Scott McNealy edges in farce-land
WinInfo | at | by Mike
You know, I love Scott McNealy. I really do. The Sun CEO isn't just a historical figure in the context of the computer industry, he's also a technology leader, a smart--even brilliant--man in his own, down home style, but he's also quite funny, and his anti-Microsoft rants over the years have never ceased to amuse. But recently, McNealy, whose company is increasingly--dare I say it--beleaguered thanks to competition from Linux and other open source projects, has ventured off the deep end. In UK this week for a technology forum, McNealy claimed that his company's approach to software development and its Solaris operating system give Sun a distinct advantage over Microsoft, a company that could--and does--squash Sun like a bug. How delusional do you have to be to make such a claim? As delusional as Steve Jobs telling Mac fans at MacWorld that Windows and the Mac together combine for "100 percent of the desktop market," when 95+ percent of that was Windows, I guess. Here's what the Master of Deception had to say, in his own words. "Our interfaces are open, so when there is a system problem we get help from the industry, but Microsoft flunked Sharing 101. I think that was a third year Harvard course," he said. The idea is that Sun's software interoperates with everything, while Microsoft's, in Sun's opinion, only interoperates with Microsoft's software. Open your eyes, Scott. You might discover the world you live in is starkly different from the one you imagine.