How Sun Bought Apple Computer (Almost) 307
Hugh Pickens writes "There was a time in the 1990s when Sun, at its wealthiest, was poised to buy Apple when it was at the lowest point in its storied history and now eWeek reports on how the deal for Sun to buy Apple fell through. 'Back in late 1995 early '96, when we were at our peak, we were literally hours away from buying Apple for about $5 to $6 a share,' says former Sun CEO Ed Zander. 'I don't know what we were going to do with it, but we were going to buy it.' Sun co-founder Scott McNealy adds that there was an investment banker on the Apple side who basically blocked it. 'He put so many terms into the deal that we couldn't afford to go do it.' Would there be iPhones, iPads and iPods on the market today if Sun Microsystems had been able to close a deal to buy out Apple in the mid-1990s? No, says McNealy. 'If we had bought Apple, there wouldn't have been iPods or iPads ... I'd have screwed that up.'"
Re:"there wouldn't have been iPods or iPads" (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.google.com/patents?vid=4667088 [google.com]
Or maybe you meant something more like this:
http://www.techpin.com/the-first-mp3-player/ [techpin.com]
Oh yeah, we really needed Apple to get portable music.
Let's get real here. Apple's strength is not in creating new technologies, but in making new technologies look pretty and in marketing those technologies. If Apple had not stepped in with the iPod, we would probably have seen a market with a lot of competing companies, making uglier products.
Innovation is a continuous process, with or without Apple. Where is Apple's research division? How does it compare with universities, or MSR, or IBM research? I do not remember Apple building a computer system that could play Jeopardy (yes, that technology will be relevant to consumers in the future, whether or not Apple decides to exploit it).
Ahem... (Score:2, Informative)
You must be new here. Welcome to Slashdot, the internet's center for pedantry.
Internet is a proper noun [internetis...ernoun.net].
(See what I did there?)