4 ms·

I think one difference is that Sun and DEC were selling to enterprise/business markets whereas Apple sells to the consumer market. I think the former tend to ma

I think one difference is that Sun and DEC were selling to enterprise/business markets whereas Apple sells to the consumer market. I think the former tend to make decisions more based on cost/benefit while the latter tend to be more emotionally driven. If Apple can continue to succeed with that I think they will continue to survive.

_ph_ 8y ago
What killed Sun and DEC and other RISC manufacturers (also PowerPC) was, that once the PC market grew to a certain size, they couldn't keep up with Intel as Intel could afford a magnitude more R&D costs with their processors and equally had lesser production costs. This shows, that going vertical won't work, if your production numbers drop below a certain threshhold, the economy of scale would work against you. For Apple, the combined range of iOS devices currently gives them enough scale. I think Sun could have had a much better chance, if they had pushed SPARC processors into the private market too, like offering a decent SPARC based ATX motherboard for all the PC enthusiasts setting up their Linux machines.