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Former Sony President Recounts Steve Jobs' Desire to Launch an OS X-Compatible VAIO
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Meh, I had a vaio a few years ago and can't understand why people equate sony to apple so much; it was plastic, the paint on the palm rest faded off in less than a year, the build quality was solid but not pretty, the drivers kinda sucked and the design had a lot of stupid decisions IMHO.. It seemed like a computer that was slapped together very quickly with little if any thought put into the design
Sony has always been one of my favorite electronics companies, probably second only to Apple. I used to own a lot of Cybershots back before I got a dSLR and went to college. They have a lot more integrity than Samsung, and they have made some pretty dang good products over the years. I'm glad to see them climbing out of their slump lately. Freaking love the RX100 that I picked up to take casual baby photos. Using a 1" sensor in a point in shoot is great, plus an f/1.8 sharp Carl Zeiss opticsand suddenly now I'm looking at Sony for my first mirrorless. Unless Canon does something by the end of this year I might even switch systems, and that's really saying something coming from me.
I remember back in high school, before I was a mac guy, I was always jealous of my friend's Vaio. My Inspiron broke the first week and had to be sent back. It was also really creaky and the Vaio seemed engineered better. Even so my Dell was still better than the POS Toshiba machines my grandpa went through. For a while there he was burning through them about one per year. He got my early 2008 MacBook Pro about 3 years ago and it's still going, though finally starting to have a couple issues with freezes that may be related to Mavericks. He upgraded from Snow Leopard to Mavericks on his own and SL was probably the better choice for that old machine.
I remember back in high school, before I was a mac guy, I was always jealous of my friend's Vaio. My Inspiron broke the first week and had to be sent back. It was also really creaky and the Vaio seemed engineered better. Even so my Dell was still better than the POS Toshiba machines my grandpa went through. For a while there he was burning through them about one per year. He got my early 2008 MacBook Pro about 3 years ago and it's still going, though finally starting to have a couple issues with freezes that may be related to Mavericks. He upgraded from Snow Leopard to Mavericks on his own and SL was probably the better choice for that old machine.
Had a Vaio from 2006-2010
After 4 years, the hinge became loose and the screen started flickering. And by that point, it was ridiculously slow and had poor battery life.
Now, I've been on a MBP for four years. Still going strong, fast, battery health is still at 84% with a 1037 cycles. Go
After 4 years, the hinge became loose and the screen started flickering. And by that point, it was ridiculously slow and had poor battery life.
Now, I've been on a MBP for four years. Still going strong, fast, battery health is still at 84% with a 1037 cycles. Go
A few years the MacBooks were plastic. Your point?
I got a vaio desktop in 2001, that stayed on 24h a day until 2011. Sure I had to replace the optical drive, by the end it had a few new cards and 4 internal HDDs but it was great. It just got too slow. I also had a sony tx ultra portable 11" laptop before netbooks were a thing.
That little thing, although expensive, was amazing. Built in 3G, carbon fiber shell and 7 hours of battery life with a DVD burner?!? Lasted from 2004 to 2009 when I accidentally broken the screen when I dropped a NYC bike lock on it. (The ribbon seemed to have popped off)
Back then the mainstream OS X was still running on PPC. I remember there were lots of posts from folks here giving all kinds of technical reasons why OS X could never physically run on x86 PCs.
Then came speculation that OS X could maybe run on an x86, in theory, but Apple would never let that happen because it was a huge step backwards, how superior the G5 chip was, and boy, once that PowerBook G5 came out (yeah, I went there
) how it would smoke the Intel Centrino competition.Then came the rumors that, indeed, not only was OS X on intel possible, but it was already working and a full on switch was going to happen. And again, lots of naysayers.
Yet here we are...
So I've learned to never say never.
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
Interesting. I wonder how serious the discussions with Sony got. If you recall, HP briefly sold a customized version of the iPod in 2002, so evidently Apple was interested in partnerships at the time.
2001 was 7 years before the introduction of the MacBook Air. The iBook was in its candy color plastic phase, IIRC. Perhaps Jobs liked the design of the Vaio and wanted to partner with Sony to get access to it.
My brother had a Viao where the power plug melted into the machine. The power jack and PSU both needed to be replaced. He was using the original Sony PSU too.
Shortly after fixing it he went and bought a MacBook Pro.
I do like Sony's camera though. I use them for YouTube all the time. I came from a PowerShot and the Cybershots are nice. Of course, most of my photos are taken on my iPhone, but if it had a wide-angle non-fish eye lens (like my Sony) it would replace it all together. (Ahem, Apple!)
If I were ever forced to go back to Windows, I would probably get a Lenovo. I have only heard good things about them.
I digress. I remember reading Steve wanted Marklar on a Viao and he went to Sony to discuss something, but I highly doubt Apple would have ever licensed OS X to anyone.
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It would have been great. Now that Apple seems to have completely abandoned us, 17" users and our notebooks are aging, we sorely need a replacement. Sony may have been much more willing to bring out large-screen, high-end notebooks for people that do need them.
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Yeah, the p-series, high-end Thinkpads have been great, particularly before the screen quality-wise not-so-good t61p. Before switching to the Mac, I used to be an avid a/tXXp user. Still have all those laptops (some handed down in family) - all in working condition, albeit some (e.g., the a31p triple-spin monster) with weak CFL backlight.
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Yeah, the p-series, high-end Thinkpads have been great, particularly before the screen quality-wise not-so-good t61p. Before switching to the Mac, I used to be an avid a/tXXp user. Still have all those laptops (some handed down in family) - all in working condition, albeit some (e.g., the a31p triple-spin monster) with weak CFL backlight.
Back in 2001, that was a smart move--if you were going to run OSX on PC hardware, Vaio would be the hardware to put it on. They were the most "Apple-like" of any of the Windows OEMs, to be sure.
That said, boy I'll bet that Sony exec wishes he'd taken Jobs up on the offer now. Sony's entire Mobile Products division, which includes the Vaio line as well as their mobile phones, grosses considerably less than the Mac alone for Apple at this point. It's not even fair to look at profit, since Sony is losing money in everything except semiconductors.
That's of course leaving aside the fact that at Sony's current $16B market cap Apple could theoretically buy the entire company for a few months' earnings.
It's interesting to imagine how different the world today might look if that meeting had gone differently.
That said, boy I'll bet that Sony exec wishes he'd taken Jobs up on the offer now. Sony's entire Mobile Products division, which includes the Vaio line as well as their mobile phones, grosses considerably less than the Mac alone for Apple at this point. It's not even fair to look at profit, since Sony is losing money in everything except semiconductors.
That's of course leaving aside the fact that at Sony's current $16B market cap Apple could theoretically buy the entire company for a few months' earnings.
It's interesting to imagine how different the world today might look if that meeting had gone differently.
So Jobs made the first Hackintosh?
Although it doesn't take up much HDD space, it does come with some. Please tell me why I need to have Notes & a Sticky app?
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Not surprising, but the Apple store from SonyStyle is a bit of a reach considering quite a few couture American and European fashion shops and mall clothes stores had that look for years. As many have said, including myself, Apple should have (still should) buy Sony and make it happen. Apple's development process has become so insular that they miss a lot of social trends that inform competitors and their customers. Having an alternate brand or two that will allow them to spread out and take a bit more risk would offer more reward than continuing to only look inward.
Always liked the design of many VAIO laptops.
And the VAIO logo is seriously great. Even insanely so. : )
And the VAIO logo is seriously great. Even insanely so. : )
I bought a VAIO laptop for school back in 2006, always loved it for it's design (quite good for a Windows-machine at that time) and because i never had a problem with it.
The VAIO is still running today, my mother uses it for surfing and mailing.
But some years ago Sony started producing some really bad notebooks and that's why Sony is where it is today - in huge financial problems.
Still VAIO is the windows-notebook of my choice. So i can understand why SJ was interested in OSX running on VAIO notebooks. He almost certainly would have many restrictions for Sony (like no 3rd-party-software or Sony-stuff preinstalled, or stickers on the notebook-body) but in the end we would have had some cheap(er) good quality OSX-running notebooks.
But i'm glad that never happened.
The VAIO is still running today, my mother uses it for surfing and mailing.
But some years ago Sony started producing some really bad notebooks and that's why Sony is where it is today - in huge financial problems.
Still VAIO is the windows-notebook of my choice. So i can understand why SJ was interested in OSX running on VAIO notebooks. He almost certainly would have many restrictions for Sony (like no 3rd-party-software or Sony-stuff preinstalled, or stickers on the notebook-body) but in the end we would have had some cheap(er) good quality OSX-running notebooks.
But i'm glad that never happened.
Sony IS kind of like Apple gone wrong if you think about it. The Walkman was the iPod of its day, and they've always had gorgous industrial design. In a perfect world, they'd have made a great fit with Apple, back in the day.