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The Sad Saga of Silicon Graphics (1997)
- apowell 17y agoThis article is from 1997, but the comparison to Apple is amusing: SGI's sexy image prompted a Wall Street analyst to label it the new Apple. Sadly for SGI, that may prove all too true. Now, like Apple Computer Inc., the Mountain View (Calif.) company is a stark anomaly in booming Silicon Valley.
- robin_reala 17y agoI went and looked for the date after this sentence: While rivals such as Sun Microsystems Inc. ride the Internet wave and even IBM enjoys a comeback, SGI has been mostly an onlooker at the tech party.
- gvb 17y agoYes, it is very interesting to look back at the ashes <-> roses transformations since 1997 (mostly roses -> ashes). -------- Ashes -> roses * Apple -------- Roses -> Ashes * SUN * Java (debatable, but the article waxes poetic about Sun Microsystems "which stole SGI's panache and profits by turning its own interactive-TV efforts into the popular Net software Java" except Java never became very popular on the Net, more on the server side and embedded). * Netscape * HotWired and Virtual Vineyards (who?)
- ivenkys 17y agoWell, Virtual Vineyards are : http://www.inc.com/magazine/19960615/1966.html http://www.inc.com/magazine/19960615/1966.html
- ajross 17y agoI don't think Java's status is really that debateable. It's a huge success, albeit not in the browser where it was originally targetted. Java changed the way IT departments look at software engineering, and to date its only significant competitor is a language designed expressly to compete against it by cloning its best features. Hackers don't like it, and Sun never found a way to get much revenue from it. But Java as a product and a platform can only be described as an unqualified success.
- seldo 17y agoI've never really understood why Java took off in the enterprise the way it did. Was it just the automatic garbage collection and no pointers was a killer feature over C++?
- ajross 17y agoFor a certain class of developers: yes, it is. The IT world needs to be able to build big projects with big teams of mediocre talent. They can't handle the pointer bugs of C++, not the runtime-only bugs of dynamic languages. Java was a breath of fresh air in this world.
- riffic 17y agohah, their Mountain View campus is now the Googleplex
- butterfi 17y agoA really awesome example of why tech columnists are terrible prognosticators of tech future. Look out SGI, or you'll share the same fate as Apple! Hah! They wish...
- lurch_mojoff 17y agoWell, cut them some slack - the article is from about 9 months after the merger with NeXT, when Steve Jobs was still just interim CEO, and more than a year before the release of the original iMac.
- elblanco 17y agoEd Catmull, Pixar gives a great synopsis of SGI's place in history during this talk. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2h2lvhzMDc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2h2lvhzMDc
- tokenadult 17y agoThe title should include the date of the article. I do remember the Silicon Graphics debacle and how arrogant some SG employees were before the blow-up of the company.
- gaius 17y agoSGI is even swallowing its pride and working on a workstation that will use Intel chips and Windows NT That was the final nail in the coffin really. Everyone who'd kept the SGI faith up 'til then was told, we're orphaning all your MIPS and IRIX investment to date, tough luck. And Sun's Creator3D cards were "good enough". Buy became bye SGI. I still have a T-shirt from their '96 developer conference, who'da thunk the free souvenirs would outlast the company...
- rbanffy 17y agoIt's a small tragedy what happened to the Unix workstations of the 90's... The result of so many blunders is that we are stuck with matrioshka-style computers that can run PC-DOS. It, at least, they could natively run Apple II, Atari or Beeb software, it would make me happier. The IBM PC was, by far, the dullest computer of its age and, weren't its descendants the only computers effectively available these days, it would also be the dullest. It's just that we have no options today.