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I enjoy historical books about the rise, fall, and everything in between for companies in the industry — things like The Idea Factory about Bell Labs, Dealers o

by otras 1y ago

I enjoy historical books about the rise, fall, and everything in between for companies in the industry — things like The Idea Factory about Bell Labs, Dealers of Lightning about Xerox PARC, and Soul of a New Machine about Data General. Are there any books folks would recommend like that about Sun?

ecliptik 1y ago
I haven't read it, but High Noon[1] comes up in recommendations about Sun Microsystems history. 1. https://archive.org/details/highnoon00kare https://archive.org/details/highnoon00kare
- otras 1y ago
  Great, thanks for the pointer! I see it was published in 1999, so I imagine it’ll be a good time-capsule read too, even if it predates the dot com bubble burst and the eventual Oracle acquisition, though maybe that’s where the “Larry Ellison lawnmower” talk fills in well.
zombiwoof 1y ago
Jonathan Schwartz was the downfall of Sun
- rbanffy 1y ago
  Not sure anyone could save the company, but he didn't help one single bit. Sun never decided whether they were a hardware company of a software company. They had great hardware and software, but couldn't make much money with the latter. Failing to recognize software as a way to sell THEIR hardware was the biggest issue. When they decided to launch x86 workstations, I knew they were doomed. When they exited the workstation business, I knew it wouldn't be long. When you destroy all the on-ramps to your highway, it's a matter of time until the toll booths are empty.
  - asveikau 1y ago
    Solaris got disrupted by Linux, and their hardware was disrupted by Intel machines. When Linux on x86 is working well, there's little reason to shell out money for Solaris on SPARC. They had Java but that's also challenging to monetize. When it was introduced it was novel to have a portable C-like workhorse that has GC and bounds checking, but now there are many free options for that.
    - hylaride 1y ago
      It seems most things in tech (OS's, databases, languages, etc) eventually become a race to zero unless you can provide some long-term service-level support for it the way most cloud computing vendors have. Sun should have probably bought Joyent and gotten their rather huge corporate client base (financial institutions, etc) onto it, but even then it was probably too little too late.
      - cryptonector 1y ago
        Joyent was a reaction to Sun's acquisition by Oracle.
      - hypercube33 1y ago
        I'm getting into the history of Palm who seemed to be the pass around project for 20 years before hp burnt it to the ground. Are there any good books or something about the full history? Feels like all of these companies are woven together like a bowl of spaghetti...sun, oracle, google, apple, etc
      - rbanffy 1y ago
        > eventually become a race to zero Free and open source software commoditised almost every sliver of the market. A lot of the investment in cloud and AI is to recapture some margins by using access to training materials and high capital investments as entry barriers.
    - cryptonector 1y ago
      > They had Java but that's also challenging to monetize. Apple killed J2ME with the iPhone. Every success story Sun had was defeated by others. SPARC by Intel, Solaris by Linux (really, Google), and Java by the iPhone. Ditto for smaller products like Sun Directory Service.
abyesilyurt 1y ago
Are there any other books about the Bell Labs you would recommend?
- burningChrome 1y ago
  A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age In this elegantly written, exhaustively researched biography, Jimmy Soni and Rob Goodman reveal Claude Shannon’s full story for the first time. It’s the story of a small-town Michigan boy whose career stretched from the era of room-sized computers powered by gears and string to the age of Apple. It’s the story of the origins of our digital world in the tunnels of MIT and the “idea factory” of Bell Labs, in the “scientists’ war” with Nazi Germany, and in the work of Shannon’s collaborators and rivals, thinkers like Alan Turing, John von Neumann, Vannevar Bush, and Norbert Wiener. I also loved this one: Exploding the Phone: The Untold Story of the Teenagers and Outlaws who Hacked Ma Bell Exploding the Phone tells this story in full for the first time. It traces the birth of long-distance communication and the telephone, the rise of AT&T’s monopoly, the creation of the sophisticated machines that made it all work, and the discovery of Ma Bell’s Achilles’ heel. Phil Lapsley expertly weaves together the clandestine underground of “phone phreaks” who turned the network into their electronic playground, the mobsters who exploited its flaws to avoid the feds, the explosion of telephone hacking in the counterculture, and the war between the phreaks, the phone company, and the FBI.
  - plapsley 1y ago
    Thanks for the mention and honored to be in the same mention as Soni and Goodman's book on Shannon!
- commandersaki 1y ago
  UNIX: A History and a Memoir by Kernighan is also good, a lot of the happenings of Bell Labs is interwoven through the narrative.
mzs 1y ago
not a book but 2hr talk w/ QA: https://youtu.be/dkmzb904tG0 https://youtu.be/dkmzb904tG0 There was a blog by a lady who was an early HR employee, but I can't find it anymore.
mh-cx 1y ago
You might like The Dream Machine: J.c.r. Licklider and the Revolution That Made Computing Personal by M. Mitchell Waldrop Not really about a company, though.
thenthenthen 1y ago
Those are great! I picked up a copy of Nokia: The Inside Story at a thrift store and was pleasantly surprised. I will add more if something comes to mind.

by otras 1y ago

ecliptik 1y ago

I haven't read it, but High Noon[1] comes up in recommendations about Sun Microsystems history. 1. https://archive.org/details/highnoon00kare https://archive.org/details/highnoon00kare

otras 1y ago
Great, thanks for the pointer! I see it was published in 1999, so I imagine it’ll be a good time-capsule read too, even if it predates the dot com bubble burst and the eventual Oracle acquisition, though maybe that’s where the “Larry Ellison lawnmower” talk fills in well.

zombiwoof 1y ago

Jonathan Schwartz was the downfall of Sun

rbanffy 1y ago
Not sure anyone could save the company, but he didn't help one single bit. Sun never decided whether they were a hardware company of a software company. They had great hardware and software, but couldn't make much money with the latter. Failing to recognize software as a way to sell THEIR hardware was the biggest issue. When they decided to launch x86 workstations, I knew they were doomed. When they exited the workstation business, I knew it wouldn't be long. When you destroy all the on-ramps to your highway, it's a matter of time until the toll booths are empty.
- asveikau 1y ago
  Solaris got disrupted by Linux, and their hardware was disrupted by Intel machines. When Linux on x86 is working well, there's little reason to shell out money for Solaris on SPARC. They had Java but that's also challenging to monetize. When it was introduced it was novel to have a portable C-like workhorse that has GC and bounds checking, but now there are many free options for that.
  - hylaride 1y ago
    It seems most things in tech (OS's, databases, languages, etc) eventually become a race to zero unless you can provide some long-term service-level support for it the way most cloud computing vendors have. Sun should have probably bought Joyent and gotten their rather huge corporate client base (financial institutions, etc) onto it, but even then it was probably too little too late.
    - cryptonector 1y ago
      Joyent was a reaction to Sun's acquisition by Oracle.
    - hypercube33 1y ago
      I'm getting into the history of Palm who seemed to be the pass around project for 20 years before hp burnt it to the ground. Are there any good books or something about the full history? Feels like all of these companies are woven together like a bowl of spaghetti...sun, oracle, google, apple, etc
    - rbanffy 1y ago
      > eventually become a race to zero Free and open source software commoditised almost every sliver of the market. A lot of the investment in cloud and AI is to recapture some margins by using access to training materials and high capital investments as entry barriers.
  - cryptonector 1y ago
    > They had Java but that's also challenging to monetize. Apple killed J2ME with the iPhone. Every success story Sun had was defeated by others. SPARC by Intel, Solaris by Linux (really, Google), and Java by the iPhone. Ditto for smaller products like Sun Directory Service.

abyesilyurt 1y ago

Are there any other books about the Bell Labs you would recommend?

burningChrome 1y ago
A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age In this elegantly written, exhaustively researched biography, Jimmy Soni and Rob Goodman reveal Claude Shannon’s full story for the first time. It’s the story of a small-town Michigan boy whose career stretched from the era of room-sized computers powered by gears and string to the age of Apple. It’s the story of the origins of our digital world in the tunnels of MIT and the “idea factory” of Bell Labs, in the “scientists’ war” with Nazi Germany, and in the work of Shannon’s collaborators and rivals, thinkers like Alan Turing, John von Neumann, Vannevar Bush, and Norbert Wiener. I also loved this one: Exploding the Phone: The Untold Story of the Teenagers and Outlaws who Hacked Ma Bell Exploding the Phone tells this story in full for the first time. It traces the birth of long-distance communication and the telephone, the rise of AT&T’s monopoly, the creation of the sophisticated machines that made it all work, and the discovery of Ma Bell’s Achilles’ heel. Phil Lapsley expertly weaves together the clandestine underground of “phone phreaks” who turned the network into their electronic playground, the mobsters who exploited its flaws to avoid the feds, the explosion of telephone hacking in the counterculture, and the war between the phreaks, the phone company, and the FBI.
- plapsley 1y ago
  Thanks for the mention and honored to be in the same mention as Soni and Goodman's book on Shannon!
commandersaki 1y ago
UNIX: A History and a Memoir by Kernighan is also good, a lot of the happenings of Bell Labs is interwoven through the narrative.

mzs 1y ago

not a book but 2hr talk w/ QA: https://youtu.be/dkmzb904tG0 https://youtu.be/dkmzb904tG0 There was a blog by a lady who was an early HR employee, but I can't find it anymore.

mh-cx 1y ago

You might like The Dream Machine: J.c.r. Licklider and the Revolution That Made Computing Personal by M. Mitchell Waldrop Not really about a company, though.

thenthenthen 1y ago

Those are great! I picked up a copy of Nokia: The Inside Story at a thrift store and was pleasantly surprised. I will add more if something comes to mind.