[mendocino]

It is interesting to note that Apple now designes their own programming language, the compilers, the operating system, the processors and the products all that tech goes into. That's a pretty rare configuration of a company that hasen't existed since what? the 80s? [1]. That's a really unique opportunity to do really wild things, I hope they don't squander it. But I guess that requires a bold visionary, not of the Jobs type, more of an academic.

[1] I guess IBM still counts, but mainframes aren't that sexy anymore :)

[achille2]

Oracle. In addition they make their own Storage, Servers, virtualization, OS, Compilers, Database, Middleware and Applications.

- Storage: Storagetek

- Virtualization: LDOM, Xen (OracleVM), VirtualBox

- OS: Solaris, EOL Linux, and also Jrockit (Java running on top of Xen)

- Compilers: Java, Pl/SQL (Compiles to ADA bytecode), C

- Database: Oracle, MySQL, BerkeleyDB

- Middleware: SOA Suite

- Applications: Fusion Apps (EBS, PeopleSoft JDEdwards)

In Addition, Oracle has their own Appliances: Exalogix, Exadata, etc.

[yskchu]

Storagetek only does Tape; the Pillar division does real storage.

[mendocino]

Oh yes, absolutely.

[stusmall]

It wasn't too long ago that Sun SPARC systems were a thing. Still I agree, it isn't that often someone can scale vertically like this. Hopefully they do something interesting with it.

I'd love to see them use what they learn in the mobile space to push the boundaries in their workstation market and experiment with something outside x86. Since they've already been through the PPC->x86 jump it would be as painful of a transition both on the technical and the sales sides.

[dragonsky]

I think you would find that in moving the apple workstations away from x86 would cause them a lot of pain as they would lose all those that use the apple hardware to run both OSX and Windows. I would assume that Linux would be available for any future architecture but that can by no means guaranteed.

[dnos]

You might be able to group Google in that category too, depending on how far you take it.

In a way, I think it's exciting. It should allow them to do some cool things and Apple definitely has the resources to do such. Although, when I put my tin-foil hat on, I find it a little worrisome when one company controls everything. But ultimately I keep going back to my capitalism hat (don't ask me what it looks like) and I find it to be the best for us consumers for the competition it creates. :)

[batista]

>It is interesting to note that Apple now designes their own programming language, the compilers, the operating system, the processors and the products all that tech goes into. That's a pretty rare configuration of a company that hasen't existed since what? the 80s?

Not to mention a company that doesn't "innovate" and hasn't "invented anything" as haters say...