's Business Daily in
October 1995: "This Windows 95 hairball has become so big, so unmanageable,
so hard to use, so hard to configure...Windows 95 is a great gift to give your kid
this Christmas because it will keep your kid fascinated for months trying to get it
up and running and trying to figure out how to use it."
McNealy hates Microsoft so much he may buy Apple just to spite Bill Gates.
Ignoring the vitriol, Sun buying Apple makes good sense. A dynamic company
that understands the Net, the enterprise, and desktop customers could become
quite a competitor to the Microsoft/Intel installed base.
Since Sun has been focused on
enterprise, large-scale networking
for years, it could use an
easy-to-use desktop solution.
Having an integrated product line
makes it easier for the sales force to
compete against the IBMs and
Hewlett-Packards of the world. Sun also has a strong operating systems division
that would work well with what Apple has now, and can learn from Apple's work
with Copland, which is due later this year or in 1997.
Sun knows the Net quite well. c|net isn't the only company that buys those
expensive SparcStations to run Internet server software; Sun has sold many
systems to corporations and universities. With the Apple purchase, Sun could
leverage its Net expertise with Apple's desktop group and regain the lead in the
personal Net server market it seems to be losing to Windows 95 and Windows
NT.
And most of all, Sun would get Java to
the Mac platform right away. The Wall
Street Journal recently reported that two
other Sun hotshots argued for both a
Java operating system and a Java
applications strategy. If Sun owned
Apple it could quickly build Java into
System 7.x and make it an even better OS than it is now. And Apple's Claris
applications division could be given free reign to write Net-savvy Java programs. |
