“A couple of things happened last month that got me thinking about Apple and Sun and their failed merger attempt years ago… One very interesting product [is Sun’s] ‘Project Looking Glass,’ an operating system whose user interface looks like the version of the Mac OS that will come after Tiger. The new Sun operating system has a Mac-like task bar that has been pumped up with more realistic icons than Apple currently offers. It also makes better use of limited desktop real estate,” Rob Enderle writes for TechNewsWorld.
MacDailyNews Take: Rob just loves the Apple/Sun merger idea. “‘Project Looking Glass’ has more realistic icons than Apple currently offers?” Yeah, right. Has Rob ever seen a Mac OS X desktop? We have seen both. Compare for yourself: Sun’s “Mac-like task bar with more realistic icons than Apple currently offers” vs. Apple’s Mac OS X Dock with photo-realistic icons.” Considering that Apple’s Dock can be set to be hidden when not in use, open windows can be minimized to the Dock, and Apple’s Mac OS X features Expos
I’m definitely going to have to go with MDN on this one…
When Enderle speaks, this is what I hear: “blah blah blah, blah blah blah”
I was in favor years ago of Sun and Apple merging – that was before OS X. But now – it would be silly. What would Apple get that it doesn’t already have? It has a robust desktop and server architecture. It has java support. It has more applications and most Unix apps can run or be easily ported. The only benefit, solaris is tru 64bit (I think) – but that’s coming down the line – and is only needed by large servers – which are being replaced by clusters using InfiniBand…and Xgrid!
didn’t micorfo$t already get its hand up sun’s ass anyway? so even if the idea is floating around, it wouldn’t happen…
Rob, where’s the iPod mini has bogus sales numbers rant?
Looking Glass is better for unix which is bad for MS… momentum is shifting…
Maybe not merge, but Sun and Apple could cooperate.
Maybe Sun could license MacOS X for Sun workstations & servers. Maybe Apple could license some of that Looking Glass technology for future MacOS X….
Sun has been bleeding money for years. Their infrastrure solutions are old old old. Apple’s X-Serve will upscale nicely to take over Sun’s old clients…
So… why would Apple even consider merging with Sun?
For the name and existing client base… but, is it worth it?
Sun will be dead meat within 7 years. The longer Apple waits, the cheaper the purchase will be.
Meanwhile… X-Serve takes over.
OK, are you ready for this? It’s not original. I’ve heard it before. If Sun and Apple were to merge (an idea floated a few times over a dozen years ago) what would the company be called?
Snapple.
If that happened we’d never hear the end of it. I’d have to buy an HP or a Sony, I guess. Not a Dell, of course.
I don’t see much of a future with Sun except at the high end and that’s where the squeeze is these days.
Xserve is cheap. And powerful. Sun is expensive, and no longer powerful (relatively).
Mr. Enderle’s greatest character flaw is most obvious when he starts “thinking.” Maybe he should stop doing that. I’m sure it’s more painful than productive. The result certainly isn’t pretty.
Milly’s joke reminds me of the joke: What do you get if you merge Apple and IBM.
IBM.
This was back in my OS/2 days.
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again, i find the comments unwarranted. Apple may have some good offerings in the server business, but it’s only for small and medium sized offerings. They don’t have anything to offer large companys. Apple has about 1% of server sales, while sun’s (even though it’s lower now than the late 90s) is at 20%. With apples 1%, they shipped 15,000 xserves last quarter. Multiply that by 20 to get 300,000 servers the companies could be selling per quarter.
Also, instead of just pulling up a screen shot of project look glass, play with it a little and you can see that there are many many promising next generation ideas that could be incorperated well os 10.5 and beyond. Project looking glass is a truly 3D OS. It’s no a 3D like OS X with simple shades and translucencies. You can flip over any window and do stuff on the back, or flip it on the side to move it to the side of the screen to make room for something. Imagine opening up MDN and seeing something interesting you want to post about. As you read through the article, you turn the window over, take notes, and then when you’re done with the article, you can put together an intelligent post about what you just read. Then flip the window and the side and stow it away.
Whether sun and apple merge (which i doubt they will) I would be surprised if these technologies aren’t soon built into OS X anyways.
I think it’s fair to say that while 10.3 is amazing, and tiger looks even better, apple still needs to be looking toward the future. With slipping market share, having a larger server distribution channel would make their desktops look more delicious. Apple would truly have an end-to-end solution.
I don’t know that this merger is actually the right idea for apple. But i just like to present the other side of the story, because this place has a tendency to just gloss over things because they think apple is perfect. And frankly, i find it infuriating.
Hey art V,
Just how STUPID are you anyway ?
Hey art V,
Just how STUPID are you anyway ?
Hey art V,
Just how STUPID are you anyway ?
Enderle, if you don’t like OS X, don’t use it. But don’t say things that are blatantly false just so you can try to get other people to dislike it as well. Let people decide for themselves.
I’m quite intelligent… I’m smart enough to point out a different point of view, and not shoot it down with a personal attack that’s completely disrespectful.
If you have an arguement for my post, give something worthwhile to say. You’re not backing anything up, nor did I even put anything antiapple in my post (I’ve never owned anything but apple computers).
I was smart enough to provide proof and numbers. So really, when it comes to down things ken. I’m the one showing off my intelligence while you’re still figuring out how to post a comment without doing it two times to many.
Art, well done. Ken is showing what he’s truly made of. Short sentences, few multiple syllable words. That says something about cranial activity (or lack of).
While I disagree with your implied premise that Apple and Sun “could” have a future together, you pointed out a number of items worthy of consideration, certainly of dialog.
Personally, Apple appears to be in a good position right now. IBM’s chips, while slow in coming, are coming, and that adds real power and economy to the architecture. Microsoft and Intel are being squeezed; probably for the first time in a long time.
MS made tons of money just being “good enough.” Now, Open Source is “good enough” for many so there’s a steady adoption of Linux on the desktop. MS is feeling the pinch. At the other end is Apple. It’s simply a better product; both hardware and certainly software. MS would have to outdo Apple and hasn’t been able to.
IBM is challenging in the chip business again. Lots of power in those new chips. So, Apple can deliver “quality” products at very competitive prices; not easily matched (both software and hardware) with a Wintel solution.
Software from Sun aside, what does Sun bring to the table? Not much. With IBM’s chips, Apple will be able to move in the direction of Sun’s enterprise market share while Sun’s cut of the pie continues to drop (Linux rising).
Back to Sun’s software; Mac OS X is probably headed in that direction anyway. Why grab something from Sun. Plus, Apple has something that Sun, Linux and others don’t have.
Application base for the desktop.
And Microsoft Office.
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Project: LOOKING ASS!
Now this is the first time i’ve seen this luscious desktop! I’ve got the jones for it! Just think! An OS that has a textured covered six sided polygon! (if anything it should have a bump channel. Its so flat and non interesting- reminds me of my x….sigh) AND IT EVEN SWINGS OPEN SO YOU DON’T HAVE TO READ IT AT A SLANT! I have to laugh and barf at the same time! (a larf) I’m sure Rob Glaser likes the Real icon on the sheet of glass bookshelf/doc. Is it refracting?! Oh oh oh! I think it is…. Nope- its just transparent.
But its Sun, so its apparent.
paul
ArtV:
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Since you responded, you proved you aren’t that smart. Smarties never respond and try to defend their “smartness”.
You blew it, go back to your Sun cube and read Dilbert.
I agree — licensing of technology is the way to go. Unless, of course, Apple could own Java. If they added WebObjects and Cocoa as default choices for all platforms in Java, they’d have the best multi-platform development environment. (And it’d run best on OS X).
Commentary from such a Windows-centric guy as Enderle always yields the same ignorant commentary: “Macs look good, you know.. eye candy.. if only they could run Windows”
So what.. he’s making OS reccomendations on an OS he’s obviously barely used..
The PC mentality is that people buy iMacs, and PowerBooks because they look cool on the outside. Seriously. Apple’s software is discredited at every turn. Ignore this twit on software recommendations.
The Sun operating system looked great when I saw a demo of it a year ago. Now, OS X 10.3 offers all the 3D effects that I would want to see on my desktop. Still, as an alternative to Linux, Sun’s OS seems ten times better.
Apple could merge with Texas Instruments. That could help them improve the calculator function in the OS9 Apple Menu.
It actually could be a good thing. We are already living under Apple Sun anyway
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Both are Unix companies and Sun has nice packet of patents.
Sun has also valuable installed base in the IT world.
My opinion as an APPL stock holder is GO. Apple should buy Sun Microsystems instead of Disney World
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All this crap of Jobs doomed health has me completely fed up with these so called writers. Were the tabloids writing Robert Dinero’s or Rudy Guilliani’s obituary when they were diagnosed with prostate cancer? Wait~! Jobs has kidney stones? Stop the presses!!
They simply want to scare the public and investors into thinking that Apple is DOOMED once again, because Apple has beaten down or surpassed ALL of their so-called projections, forecasts, death kneels, and all other “going out of business” rants.
Who’s the heir for MS when monkey boys drops dead from a heart attack the next time he does his “developers” bump and grind dance? Billy Goat Gates? Have anyone ever written about Ballmer’s fat ass in relation to his health? Ever see the guy with his 3 feet long sweat streaks running down the front AND back of his shirt and his armpits? Now there’s a person who needs Bob Green on his fat ass for 3 years.
Let’s deal with the facts. So Jobs had a “successful” operation to remove a cancerous tumor from his pancreas. Key word “successful”. No need for chemotherapy or radiation. We all have known this for the past week. Move on!
This report about merging Sun and Apple is nothing more than FUD from a writer who has more time on his hands than Charles Manson talking mindless dribble from death row.
Sun and Apple? It was Sun who liked that idea, in de dotcom era. Now, they’re falling from the sky, even harder than Microsoft. Speaking of Enderle. Well, he ‘s the barking dog for M$ and $CO. And he blew the little credit he has as an “anaylist”. Read Groklaw on his latest Keynote for SCO: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20040810032827912
Rob Enderle so completetly misunderstands Apple that he really shouldn’t be writing about the company.
Look Glass is just a bag of (very ugly) circus tricks, What is the difference between a collapsing window bar and Sun’s silly rotating windows – other than one will bore you out of your mind afer the sixth viewing? The suggestion that Apple should merge with Sun because Sun has ‘more realistic icons’ is really not worth the effort of responding to. Looking Glass – with all it’s ridiculous gizmos – is far closer to Microsoft’s bloated OS than Apple’s. Perhaps MS should buy Sun and make Looking Glass the basis of its forever delayed Longhorn.
Rob, here’s a hint: Apple is loved for what it DOESN’T put into its software (and hardware) rather than for what it DOES.
is far more
Last time I looked Sun had fallen from a market cap of ~$100bn to only $11bn. That doesn’t happen unless there are serious doubts about the company’s future.
Similarly, go back two years. Apple (worth only $4.5Bn) was making tiny profits on falling sales. It was only when iPod sales took off that real profits came back. As a result, Apple look like a company with a future just at the time when the Mac is attracting big interest, so customers feel more comfortable buying Macs and sales increase.
Unless Sun come up with something outside of the envelope to increase their revenue stream, they will continue to lose customers to Linux, and will shrink as a business. They have the server market penetration now, but if things carry on as they are in two years time it will be a much smaller share. Why should Apple tie themselves to a loss making enterprise with nothing to offer just as they are making strides back into the business and education markets they lost in the 90s.
To summarise: Enderle, as usual, is wrong. This merger may throw Sun a lifeline, but it would be extremely bad for Apple.
I suppose “Apple and Sun should merge” makes a nice change from “Sony should buy Apple” and “Apple should release OS X on Intel”. I don’t think I’ve seen the Apple/Sun suggestion before – Enderle may actually have added a new item to the shortlist of clueless article themes available for endless rehashing by lazy journalists facing a 5pm deadline and instructions to write something about Apple.
Art V: don’t mind the usual herd of ‘religious fanatics’ here who seem to think that MDN stands for MujaheDiN, and who always like to react in a fashion of combining an Osama-mentality with Bush-intelligence. Examining the various pro’s and cons of a proposition before reaching a conclusion is alien to their blind dogmatism. Though clearly macusers, their persistent lack of related arguments and verbal aggressiveness indicate to me that they’re actually closet-Windows users, they just don’t know it yet…
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To the question at hand: wether a merger with Sun provides more benefits than disavantages is difficult to asses. But you, like Welborn and One Guy from Finland, make some interesting points. I too was wandering if acquisition of Java could be a big asset. Isn’t there possibly a somewhat hidden gem to be found in IT-education? Java is taught and used at many IT-colleges. Up until now, the hardware platform of these IT-students has largely been Intel. But what if Apple would acquire Java, outfitted an iBook – or possibly PB 12″ – to the needs of these students and offered it at a very attractive price-point. Wouldn’t thus Apple gain a strong foothold in IT-education? With all the long term benefits it could entail?
Also, isn’t the corporate culture at Sun maybe an asset? Like Apple, they’re fiercely independent from Wintel, are battle-hardened, are (or were) innovative within their own time and realm, made some great products. At this moment they are clearly struggling, with apparently not the right answers to the problems at hand. Very much like Apple was in the Copland era, before Steve came with Next from outside and saved it. Anyway, perhaps combining the creative forces – design wise as well as technology wise – of both of these independent companies could prove to be beneficial?
Wether a merger is a good idea still remains to be seen, but I have great respect for Sun and their employees, and believe it would not be a good thing if they would go down. Nothing to rejoice about.
One way or another, I hope they survive, like Apple has.
steve’s health problems? will someone please tell me what that’s all about? haven’t heard of this.
Finland, Sun is definitely a better fit than Disney. Maybe Pixar should buy Disney, but Apple?
Ton, while Sun is definitely a better fit, would the fact that they are both fiercely independent create more turmoil than either company needs? Just a question, I don’t really know anything about either.
art v, great points and definitely something to think about. You’ve spurred the best discussion on this thread by a long shot. Only one unrelated question, shouldn’t it read “two times too many.”
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Alright, I watched the Demo and it really isn’t all that impressive. For one, the translucent border looks horrible, but I realize they are in the early stages and (I hope) haven’t had it professionally designed yet. The Dock also needs some work. What I don’t understand is how it is any more useful than the current Mac OS. Expose is just as convenient (actually more) for viewing multiple open windows. Also, if the frickin window is open, then why does it need to be in the dock, and why so BIG???
The flipping the windows is sorta cool, but we already know that OSX can do it if Apple wants it to, since they are doing it with dashboard, and the effect is a lot cleaner. The big difference is, OSX already exists for consumers to use and Looking Glass is just a toy in extremely early development stages. I’ll stick with my Mac.
ArtV,
Ignore the trolls. You make some good points regarding Sun’s high-end hardware line, which could complement Apple’s X-lineup (Xserve, Xraid, Xsan, Xgrid) quitely nicely. And while OS X is coming along like gangbusters, Apple could gain a lot from Sun’s enterprise expertise with Solaris, as well as porting over some of Solaris’ tools (check out the awsome DTrace).
However, while I’m impressed with the achievements of Project Looking Glass, I’m not sure that the features so far demonstrated are actually all that useful as yet (Expos� trumps multiple edge-on windows in my view). This is not to say that they couldn’t be, but I’d prefer to see Apple’s interface wizards make what they can of a 3D desktop. They are the best in the business as far as I’m concerned.
By a huge coincidence, Slashdot’s most recent thread is a discussion of an announcement by Sun Microsystem’s No. 2 man Jonathan Schwartz that Solaris is being ported to IBM’s POWER architecture. Much of the thread actually touches on relevant parts of this discussion, namely what it could mean for Solaris on the PowerPC and for OS X. A couple of the posters raise much the same points as my previous post concerning enterprise-grade applications available for Solaris.
Sample quote:
“Many enterprise class applications were made to run on Solaris or ported to it. That’s where it has MacOS X beat hands down. The other stuff that Solaris can do (e.g. scale to 128+ processors, etc) is important, but not crucial.”
you all have to remember that looking glass is in the early stages of devlopment and the demo was only showing what the software can do . i am quiet sure that when it comes out it would be different.
cynical1,
Where you been? Steve had cancer surgery. Two links with details:
http://www.mac360.com/index.php/mac360/more/change_at_the_top_is_it_time_for_a_successor_to_steve_jobs/
http://www.mac360.com/index.php/mac360/more/apple_steve_jobs_has_cancer_surgery/
Addendum:
I don’t know if this is true, but one of the posters in the Slashdot thread states that Solaris beats all other Unix variants (including Linux) when it comes to scaling to multiple processors. OS X could certainly benefit from this expertise.
“you all have to remember that looking glass is in the early stages of devlopment and the demo was only showing what the software can do . i am quiet sure that when it comes out it would be different.”
Bob,
Agreed, and as I said I found the demo impressive in its abilities. But I also believe that only Apple’s interface designers have the skills to fully exploit these abilities. No other company has shown anything approaching Apple’s mastery of interface design and usability.
Thanks millie – guess I missed that while I was hiking in yellowstone.