In another one of those “close, but no cigar” moments, Bill Joy remarks about the recent switch of Apple to Intel processors:
“We got very close to having Apple use Sparc. That almost happened,” Joy said at a panel discussion featuring reminiscences by Sun’s four cofounders at the Computer History Museum here.
I’ll hazard a guess as to why it didn’t happen: because Apple isn’t stark raving mad.
Sun: Apple nearly moved to Sparc chips | News.blog | CNET News.com
[tags]Sun,Bill Joy,Intel,Apple[/tags]
Isn’t he talking about the switch from m68k to powerpc, rather than the recent switch to intel? That might have been a less clear-cut case.
Editor’s note: About an hour after I posted this, I wondered exactly the same thing. It seems strange for CNet to recycle this story (I believe the decision to go with PowerPC was made in 1991 for pete’s sake, almost fifteen years ago).  I suspect that if Apple had gone the Sun route, we’d still be seeing a shift to Intel today. 🙂