Is Sun copying Apple's design?

[iris_failsafe]

Sun Microsystems just released its new server T1000/2000.
Is it me or the degingn looks an awful lot to tyhe X Serve?

http://www.sun.com/servers/coolthreads/t2000/

 

[maya]

Does it really matter anymore.

People buy servers for its performance and reliability, and looks come last considering very few people actually see it on a daily basis.

 

[mdavey]

Is it me or [does] the [design] look an awful lot [like the] X Serve?

I think it is just you. Recent Sun kit looks ugly. They had some nice-looking machines a few years ago but seem to have lost the plot with regards to aesthetics since then.

 

[londonweb]

Let's not forget that many moons ago a young Steve Jobs stole the idea for a pointing device known as a 'mouse' and based the interface for Mac OS on software he saw during a visit to Sun Microsystems.

I'm surprised they never got that upset about it...

 

[cube]

Let's not forget that many moons ago a young Steve Jobs stole the idea for a pointing device known as a 'mouse' and based the interface for Mac OS on software he saw during a visit to Sun Microsystems.

I'm surprised they never got that upset about it...

That was Xerox, not Sun. It was Xerox management's fault, not Apple's.

 

[janey]

That was Xerox, not Sun. It was Xerox management's fault, not Apple's.

it was xerox PARC (tbh, xerox was an idiot when it came to the magical things that came out of PARC), but to be honest, they needed something extra - they lacked a bit of marketing ability, but that's what jobs had to make it successful.

 

[londonweb]

That was Xerox, not Sun. It was Xerox management's fault, not Apple's.

I've been mis-informed then...

A sad demise for Xerox then, relegated to a life of making over-complicated photo-copiers.

 

[AmbitiousLemon]

Let's not forget that many moons ago a young Steve Jobs stole the idea for a pointing device known as a 'mouse' and based the interface for Mac OS on software he saw during a visit to Sun Microsystems.

I'm surprised they never got that upset about it...

Not only is that Xerox (mentioned by others) but Apple also paid for the ideas, they didn't steal them.

 

[jhu]

8 cores on 1 chip? that's pretty nice

 

[bugfaceuk]

Sun servers have been looking like that for years.

Where:

that=ugly

 

[mdavey]

Sun servers have been looking like that for years.

Ultra 80 and V100 weren't bad at the time. SunRay 100 is nice, too. Things started to go wrong with the Blade 100 and 1000.

 

[strider42]

Not only is that Xerox (mentioned by others) but Apple also paid for the ideas, they didn't steal them.

I'd also point out that the idea for a mouse predated xerox by decades. Xerox had a spatial user interface that was unique. But Mac OS was significantly different in form and structure than what xerox had. It was a starting point, not a wholesale ripoff. Also, xerox never commercially produced anything with it. They jsut had a few engineers come up with something neat and didn't know what to do with it.

 

[plinden]

Not only is that Xerox (mentioned by others) but Apple also paid for the ideas, they didn't steal them.

This is a quote from Steve Wozniak's website, link (my emphasis below):

Steve Jobs made the case to Xerox PARC execs directly that they had great technology but that Apple knew how to make it affordable enough to change the world. This was very open. In the end, Xerox got a large block of Apple stock for sharing the technology. That's not stealing outright.

 

[jacobj]

Sun Microsystems just released its new server T1000/2000.
Is it me or the degingn looks an awful lot to tyhe X Serve?

http://www.sun.com/servers/coolthreads/t2000/

Close, but no cigar!

 

[adk]

yep, Sun definitely ripped off apple. any piece of aluminum with holes in it is a direct ripoff of apple.

 

[bugfaceuk]

Ultra 80 and V100 weren't bad at the time. SunRay 100 is nice, too. Things started to go wrong with the Blade 100 and 1000.

That's certainly true, there was a brief period of "looks less like a brick that it used to", but we seem to have gone from brick to "plastic fantastic" to "brick. with holes"....

Not a workstation you want to have on your desk.

 

[Daedalus256]

OH MY GOD IT HAS A GRATED LOOK TO THE FRONT ZOMG CLEARLY THEY ARE COPYING.

 

[lucius]

Sun Microsystems just released its new server T1000/2000.
Is it me or the degingn looks an awful lot to tyhe X Serve?

http://www.sun.com/servers/coolthreads/t2000/

Those Sun servers running Solaris 10 are a heck of a lot faster than the XServe though ... up to 32 processing threads in one server is a pretty awesome scaling. I'd love to see Apple make inroads into the enterprise server market but the XServe and OS X have a long way to go (just look at the poor performance of things like MySQL on OSX). <optimism>I'm sure Apple will get there though</optimism>

 

[Rocksaurus]

It's not really necessary to tease this guy so relentlessly... There are similarities between it and the Xserve, but what I think everyone's trying to say is that these things are so ugly that saying that they're ripping off Apple is a compliment.

 

[ReanimationLP]

Meh.

Suns a fast dying company.

 

[lucius]

Meh.

Suns a fast dying company.

Do you know I've been thinking that for years now but they still manage to hang in there. They have open sourced Solaris, on the one hand, but they won't fully give up control over Java on the other. Strange company. Then they release cheap Opteron based servers and cheap super computer servers (like the T1000/2000). There's still something interesting happening in Sun - not sure where its going to go. I wonder if Google would buy them, or Microsoft for that matter ... God knows, Microsoft could do with taking a leaf out of Apple's book and ditching a proprietary OS in favour of a solid Unix based one.

 

[mdavey]

Suns a fast dying company.

Hmm, well their revenue was $3.3billion for the last quarter and they have $4.2billion cash in the bank, so they aren't doing too badly. Their stock is currently sitting at around $4.4 (it was at $3.5 not so long ago).

There aren't many companies that can offer a server for less than $1000, a server with a single 8 core (32 thread) processor and a server with 72 dual-core processors (144 threads), all running the same OS.

I wouldn't write them off just yet.

 

[TheMasin9]

looks can be deciving

no matter how much they try, APPLE DID IT FIRST!!!!

 

[jhu]

Do you know I've been thinking that for years now but they still manage to hang in there. They have open sourced Solaris, on the one hand, but they won't fully give up control over Java on the other. Strange company. Then they release cheap Opteron based servers and cheap super computer servers (like the T1000/2000). There's still something interesting happening in Sun - not sure where its going to go. I wonder if Google would buy them, or Microsoft for that matter ... God knows, Microsoft could do with taking a leaf out of Apple's book and ditching a proprietary OS in favour of a solid Unix based one.

that would be interesting if ms bought sun. they could add a win32 api on top of solaris and improve the usability of project looking glass. and they can sell solid machines.

 

[bugfaceuk]

Meh.

Suns a fast dying company.

I used to think that, but I think it's beginning to find its feet.