I mentioned in my prognostications for 2005 that I had, for the last few years, predicted the decline/demise of Sun and Apple Computer. And I still do.

However, in light of the pretty damn good year Apple had last year, it made me think again.

However, I still stand by my statement(s). But allow me to clarify.

When I wrote (above) “Apple Computers” this was very intentional. I’m talking about Apple as a computer manufacturer. And the outlook for the company in that respect is still pretty bleak. MS still has a stranglehold on desktops (especially in the business environment, which is woefully undercounted in many surveys), and any inroads made against MS is by Linux, not Apple. Speaking from personal experience, the places I’ve worked have mainly broken down to some art/graphics folks having Macs, some portion of the hard-core techies running Linux desktops (on machines which had Windoze pre-loaded: Dell units; IBM ThinkPads and so on) and everyone else running Windoze.

Apple’s success recently is not in computers but in their foray into becoming an entertainment company: Itunes; Ipod and so on. Some of this may – at some point – translate to more Mac sales, but – right now – we’re just not seeing it. No halo effect.

So – to me – Apple is, at best, stagnant as a computer company.

Sun is a little more straight-forward and interesting.

All the pundits seem to paint MS as the next IBM, referring to the decline of IBM after they refused to acknowledge that their heavy-iron mainframes were becoming dinosaurs. (IBM bounced back by embracing the PC and – later – Linux.)

There is a certain amount of validity to that argument, but – to me – Sun is really the next IBM.

Sun is still pushing the same hardware (SPARC) and software (Solaris) that they were a decade ago. Yes, they’ve added Java to their software portfolio, but I’d wager that MS has made more profit off the Java-clone C# in the last couple years than Sun ever has off Java.

Sun reported a meager profit lately, but this was in large part due to an large injection of capital – in the form of litigation avoidance – from … [drumroll]… Microsoft.

While there still is a need for Enterprise 10000 servers put out by Sun, the demand is going way down. Less than a decade ago I worked for a small company that ran an old DEC mainframe. An expensive piece of hardware to own/maintain – but that’s what was needed. Today, you could throw that out, get a couple of blade units running Linux and have way less maintenance, greater speed and higher redundancy at a fraction of the cost.

Take Google for an example: They have huge farms of Linux/x86 servers. Know what they do when one of the units has problems?

Nothing.

If you have 10,000 servers, if one goes down, you still have 99.99% of your units running.

Have a cluster of five Enterprise 10000 servers and one goes down, you’ve lost 20 percent of your units.

To its credit, Sun keeps surviving, but I don’t know how long this can last. I have nothing against Sun; I learned (sorta) Unix on Solaris. But it’s a tough technical row to hoe with 10-year old tactics.

Know what I mean?