Original text from SunWorld, February 1996 by Michael McCarthy and Mark Cappel.
This was such a bad idea that in the very same issue it was announced a potential Sun/Apple deal had fallen through.
CHM Sun Microsystems Founders Panel in which they discuss close encounters with acquiring Apple.
I’m glad Sun didn’t buy Apple because by the turn of the century Sun was in serious trouble. UltraSPARC III was delayed by two years, x86 caught up, the dotcom bust happened, everyone was broke, and Linux had matured to a point where it began creeping into the enterprise. Andy Bechtolsheim quote to that effect.
This was the second significant time Sun’s CPU group had difficultly keeping up with the Groveses: Microprocessor Report outlines the troubled design and production behind the “constipated” performance of SuperSPARC (1992).