[X-Unix] Apple dumping IBM, moving to Intel

[David Ledger]

>From: "William H. Magill" <magill at mcgillsociety.org>
>Subject: Re: [X-Unix] Apple dumping IBM, moving to Intel
>
>Sigh... the boneyard of the computer industry is littered with
>companies who thought they could implement multiple operating systems
>across multiple architectures.
>
>  From UNIVAC, DEC and Compaq to Sun and HP -- they are now all has-
>beens.
>
>IBM is the only vendor who has managed to stay alive across multiple
>architectures ... but just barely.
>
>One would hope that Jobs would learn from history... Apple has plenty
>of experience available to it -- I know that many of its Engineers
>have "been there and done that" -- they came from those has-beens.

Has beens?  UNIVAC, DEC and Compaq yes, as companies.

Sun - (Motorola 68000 series -> Sparc & now Intel; Bsd based Unix -> 
Sys V based Unix) - very much alive.  Has just taken over 
Storage-Tek. Used in many financial institutions and is the core of 
many trading floors.

DEC  - taken over by Compaq and now HP. VMS on Vax and then on Alpha 
- but their products are still going strong.

HP - (Motorola 68000 series -> PA-Risc -> Itanium; MPE & HP-UX (no 
h/w overlap though) ) - very much alive. HP does HP-UX on PA-Risc and 
Itanium, VMS on Alpha and Itanium, Non-Stop Unix on MIPS and Itanium, 
Tru-64 on Alpha and Itanium, Linux on Intel, PA-Risc and Itanium, and 
Windows on Intel and Itanium. Unsurprisingly, they are moving them 
all over to Itanium. VMS still has 22 years to run of its guaranteed 
life. HP is a mainstay of the worlds financial and business 
institutions. Tru-64 and HP-UX will merge.

HP had over 28% of a $12billion server market last quarter (IBM 
almost 30%), Sun had 9.5% (Dell 10.8%). Hardly has-beens.

-------

A lot of people seem to feel that Intel are bad. If you look at what 
they have done over the last 20 years you will see what they have 
achieved. They have continuously improved a CPU family within the 
restrictions of having a slowly evolving target. They have always had 
to keep their design changes in line with old, current, and planned 
future O/S versions and an architecture driven by outsiders. Wintel 
has never had a CPU / sw breakpoint. Apple have had one major (680x0 
-> PowerPC), the others above have all done it. Not having such a 
break is not a good thing in itself, but being the tail of such a 
bloated dog needs a lot of expertise.

David


-- 
David Ledger - Freelance Unix Sysadmin in the UK.
Chair of HPUX SysAdmin SIG of hpUG technical user group (www.hpug.org.uk)
david.ledger at ivdcs.co.uk
www.ivdcs.co.uk