On Sun, 28 Dec 2008 16:09:41 -0800 (PST) Octave Orgeron <unixconsole at
yahoo.com> wrote:
> Well there is no doubt that the shift about 8-10 years ago at Sun to
> focus on SMP servers caused the SPARC workstations to suffer. So
> much focus was placed on making mid-range to high-end servers that
> did not have the requirements of a workstation line. And there was
> the shift to rack-mount entry-level servers with "lights-out"
> features. These were not bad things to go after for Sun as it has
> placed them in competition with IBM and HP. The big issue now is
> that the ecosystem that attracted people or companies to develop,
> port, and support their applications on SPARC is dropping off.
Except for servers, of course. But this is a typical pattern:
general-purpose hardware used by nearly everyone will eventually
outperform special-purpose hardware used exclusively by your
customers. This is what killed the workstation vendors, the graphics
box vendors, the LISP machine vendors, and the supercomputer vendors -
unless they made the transition to general-purpose hardware used by
nearly everyone.
> Linux is where it's at today because it focused on winning the
> hearts and minds of the developers ...
Surely that's at typo, and you mean users, right? If you want a system
focused on winning developers, look at the BSD-based systems. Among
developers I know (ok, we're mostly old Unix fogeys) GNU/Linux is
pretty much disparaged as a desktop system, as the successful ones are
adopting the attitudes and practices of the most successful desktop
vendor around.
> installing MacOS X anywhere. Apple figured out how to get everyday
> people onto their platform successfully, unlike all the other UNIX
> vendors. If Sun really wants to re-enter the workstation
> market.. it'll have to ask itself the same questions that Apple did
> with the PPC line. I would also go as far to say that Apple
> successfully migrated its customers from PPC to Intel and increase
> the value.
I want to expand on that a bit. Apple didn't just migrate their user
base from PPC to Intel and increase it's value, Apple has migrated
it's user base across four radically different platforms (From M68K ->
PPC -> Unix -> Intel) and in general improved things each time (though
some of the cases may have been a desperation move). They provide a
single transition step (i.e - you can run 68K binaries on PPC/OS9;
PPC/OS9 on PPC/Unix; PPC/Unix on Intel/Unix) and people generally make
the transition along with them, albeit some slower than others (I do
know people who are still running PPC/OS9 software on their PPC/Unix
boxes...).
I think Apple has done it because they have stuck with the attitude of
being a system vendor, not a hardware or software vendor. I.e. - most
people buying Mac's (or iPhone's) aren't buying Unix boxes; they're
buying Apple systems. That it's Unix underneath is immaterial to them
(though it makes us old Unix fogeys buy them by the office-full for
laptop and desktop boxes). It's not clear that Sun can position itself
as something other than a Unix vendor at this stage, and that would be
required if they were going to try and do things the way Apple did.
<mike
--
Mike Meyer <mwm at mired.org> http://www.mired.org/consulting.html
Independent Network/Unix/Perforce consultant, email for more information.
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