“Sun Microsystems tried to acquire Apple once and then almost merged with Apple on two other occasions, according to Sun co-founder Bill Joy. Beyond these deals, the two companies almost teamed on three other projects including sharing a user interface and the SPARC architecture. The moves were cheered by Apple fan Joy, while Sun’s CEO Scott McNealy appeared less impressed with some of the proposals,” Ashlee Vance reports for The Register. “All of this we learned tonight at a Computer History Museum event where Sun’s four co-founders held the stage for close to two hours. At one point during the discussion, questioner John Gage, a longtime Sun staffer, asked McNealy about Sun’s ‘three attempts’ to buy Apple. McNealy dodged the question.”
Vance reports, “Moments later, Joy – a Unix god and venture capitalist on the side – dragged the conversation back to Apple, seeming to want to make a confession. Joy voiced an affinity for Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs and said it was a ‘personal disappointment’ that the two companies were never closer. ‘There were six very close encounters,’ Joy said.”
More in the full article here.
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Once upon a time many years ago in the mid-1990’s the pundits were suggesting Sun should buy Apple. Then someone pointed out that if Sun did so, there sales would instantly triple.
Even then, Apple was bigger than Sun.
Once upon a time, Sun had stock that was worth something.
Anyone wanna pull up the graph of Apple stock vs. Sun stock?
apple sparc’s. A cool thought.
…and if they did, they ain’t no Steve Jobs… in fact, they’d probably pull a Sun and Apple would be toasted…
What kind of juice would a Snapple Computer need? Actually, if they merged I think it should be called Appun. Instead of Think Different, the motto could be Stuff Appuns.
Apple’s current market cap is 4.7 times higher than Sun’s.
I think Solaris is a great product, but Sun are sadly the most vulnerable of the computing majors from Linux. Their hardware is just way overpriced when you can buy a bog standard HP box and stick Red Hat on it to do the same job.
I hope Sun recover from the doldrums. With Google, Apple and Mozilla.org all attacking M$ on the consumer and Internet fronts, it would be nice if someone could hammer at them in the small to mid-range server arena too.
The Niagara series sure looks sweet compared to clunky old Intel junk, but, then, Apple would have the problem of selling high performance machines against a company that makes the chips, and sells high performance machines. Didn’t work with IBM, probably wouldn’t work with Sun.
If Apple bought Sun, could they make enough chips? I don’t know. Do they fab their own, or do they job it out?
Apple needs a good merger to extend their reach. Maybe not Sun, but imagine Google or Adobe…
I would like to see Apple acquire someone in the Enterprise space or a gaming software company. I don’t personally play games but I know a lot of mac users want more titles on the mac
They’ll always have Paris.
I remember the MAE (Macintosh Application Environment) and nearly 10 years ago wishing Apple would adopt a UNIX kernel. Well, it finally came to being.
BTW, Bill Joy’s personal computer is a Mac running OS X.
Interesting though, how many and deep the secrets of old are kept. First the Intel compilation of OS X going back at least 5 years, now Sun. What else?
Maybe Apple should aquire Sun. Maybe such a move could get them a stronger footing in the market that the Xserve and Xraids are targeting.
Maybe Apple should buy one of the companies that makes Windows-only software such as AutoDesk, maker of AutoCad software. Their market cap is $9.47 billion. They probably wouldn’t even have to buy the whole thing, invest enough to get a 30% share to make a Mac version happen. Do that with a few more applications and simply buy your way into enterprise. Apple’s got the cash.
mw=pressure. Let’s use that bankroll to pressure companies to offer mac versions.
Its like what Jim Cramer on Mad Money said, if your stock is hovering around 3-4 dollars from 20, it means you have bad management. Mcnealy has got to go
I always thought that the Sun shone from Job’s ass.
That must have been an interesting time to work at Apple. In the mid-90’s, Apple execs were furiously trying to find someone to buy them out. The were other big names besides Sun, but the only one I recall without looking it up was Philips.
Thank Jobs it didn’t happen!
“Interesting though, how many and deep the secrets of old are kept. First the Intel compilation of OS X going back at least 5 years, now Sun. What else?”
MS’s Chief Software Architect uses a PowerBook with Tiger when he actually wants to get work done. You can see a glowing Apple logo through the Dell sticker. How else do you think Vista gets developed?
Ampar, in the 97 Macworld http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4436710013736446644 Jobs admonished everyone for thinking that for Apple to win, Microsoft had to lose… he got boos from the audience and wasn’t happy.
Nothings changed. Everythings changed.
It wasn’t that big a secret. I used to work for Sun. There was a lot of talk internally about Sun buying Apple. During one of the courtships Sun employees were offered Apple employee discount prices for Macs. I got what I considered to be a sweet deal on a couple of PowerMac 8500’s.
We really thought it would be great. At the time Sun was losing the desktop to Wintel, and the Macintosh UI on Solaris, with Mac hardware was going to be the answer. Who knows if it would have ultimately worked? It certainly would have been interesting…
No, I don’t think it would’ve been interesting. If anyone could’ve ruined then killed the Mac (more than Apple was), it was Sun. Next was the best company to acquire Apple. It has worked out exactly as planned.
I remember that, Macaday. Plus ca change, plus c’est la même chose?
“the two companies almost teamed on three other projects including sharing a user interface and the SPARC architecture”
Actually, NeXTstep/OpenStep (now known as OS X) ran on the SPARC architecture.
JEG:
They should buy EMC ($32.5 billion) & ADIC.
They’d get enterprise coverage for Xserve RAID.
They’d get Legato & Dantz.
They’d get VMWare – which has its uses.
They’d get massive tape libraries.
That would be a $33 billion dollar merger/takeover, with next to no overlap except in administrative positions so minimal restructuring costs.
Also Sybase would be only another $2 billion.
So we could’ve been using Sparcles?
The MacBook Pro is thin, but still too big! I need nanobook!
Could Steve’s crack about a 10 inch screen have been a hint?
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