[Ti] Apple's True Market Share!

[Mark C. Langston]

On Thu, Dec 12, 2002 at 02:50:51PM -0600, Loren Schooley wrote:
> Here's another perspective :-)
> Perhaps fully functional could also mean: "For Sale at a Sun shop near you
> --> Solaris 9 on x86 w/optional Gold support. Check your Sun Rep for
> details" and "This is an attempt to escalate our $ awk '/Subject:/{print $4,
> $5}', and that Microsoft internal Newsletter-  Headlines: "Holy Crap, Sun is
> competing for our market share with Early Access software!"
> 
> Or do you think that Apples x86 market share could be dramatically
> influenced by a few OSX port hacks by Apple development to x86 and some $20
> beta users? (I admit it could actually cause a ding) Or wait-one more thing,
> perhaps Sun already attempted x86 support, it failed miserably, and Early
> Access is the remnant of that failed enterprise, which Apple couldn't help
> to have observed.

Well, that's a swell theory, except for the fact that "Early Access" is
a formal stage in Sun's OS release process.  They've done it since at
least 2.6, and almost certainly earlier.  Not just for x86, but for
SPARC as well.

So, if you ignore that glaring fact, then sure, you've probably hit it
on the head.  But if you examine how Sun releases new versions of
Solaris, it seems kind of flimsy.

> 
> Market share is marketing, not performance and capability you go on about. I
> don't think people care what Microsoft runs on, they care about Microsoft,
> not x86. Would Apple ever dare take a full step toward x86 support? No way.
> Sun don't either, but they have a good thing going with Early Access, that's
> a productive solution for what existing product they already have.
> 

I'm sorry, how does this have anything to do with Solaris x86 being
fundamentally broken?  That was the conversation I was involved in.


> I said earlier that Sun quit supporting x86, that was kinda inaccurate. I
> gathered that back when 9 came out x86 support was missing and no ISO's were
> to be found, so at the time it was the consensus. Later of course, they had
> this Early Access plan going on.

9 isn't out yet for x86.  This may be the crucial flaw in your reasoning
process.  That's why it's still in "Early Access".

Look, I'll simplify things for you:  When Sun releases a new version of
Solaris, they go through 5 stages:  A, B, C, D, and E.


They've gotten to E for the SPARC version of Solaris 9.  They're still
on D for the x86 version.  They've finished with C, and they're on their
way to E.  No big conspiracy, nothing mysterious or untowards about it.
It's just lagging the SPARC release.  Which has always been the case,
for every release of x86.  And _that_ also is no big mystery or
conspiracy.  They simply get the SPARC version out the door first,
becasue it's their biggest market, and most closely tied to their
revenue model (which, contrary to certain theories here, has nothing
to do with OS sales; their cash cow is the SunSpectrum support
contract.)

Clearer now?



(and PLEASE start trimming your posts.  I just deleted over 100 lines
of text whose only relevance to what you've said is that it was said
prior to you piping in.)

-- 
Mark C. Langston                                    Sr. Unix SysAdmin
mark at bitshift.org                                       mark at seti.org
Systems & Network Admin                                SETI Institute
http://bitshift.org                               http://www.seti.org