Apple partners IBM and Sun consider merger

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Comments

  • Reply 21 of 72
    mdriftmeyermdriftmeyer Posts: 7,503member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by GregAlexander View Post


    I too would much rather see Apple buy Sun (or invest heavily).



    Apple doesn't do much in the Enterprise space - and Sun could easily become the "Enterprise Computing" division. Keep Sun setup as is and roll in the Mac Pros, Xserve, etc. Make them responsible for everything in business.



    They could even own 80% of Sun and have a great business play going forward.



    Buy Sun. Gut the redundancy in staffing, restructure for a subsidiary of Apple. Develop an Enterprise Roadmap for cross pollination.
  • Reply 22 of 72
    monstrositymonstrosity Posts: 2,234member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by mdriftmeyer View Post


    WebObjects uses Java. Move along.



    writings been on the wall for that technology for some time.



    WebObjects is actually a fine example of Apples attitude towards Java.

    Apple dont give a monkeys about Java, and thats that.
  • Reply 23 of 72
    Apple isn't buying Sun. They show no interest in selling long-term services contracts to enterprise on small, but steady margins, which is the bulk of Sun's business alongside a shrinking hardware arm. Think about it - exactly how interested does Apple seem in selling Macs to enterprise these days? Why on earth would they get back into that market when the margins on selling to consumers are so much higher?



    It's a shame, because they could call the merged business Snapple.
  • Reply 24 of 72
    mshockmshock Posts: 21member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by mdriftmeyer View Post


    Buy Sun. Gut the redundancy in staffing, restructure for a subsidiary of Apple. Develop an Enterprise Roadmap for cross pollination.



    I totally agree. Sun as a subsidy like FileMaker would make sense. Sun could maintain a level of autonomy, develop open-source projects (which are awesome), and could rub off on Apple. Apple could spruce up Sun's developer community with some organization and looks - make the iPhone operable with Solaris, and be set. Seriously, I could see hospitals, schools, law firms, etc. really benefiting from Sun's tech and Apple's ease of use. That would be huge competition to MS who dominates these arenas.
  • Reply 25 of 72
    rbrrbr Posts: 631member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by MShock View Post


    If Sun really is in such trouble, I wonder why Apple wouldn't take the helm... The only reason I can think of is that Apple is focused on non-business computing. The iPhone, however, opens Apple up to business computing and potentially, enterprise level managment. With Sun's able developer community and distribution frameworks, it would be the infrastructure push Apple needs to expand.



    I hope IBM doesn't make the deal... they don't have a great reputation with Apple after the dropping of powerpc... and I don't want OpenSolaris scrapped.



    I agree. I do not see an acquisition of SUN by IBM creating a closer relationship with Apple. I see it as further marginalizing Apple in the enterprise market.



    Even though Apple have made strides in the enterprise market that are not widely realized, Apple have never made the corporate client a true priority. On the other hand, if companies were buying SUN servers and such, it would be logical for them to integrate Apple desktops and laptops into their structure. Apple's servers would fit into the structure where appropriate as well. It would be win-win. Solaris/OS X is a winning combination.



    I believe that Apple, which has the cash, should acquire SUN and work on integrating both hardware (and design) and operating systems so that SUN could, in essence, be the Apple Enterprise Division. I think the history and culture of these two companies are a better fit than either with IBM. Apple could continue to do what pleases them in the consumer market and benefit from the wealth of experience at SUN at the same time and vice versa.



    That said, I think that IBM would want to work with whatever company emerged because it would suit their interests to sell software to run on the Apple/SUN hardware even though IBM is in competition with them for hardware sales. Please not that SUN have recently entered into agreements with HP to sell SUN's OS preinstalled on HP servers so it should be clear that SUN is flexible enough to face the realities of a market which, in many segments, has avoided their proprietary hardware.



    This may be Apple's last chance at SUN, unless, of course, IBM makes such a mess of it that it spins off the wreckage in a few years.
  • Reply 26 of 72
    ghstmarsghstmars Posts: 140member
    buy sun!
  • Reply 27 of 72
    dluxdlux Posts: 666member
    Quote:

    ...applications that could run on NeXTSTEP (which already ran on hardware from PA-RISC, SPARC, and MIPS, to the common Intel PC)



    NeXTSTEP never made it to MIPS. The four architectures (fat binaries) were PA-RISC, SPARC, X86, and 68x Motorola (the original NeXT Machine processor). A lot of people had hoped to see NeXTSTEP run on SGI hardware, and there were rumors of that happening, but we can look back now and see that that would have been a financial dead end.



    Also,



    Quote:

    Full support for ZFS will follow in Snow Leopard.



    As far as anyone can tell, ZFS will only be native on Snow Leopard Server, not the client (desktop) version. And even then it's not clear whether it will support booting or just work on data-only disks.



    Nonetheless, ZFS should continue to develop further regardless of what happens to Sun.
  • Reply 28 of 72
    dluxdlux Posts: 666member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by GregAlexander View Post


    Keep Sun setup as is and roll in the Mac Pros, Xserve, etc. Make them responsible for everything in business.



    Earlier on Apple offered a file server running AIX:



    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Network_Server



    That was a short-lived novelty, but certainly not Apple's first foray into Unix:



    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A/UX





    What's amusing to contemplate are all the various architectures and OS technologies that Apple/NeXTSTEP have had to deal with. Consider the Mac platform alone:



    'Classic' Mac OS on 68xxx > PowerPC > OS X (Mach/BSD) > (32-bit - 64-bit) > Intel architecture.



    Now imagine incorporating Solaris (System V Unix) and/or SPARC into the mix. It's the platform transition that never ends!
  • Reply 29 of 72
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by AppleInsider View Post


    A merger of IBM and Sun would result in an even tighter relationship with Apple, and could even create a market for licensing Mac OS X Server on enterprise hardware and supporting that software using a services team that Apple lacks the resources to quickly assemble from scratch.



    RoughlyDrafted,

    I don't get how you come to this conclusion. IBM and Sun both have their own OSes (especially server based!), Apple hasn't licensed Mac OSX or Mac OSX Server to anyone, yet you think that IBM merging with Sun could lead to Mac OSX Server on IBM+Sun hardware?



    I'm a hypnotherapist... one method of hypnosis is to say 3 true & verifiable things and follow up with a suggestion - this is MUCH more likely to be accepted as fact. I find your articles often like this yet also mostly insightful - so I'd like to be corrected if there's more to this leap of yours than wishful thinking. Is there?
  • Reply 30 of 72
    bloggerblogbloggerblog Posts: 2,462member
    Adobe has never been this cheap for more than 5 years (a few days ago it was going for $10 a share!), Apple should buy Adobe.

    SUN and especially IBM are both old-farts.
  • Reply 31 of 72
    rbrrbr Posts: 631member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by bloggerblog View Post


    Adobe has never been this cheap for more than 5 years (a few days ago it was going for $10 a share!), Apple should buy Adobe.

    SUN and especially IBM are both old-farts.



    That is a darned good way to get Adobe to code Photoshop in Cocoa for (64 bit) Snow Leopard!



    It might even give Steve the revenge he seems to want in his spat with Adobe about Flash!



    It would be a coup to buy SUN and Adobe!
  • Reply 32 of 72
    hmurchisonhmurchison Posts: 12,419member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by bloggerblog View Post


    Adobe has never been this cheap for more than 5 years (a few days ago it was going for $10 a share!), Apple should buy Adobe.

    SUN and especially IBM are both old-farts.



    Adobe had to buy Macromedia because print publishing is waning. The Seattle Post Intelligencer printed its last issue this week. Another paper in Denver stopped printing this year.



    There is little biz opportunity in buying Adobe. Adobe is the 1600lb Gorilla in the market but the profit potential is static as compared to something as explosive as selling a bajillion of iPhones.



    Adobe makes no sense whereas Sun makes sense because they compete in areas where Apple simply isn't competent. Enterprise.
  • Reply 33 of 72
    princeprince Posts: 89member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by GregAlexander View Post


    ,I don't get how you come to this conclusion. IBM and Sun both have their own OSes (especially server based!), Apple hasn't licensed Mac OSX or Mac OSX Server to anyone, yet you think that IBM merging with Sun could lead to Mac OSX Server on IBM+Sun hardware?



    I'm a hypnotherapist... one method of hypnosis is to say 3 true & verifiable things and follow up with a suggestion - this is MUCH more likely to be accepted as fact. I find your articles often like this yet also mostly insightful - so I'd like to be corrected if there's more to this leap of yours than wishful thinking. Is there?



    Both IBM and Sun already sell multiple OSs, their own proprietary stuff and Linux.



    Why would they license Mac OS X Server too? Because there is a market for serving Macs in higher ed and increasingly, to serve push messaging to corporate iPhones and other easy to mange wiki/blog/iCal Server/Podcast Producer style applications unique to Apple that aren't all available to AIX/Solaris/Linux.



    Why would Apple license Mac OS X Server to IBM/Sun when it shows no interest in licensing Mac OS X to Dell and HP and Pystar? Because Apple's money comes from consumer hardware, and the company hasn't been able to break into enterprise sales and demonstrates little interest in doing so.



    How much money does Apple make designing and building the Xserve? It's a vanity product. Why not cede that business to Sun, and collect licensing revenue from a NEW market, just as it gave up trying to sell the Xserve RAID and delegated those hardware RAID sales to Promise?



    Apple also "licensed" the iPod to HP (or more accurately "franchised") because HP could (at the time) sell it to a wider audience of PC buyers. So there's plenty of reasons why Apple would license Mac OS X Server to a broad audience that does not compete with its current sales.



    Additionally, Mac OS X Server costs $500 to $1000 per license. Mac OS X costs $129. When you buy a PC, you pay a ~$30 Microsoft tax. When you buy a PC Server, you pay $1000 (or more) for a Windows Server license separately. You then shell out thousands for CALs.



    That reality results in desktop PC licensing making no sense for Apple to enter (it can't make any money giving up its profitable Mac hardware sales for $30 licenses sold to Dell), but leaves enterprise server sales a lucrative licensing opportunity where Apple risks very little. It has no real Xserve volumes to lose, and Sun could offer a variety of different hardware to enterprise customers (Apple only has one Xserve, a 1U machine).



    Sun/IBM could gain a new way to sell hardware, and risk little from 'losing sales' of AIX or Linux or Solaris, because first, there's little overlap and new markets to enter, and secondly because Sun makes its money from hardware, not its OS, while IBM makes money on service, not AIX. That's why both started supporting and distributing Linux - they don't make money on software.
  • Reply 34 of 72
    fairlyfairly Posts: 102member
    It's not a merger - it's a BUYOUT. Nobody buys IBM. No one. And Roughly Twisted turns it into another article about Apple.



    This is not only typically skewed Dilger history - it's outright nauseating.
  • Reply 35 of 72
    fairlyfairly Posts: 102member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by GregAlexander View Post


    RoughlyDrafted, I don't get how you come to this conclusion.



    It's the prescription medication. Someone please tell AI to fire this jerk.
  • Reply 36 of 72
    princeprince Posts: 89member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Fairly View Post


    It's not a merger - it's a BUYOUT. Nobody buys IBM. No one. And Roughly Twisted turns it into another article about Apple.



    This is not only typically skewed Dilger history - it's outright nauseating.



    Your comments are inappropriate and ridiculous.
  • Reply 37 of 72
    bloggerblogbloggerblog Posts: 2,462member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by hmurchison View Post


    Adobe had to buy Macromedia because print publishing is waning. The Seattle Post Intelligencer printed its last issue this week. Another paper in Denver stopped printing this year.



    There is little biz opportunity in buying Adobe. Adobe is the 1600lb Gorilla in the market but the profit potential is static as compared to something as explosive as selling a bajillion of iPhones.



    Adobe makes no sense whereas Sun makes sense because they compete in areas where Apple simply isn't competent. Enterprise.



    Adobe started in the publishing business, now it's more internet: Photoshop, Flash, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, Acrobat, ColdFusion, Air, AfterEffects, and other bajillion patents and technologies makes Adobe one of the most modern software companies. Also lets not forget Premiere among other things.
  • Reply 38 of 72
    fairlyfairly Posts: 102member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Prince View Post


    Your comments are inappropriate and ridiculous.



    Typical Dilbert.



    Here's a link to the real story. Which you would not provide.



    http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123735970806267921.html



    "I Led Five Lives": the harrowing story of a disturbed personality. In five parts. Daniel Eran Dilger, Prince McLean, Sara McNamera, Tara Fae, Michael Tooley.



    Get professional help, Dilbert.
  • Reply 39 of 72
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by mdriftmeyer View Post


    Buy Sun. Gut the redundancy in staffing, restructure for a subsidiary of Apple. Develop an Enterprise Roadmap for cross pollination.



    You need to learn how to write a real business plan.



    1. Buy Sun.

    2. Gut the redundancy in staffing.

    3. Restructure as a subsidiary of Apple.

    4. Develop an Enterprise Roadmap for cross pollination.

    5. PROFIT!!!



    I guess they didn't teach you that in your fancy MBA classes!?!!?

    </sarcasm>
  • Reply 40 of 72
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Prince View Post


    Your comments are inappropriate and ridiculous.



    Your comments are salacious, egregious and thelonious!
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