I have been saying this for years but there is no better fit. Here are the facts:

1. Sun make great infrastructure technology, but fail at marketing and consumer awareness

2. Apple are great at marketing and consumer awareness, but lack a distribution channel for their server products

3. Both companies know that the future lies in robust intuitive web applications - and that Java's time is yet to come. (Android may be it's saving grace, we will see.)

4. The informal connection between Google, Sun and Apple is a potential force for good. (Re Android, if it does get stuck, which I doubt due to the passion behind the open source community, the iPhone is a proven platform with massive potential for all parties.)

The time for a buyout should be now. Apple are on a role (fiscally and from a PR angle) and it is only at the start of a paradigm shift that opportunities can be taken. Else, MS will once again, move in where others have failed to take the initiative and it will be the late 1990s all over again. (Netscape was the great hope that never happened.)

"Sun spends a ton of time trying to woo start-ups and internet-savvy companies with its hardware and software. "

Of course, what is missing is a ton of money to start-ups and internet-savvy companies who will use their hardware and software. Then all their time would be spent delivering to the needs of new real businesses creating New Society Models.

Energise those Latent Assets, Jonathan, and you will have more than enough to keep yourself very busy Providing SaaS.

Two informative Sun videos here..... http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/

Jonathan Schwartz can certainly talk the talk but can he walk the walk and make IT Run Sun? With a Little Help from our Friends, he most certainly could.

And bizarrely, I cannot access http://www.sunspotworld.com/ from my browsers. Does anyone else have that anomaly? I trust it wasn't anything that was said and shared on its forums/blogs.

Sun can't deliver. Starts out with great ideas, overengineers and underdelivers.

If Apple bought Sun they'd end up with a lot of empty offices... Sun engineers may use MacOS in preference to Windows, but I know very few who'd want to work for SteveJ

years of experience VS none, not too hard to figure out what you use and sell it to others making something and then using it for real world do it or starve business, is an amazingly educational experience maybe Sun should try it.

"Have you ever tried to buy Sun hardware in EU if you are not a company with 1B+ turnover?"

Ring a reseller, get a quote, send a PO? Always worked for me...

As for cost, the x86 line is competitive with HP, IBM and Dell in price, UltraSPARC is going away, and Niagara works out cheaper is, and only if you have an app that can make use of the fairly exotic architecture.

The problem doesn't be that Sun are bad at building things, they build some very big and clever things. Building things that people actually want seems to be the problem...

Building grids that were aimed at customers big enough to have their own grids was a case in point. Amazon's customers can't build their own grids and SANs - Sun punted their at companies big and competent enough to do it all in-house, and had serious legal/data protection concerns.

And clearly, the software side is still riddled with Underpants Gnomes (which things are still called N1? What was that anyway?).

Where's the Jonathan Schwartz icon anyway?

Cheers

This would be a huge marketing coup and customers would be lined up for miles to use the service. They just need an attention grabber, then build the service later.