4 ms·

2010 is still pretty recent, where was Apple in 1990? If someone said they would become the largest company in the world because they manufactured premium telep

2010 is still pretty recent, where was Apple in 1990? If someone said they would become the largest company in the world because they manufactured premium telephones, offered a replacement to cable TV, and were one of the few remaining Unix vendors that would surprise anyone you told it to including any Apple employee or executive.

criddell 3y ago
> one of the few remaining Unix vendors I haven’t thought about this before - who are the others?
- nordsieck 3y ago
  > I haven’t thought about this before - who are the others? All of the workstation vendors: IBM, HP, Dec/Compaq/HP, SGI, Sun. I don't think any of these are particularly popular, but AIX (IBM) and Solaris (Sun) are probably more popular than the others. I wouldn't be surprised if IRIX (SGI) is totally dead. And funnily enough, Microsoft. Although they sold Xenix to Sco. I think it's in a lot of POS devices (so probably dying to iPad installs). Edit: Oops - just realized that "Dec/Compaq/HP" probably doesn't belong in the list. I guess technically there was Tru64 Unix, but everyone I've ever heard of who ran Alpha boxes used VMS.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - kjs3 3y ago
    IBM is the only one really left...for now. They just shuttered US-based AIX development and moved everything to India, so the writing is on the wall. HP/UX and Solaris are barely on life support and basically moribund. I seem to recall a recent announcement that HP/UX goes end-of-support in 2025. As far as Solaris...Oracle is gonna Oracle. Illumios, et. al., won't save it. SGI IRIX is long dead. RIP. SCO (the part with a product, not the part that fails miserably at litigation) got sold to someone noone has ever heard of and probably never will. I speculate there's an SMB PoS market out there supporting it and that'll turn out just as well as the OS/2+ATM market did. No innovation going on there, just milking a dwindling revenue stream. I doubt anyone has sold a Xenix license in decades.
    - nordsieck 3y ago
      > HP/UX and Solaris are barely on life support and basically moribund. I seem to recall a recent announcement that HP/UX goes end-of-support in 2025. As far as Solaris...Oracle is gonna Oracle. Illumios, et. al., won't save it. I figured as much for HP/UX. The failure of Itanium was the death knell there. I mostly lump Solaris together with Illumos/SmartOS. Is there a good reason not to (unless when talking about Oracle specifically)?
      - kjs3 3y ago
        Last time I tied Solaris and Illumos/SmartOS at the hip in a comment someone from the Illumos camp responded adamantly that while they were based on Solaris, they were their own thing evolving their own direction. I dunno, I'm not so much involved in the Solaris world anymore (having started on SunOS 3.5), but I suppose I take them at their word.
        nordsieck 3y ago
        > Last time I tied Solaris and Illumos/SmartOS at the hip in a comment someone from the Illumos camp responded adamantly that while they were based on Solaris, they were their own thing evolving their own direction. That's fair. I know that, after Oracle re-closed OpenSolaris, they can't (legally) incorporate the innovations happening in Illumos into Solaris proper, so the 2 siblings will continue to drift apart. And it sounds like there was quite a lot of bad blood that proceeded the founding of Illumos (unsurprising when Oracle is involved), so I'm not super surprised that users would talk that way.
        kjs3 3y ago
        That matches my perspective. I personally don't get the impression that Illumos, et. al., have the critical mass for a robust long-term future, but I surely don't see all the places it's being used. Fortunately, I guess, a lot of the nifty things Solaris brought to the table (ZFS, dtrace, etc.) have been pulled up into the BSDs and Linux with varying degrees of success.
  - retrocryptid 3y ago
    Square ships iPads, most of the other payment terminals are some brand of leenucks (some are android, some are not.) There are more WinCE terminals still out there than you would expect (verifone's been around for a LONG time and has probably used every embedded toolchain/cpu architecture/rtos that's come down the pike. And that's just one example.) IBM 4690's supposedly run a SuSe derivative, and Walmart doesn't seem to be replacing them with iPads. I think Sears & KMart also used 4690s, but also a mix of predecessor systems which ran an unholy assemblage of OSes: flex, dos, a bizarre mix of Os/36 and IMS, etc. As best I can tell, they never ran an OS from CMU. Next time you're in a gas station, grocery store, cinema or chain restaurant look closely at the cash register. It's not an iPad. Square did a mightily brilliant thing to marry its dongle to a consumer friendly iPad to support small retail, but apple is not in the business of selling PoS systems. Heck, apple stores didn't use apple devices for PoS for the first two or three years after they were launched. The assertion that iPads are "taking over" PoS seems to be based on an inappropriately small sample.
    - nordsieck 3y ago
      > The assertion that iPads are "taking over" PoS seems to be based on an inappropriately small sample. That's fair. I think I notice iPad PoS devices when ever I run into them, whereas the other devices are less remarkable to me. But my experience really mirrors what you say - gas stations and grocery stores aren't running iPads. It's usually restaurants and small vendors where I see them.
      - retrocryptid 3y ago
        And it's a brilliant idea for small businesses. People are already familiar with it and trust Apple. I mean... I'm a BSD & Leenooks person and generally have a decent opinion of apple products. They just don't do what I want to do. But square piggy-backing on Apple's reputation was a great idea.
  - criddell 3y ago
    Yeah, it’s pretty wild. Apple is the basically the last Unix company. All the others are gone or are winding down.
scarface_74 3y ago
> Meanwhile software history is full of examples of abusive corporations being put in their place by casual side projects By 1997, Apple wasn’t a “casual side project”. It had already existed for 20 years.
retrocryptid 3y ago
Um... what Unix (tm) product does Apple sell. They stopped selling A/UX decades ago and it's a bit of a stretch to call AIX Unix. And Mach is absolutely NOT Unix. Saying that Apple is a Unix vendor because of Mach/Darwin/NeXTStep and Android/Google, Red Hat/IBM, Ubuntu/Canonical, Amazon/Amazon Linux aren't Unix vendors because they're Linux is an interesting take. By that logic we could call MSFT a Unix vendor 'cause they once sold Xenix and NT originally shipped with BSD networking code.
- ChickeNES 3y ago
  It very much is: https://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/ https://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/
  - retrocryptid 3y ago
    This means that Apple has licensed the right to use the Unix(r) trademark, not that they have the right to use code from AT&T or its successors (USL, Novell, SCO, Caldera &c). It means that Apple will not be sued if they call macOS Unix, but it most assuredly did not use code from the SVR lineage.
    - jrumbut 3y ago
      This is the situation I was attempting to make light of. Apple is not what someone from 1990 would think of as a Unix vendor, but due to paying the licensing fee they are one and there are very few left.
      - scarface_74 3y ago
        Why wouldn’t they? By definition they passed every certification requirement to be Unix
  - retrocryptid 3y ago
    So... if I take Mach and use it as the basis of a product for a different company, does that company get to say it's Unix? Or does the Unix moniker only apply to products released by Apple? If so, why?
filmgirlcw 3y ago
> 2010 is still pretty recent It kind of isn’t, though. If you compare top companies by market capitalization from December 31, 2010 to today, the only two companies that are in both lists are Apple and Microsoft. You’ve got to go to 2013 for Google to enter the list, 2015 for Amazon, 2017 for Facebook. Heck, Apple didn’t even enter the top 10 until the end of 2009. The only company still in the top 10 (as of market close today) to remain a player consistently for more than 25 years is Microsoft, and Exxon should get a special mention for being the erstwhile first or second place leader for decades and only dropping out of the top 10 at the end of 2017 (it reappeared at the end of 2022).

criddell 3y ago

> one of the few remaining Unix vendors I haven’t thought about this before - who are the others?

nordsieck 3y ago
> I haven’t thought about this before - who are the others? All of the workstation vendors: IBM, HP, Dec/Compaq/HP, SGI, Sun. I don't think any of these are particularly popular, but AIX (IBM) and Solaris (Sun) are probably more popular than the others. I wouldn't be surprised if IRIX (SGI) is totally dead. And funnily enough, Microsoft. Although they sold Xenix to Sco. I think it's in a lot of POS devices (so probably dying to iPad installs). Edit: Oops - just realized that "Dec/Compaq/HP" probably doesn't belong in the list. I guess technically there was Tru64 Unix, but everyone I've ever heard of who ran Alpha boxes used VMS.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- kjs3 3y ago
  IBM is the only one really left...for now. They just shuttered US-based AIX development and moved everything to India, so the writing is on the wall. HP/UX and Solaris are barely on life support and basically moribund. I seem to recall a recent announcement that HP/UX goes end-of-support in 2025. As far as Solaris...Oracle is gonna Oracle. Illumios, et. al., won't save it. SGI IRIX is long dead. RIP. SCO (the part with a product, not the part that fails miserably at litigation) got sold to someone noone has ever heard of and probably never will. I speculate there's an SMB PoS market out there supporting it and that'll turn out just as well as the OS/2+ATM market did. No innovation going on there, just milking a dwindling revenue stream. I doubt anyone has sold a Xenix license in decades.
  - nordsieck 3y ago
    > HP/UX and Solaris are barely on life support and basically moribund. I seem to recall a recent announcement that HP/UX goes end-of-support in 2025. As far as Solaris...Oracle is gonna Oracle. Illumios, et. al., won't save it. I figured as much for HP/UX. The failure of Itanium was the death knell there. I mostly lump Solaris together with Illumos/SmartOS. Is there a good reason not to (unless when talking about Oracle specifically)?
    - kjs3 3y ago
      Last time I tied Solaris and Illumos/SmartOS at the hip in a comment someone from the Illumos camp responded adamantly that while they were based on Solaris, they were their own thing evolving their own direction. I dunno, I'm not so much involved in the Solaris world anymore (having started on SunOS 3.5), but I suppose I take them at their word.
      - nordsieck 3y ago
        > Last time I tied Solaris and Illumos/SmartOS at the hip in a comment someone from the Illumos camp responded adamantly that while they were based on Solaris, they were their own thing evolving their own direction. That's fair. I know that, after Oracle re-closed OpenSolaris, they can't (legally) incorporate the innovations happening in Illumos into Solaris proper, so the 2 siblings will continue to drift apart. And it sounds like there was quite a lot of bad blood that proceeded the founding of Illumos (unsurprising when Oracle is involved), so I'm not super surprised that users would talk that way.
        kjs3 3y ago
        That matches my perspective. I personally don't get the impression that Illumos, et. al., have the critical mass for a robust long-term future, but I surely don't see all the places it's being used. Fortunately, I guess, a lot of the nifty things Solaris brought to the table (ZFS, dtrace, etc.) have been pulled up into the BSDs and Linux with varying degrees of success.
- retrocryptid 3y ago
  Square ships iPads, most of the other payment terminals are some brand of leenucks (some are android, some are not.) There are more WinCE terminals still out there than you would expect (verifone's been around for a LONG time and has probably used every embedded toolchain/cpu architecture/rtos that's come down the pike. And that's just one example.) IBM 4690's supposedly run a SuSe derivative, and Walmart doesn't seem to be replacing them with iPads. I think Sears & KMart also used 4690s, but also a mix of predecessor systems which ran an unholy assemblage of OSes: flex, dos, a bizarre mix of Os/36 and IMS, etc. As best I can tell, they never ran an OS from CMU. Next time you're in a gas station, grocery store, cinema or chain restaurant look closely at the cash register. It's not an iPad. Square did a mightily brilliant thing to marry its dongle to a consumer friendly iPad to support small retail, but apple is not in the business of selling PoS systems. Heck, apple stores didn't use apple devices for PoS for the first two or three years after they were launched. The assertion that iPads are "taking over" PoS seems to be based on an inappropriately small sample.
  - nordsieck 3y ago
    > The assertion that iPads are "taking over" PoS seems to be based on an inappropriately small sample. That's fair. I think I notice iPad PoS devices when ever I run into them, whereas the other devices are less remarkable to me. But my experience really mirrors what you say - gas stations and grocery stores aren't running iPads. It's usually restaurants and small vendors where I see them.
    - retrocryptid 3y ago
      And it's a brilliant idea for small businesses. People are already familiar with it and trust Apple. I mean... I'm a BSD & Leenooks person and generally have a decent opinion of apple products. They just don't do what I want to do. But square piggy-backing on Apple's reputation was a great idea.
- criddell 3y ago
  Yeah, it’s pretty wild. Apple is the basically the last Unix company. All the others are gone or are winding down.

scarface_74 3y ago

> Meanwhile software history is full of examples of abusive corporations being put in their place by casual side projects By 1997, Apple wasn’t a “casual side project”. It had already existed for 20 years.

retrocryptid 3y ago

Um... what Unix (tm) product does Apple sell. They stopped selling A/UX decades ago and it's a bit of a stretch to call AIX Unix. And Mach is absolutely NOT Unix. Saying that Apple is a Unix vendor because of Mach/Darwin/NeXTStep and Android/Google, Red Hat/IBM, Ubuntu/Canonical, Amazon/Amazon Linux aren't Unix vendors because they're Linux is an interesting take. By that logic we could call MSFT a Unix vendor 'cause they once sold Xenix and NT originally shipped with BSD networking code.

ChickeNES 3y ago
It very much is: https://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/ https://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/
- retrocryptid 3y ago
  This means that Apple has licensed the right to use the Unix(r) trademark, not that they have the right to use code from AT&T or its successors (USL, Novell, SCO, Caldera &c). It means that Apple will not be sued if they call macOS Unix, but it most assuredly did not use code from the SVR lineage.
  - jrumbut 3y ago
    This is the situation I was attempting to make light of. Apple is not what someone from 1990 would think of as a Unix vendor, but due to paying the licensing fee they are one and there are very few left.
    - scarface_74 3y ago
      Why wouldn’t they? By definition they passed every certification requirement to be Unix
- retrocryptid 3y ago
  So... if I take Mach and use it as the basis of a product for a different company, does that company get to say it's Unix? Or does the Unix moniker only apply to products released by Apple? If so, why?

filmgirlcw 3y ago

> 2010 is still pretty recent It kind of isn’t, though. If you compare top companies by market capitalization from December 31, 2010 to today, the only two companies that are in both lists are Apple and Microsoft. You’ve got to go to 2013 for Google to enter the list, 2015 for Amazon, 2017 for Facebook. Heck, Apple didn’t even enter the top 10 until the end of 2009. The only company still in the top 10 (as of market close today) to remain a player consistently for more than 25 years is Microsoft, and Exxon should get a special mention for being the erstwhile first or second place leader for decades and only dropping out of the top 10 at the end of 2017 (it reappeared at the end of 2022).