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Original poster
Apr 12, 2001
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Steve Jobs had a desire to launch an OS X-compatible Sony VAIO, according to a new blog post from longtime Japanese freelance writer Nobuyuki Hayashi (via The Verge). The account comes from a 2011 interview with former Sony president Kunitake Ando, who stated Jobs and another Apple executive presented him with a VAIO running OS X during a winter golf tournament in Hawaii.

sony_vaio_flip2-800x496.jpg
Most of Sony's executives spends their winter vacation in Hawaii and play golf after celebrating new year. In one of those new year golf competitions back in 2001, "Steve Jobs and another Apple executive were waiting for us at the end of golf course holding VAIO running Mac OS" recalls Ando.
Upon his return to Apple in 1997, Steve Jobs famously ended Apple's Mac OS licensing program for third-parties. However, Ando notes that Jobs was ready to "make an exception" for Sony's line of VAIO notebooks. Ando states that the partnership between the two companies never happened due to "bad timing" for Sony, as the company had finished optimizing both the VAIO's hardware and software specifically for Microsoft's Windows platform.

In addition to having a strong interest in the company's notebooks, Ando also claims that Jobs asked many questions about Sony's line of "SonyStyle" retail stores, which he believes led to inspiration for Apple's own retail stores. Jobs also reportedly inspired the GPS feature found in many of Sony's CyberShot cameras, as Ando recounts the former Apple CEO professing his desire for the feature upon using the product.

Article Link: Former Sony President Recounts Steve Jobs' Desire to Launch an OS X-Compatible VAIO
 

musika

macrumors 65816
Sep 2, 2010
1,285
459
New York
That was unexpected. It would've been really funny if he had wanted it on a Samsung laptop.
 

hrn

macrumors newbie
Feb 5, 2014
1
0
This is the history of Project Marklar... and how he ended up taking a flight to meet the Sony President. :)

http://www.tuaw.com/2012/06/10/how-marklar-os-x-on-intel-owes-its-start-to-a-one-year-old-boy/

Ok... this is the original link

http://www.quora.com/Apple-company/How-does-Apple-keep-secrets-so-well/answer/Kim-Scheinberg

Max (our 1-year-old) and I were in the office when this happened because I was picking JK up from work. Bertrand walks in, watches the PC boot up, and says to JK, "How long would it take you to get this running on a (Sony) Vaio?" JK replies, "Not long" and Bertrand says, "Two weeks? Three?"

JK said more like two *hours*. Three hours, tops.

Bertrand tells JK to go to Fry's (the famous West Coast computer chain) and buy the top of the line, most expensive Vaio they have. So off JK, Max and I go to Frys. We return to Apple less than an hour later. By 7:30 that evening, the Vaio is running the Mac OS. [My husband disputes my memory of this and says that Matt Watson bought the Vaio. Maybe Matt will chime in.]

The next morning, Steve Jobs is on a plane to Japan to meet with the President of Sony.
 

TonikGR

Contributor
Oct 29, 2013
7
2
UK
This is interesting!

In other news, Sony is said to be looking to sell PC operations. Wonder if there's anything of value that Apple could swoop up?

Or perhaps Lenovo will reconsider its previous position and buy Sony's PC line.

WSJ article
 

Tankmaze

macrumors 68000
Mar 7, 2012
1,707
351
I would buy that, vaio hardware design is also as beautiful as a mac.
If I would switch to windows, vaio is definitely my choice.

But this was probably when steve got back to apple around 1997ish maybe.
Edit : after reading the article this event happened in 2001.
 

MaulRx

Suspended
Aug 27, 2012
578
646
Little hard to believe but if had to be anyone it would have been a Sony product.
 

2457282

Suspended
Dec 6, 2012
3,327
3,015
My last Windows machine was a viao and that was my fist prebuilt machine as I had built my own up on til then. I really like the viao and I think Sony did a great job. But that was now 8 years ago. I don't know where they are at product wise, but as a company they are in a bit of a decline. They were a great company and I hope they can rebound.

In terms of this story, I cannot but wonder what life would be like if that partnership would have taken off.
 

frikova

macrumors newbie
Aug 5, 2011
9
5
MX
I'm glad it didn't happen, as probably Apple would not have been what it is today.

But, anyway:

Yi88X4n.jpg
 

alohamade

macrumors regular
Sep 13, 2012
143
13
My last Windows machine was a viao and that was my fist prebuilt machine as I had built my own up on til then. I really like the viao and I think Sony did a great job. But that was now 8 years ago. I don't know where they are at product wise, but as a company they are in a bit of a decline. They were a great company and I hope they can rebound.

In terms of this story, I cannot but wonder what life would be like if that partnership would have taken off.

I feel pretty similar, actually. My first laptop when I was eleven years old was a VAIO (2001-2002 ish), and that thing lasted like a tank and was quite the piece of work. Of course, I didn't know what a Mac was like then. :)

These "What If?" stories about possibilities and proposals from before really intrigue me, for some reason. Makes you think about what's potentially being discussed right now...
 

macnerd93

macrumors 6502a
Nov 28, 2009
712
189
United Kingdom
I call ******** on that.

its perfectly plausible. I remember reading in one of my many Jobs/Apple books, I think it might have been the iWoz biography, that when Steve returned to Apple he actually used a Toshiba laptop over an Apple one until his personal signature was put back on the Apple brand.
 

bushido

Suspended
Mar 26, 2008
8,070
2,755
Germany
had a Vaio before my last two macbook gens and it was the worst thing to upgrade. no driver support for future windows releases whatsoever. to this day i havent got the graphics and fn keys working again for windows 7. all the driver mess on MS actually was the reason i went back to Mac on top of windows messy registry
 

nobihaya

macrumors newbie
Oct 27, 2006
2
0
Thanks for reminding me!

Thank you hrn for reminding me of this story (and thanks, MacRumors for picking up this story with link to my blog).

I am the original author of this story; please come read my blog, if you had time:
http://nobi.com/en/

One of my friend actually told me about Marklar project; I also have many ex-Apple friends who worked for the original Mac OS X (and for project Millenium, if you know what it is).
I followed the link to Quora and even commented there, but completely forgot about it:
http://www.quora.com/Apple-company/...ecrets-so-well/answers/1280472/comment/989850

Now I can add that bit to my own blog.

Thanks again!

Nobi



This is the history of Project Marklar... and how he ended up taking a flight to meet the Sony President. :)

http://www.tuaw.com/2012/06/10/how-marklar-os-x-on-intel-owes-its-start-to-a-one-year-old-boy/

Ok... this is the original link

http://www.quora.com/Apple-company/How-does-Apple-keep-secrets-so-well/answer/Kim-Scheinberg
 

allpar

macrumors 6502
May 20, 2002
365
122
I agree with Steve Jobs, though. Vaio was at the time the very best designed hardware you could get for anywhere near the money, in my opinion. I ran tech for a small company and we had the IBMs, which were good but expensive (and any repair, no matter how small, would cost twice as much as the machine). We had a variety of other brands, Dell, Hitachi, Toshiba, etc. None could stand any abuse at all, and all would fail very rapidly in use.

The Vaio, with their metal construction, extremely light weight, and clever design, were the smallest, toughest, most durable laptops we could get, and they were cheaper than many of the competitors. Before long we had all Vaios and our problems were much less frequent than they had been. The down side was some of the guys didn't like the "Barbie look" of the pink ones.

I left before they had to be upgraded to new systems, though. I think we were on 98SE, ME, and XP, depending on the batch. (I specified 98SE when I could get away with it, until XP came.)

In 2001, the only non-Apple computer I would want running MacOS would be Vaio.
 

ArtOfWarfare

macrumors G3
Nov 26, 2007
9,544
6,042
As I recall, wasn't the design of the NeXT computer and it's assembly line inspired by Jobs visiting Sony? Didn't he base the decision to have a uniform clothing policy at Apple on Sony, too (other managers convinced him it was a bad idea, so it became his personal policy instead, that he would always wear his trademark turtleneck, jeans, and sneakers.)

I'm recalling all of this from the Steve Jobs biography, but I only read it once, right when it came out over two years ago.
 

Gudi

Suspended
May 3, 2013
4,590
3,264
Berlin, Berlin
My first Vaio melted under its own heat. The plastic casing break out in blisters. All Sony products I had developed problems over time. Can't recommend them.
 

crouchingtiger

macrumors member
Feb 15, 2004
48
28
I distinctly remember Jobs referencing Sony's laptops directly when he introduced the PowerBook G4 Titanium. Macrumors would be well served to dig up that keynote speech and confirm. Timing of this story seems a little bit off as presumably this must have occurred before the Titanium launch...
 

brinary001

Suspended
Sep 4, 2012
991
1,134
Midwest, USA
This would've been really coo to see imo. The Vaio line is beautiful, and though I'm with a MacBook Pro right now, I wouldn't call you crazy if you were from the future and said I'll own a Vaio at some point.
 
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