The Sad Saga of Silicon Graphics (1997) | Hacker News Reader

The Sad Saga of Silicon Graphics (1997)

businessweek.com

13 pointsprakash14 comments

A really awesome example of why tech columnists are terrible prognosticators of tech future.

Look out SGI, or you'll share the same fate as Apple! Hah! They wish...

Well, cut them some slack - the article is from about 9 months after the merger with NeXT, when Steve Jobs was still just interim CEO, and more than a year before the release of the original iMac.

Ed Catmull, Pixar gives a great synopsis of SGI's place in history during this talk.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2h2lvhzMDc

It's a small tragedy what happened to the Unix workstations of the 90's... The result of so many blunders is that we are stuck with matrioshka-style computers that can run PC-DOS.

It, at least, they could natively run Apple II, Atari or Beeb software, it would make me happier. The IBM PC was, by far, the dullest computer of its age and, weren't its descendants the only computers effectively available these days, it would also be the dullest. It's just that we have no options today.

SGI is even swallowing its pride and working on a workstation that will use Intel chips and Windows NT

That was the final nail in the coffin really. Everyone who'd kept the SGI faith up 'til then was told, we're orphaning all your MIPS and IRIX investment to date, tough luck. And Sun's Creator3D cards were "good enough". Buy became bye SGI.

I still have a T-shirt from their '96 developer conference, who'da thunk the free souvenirs would outlast the company...

This article is from 1997, but the comparison to Apple is amusing:

SGI's sexy image prompted a Wall Street analyst to label it the new Apple. Sadly for SGI, that may prove all too true. Now, like Apple Computer Inc., the Mountain View (Calif.) company is a stark anomaly in booming Silicon Valley.

I went and looked for the date after this sentence:

While rivals such as Sun Microsystems Inc. ride the Internet wave and even IBM enjoys a comeback, SGI has been mostly an onlooker at the tech party.

Yes, it is very interesting to look back at the ashes <-> roses transformations since 1997 (mostly roses -> ashes).

  --------

Ashes -> roses

* Apple

  --------

Roses -> Ashes

* SUN

* Java (debatable, but the article waxes poetic about Sun Microsystems "which stole SGI's panache and profits by turning its own interactive-TV efforts into the popular Net software Java" except Java never became very popular on the Net, more on the server side and embedded).

* Netscape

* HotWired and Virtual Vineyards (who?)

Well, Virtual Vineyards are : http://www.inc.com/magazine/19960615/1966.html

I don't think Java's status is really that debateable. It's a huge success, albeit not in the browser where it was originally targetted. Java changed the way IT departments look at software engineering, and to date its only significant competitor is a language designed expressly to compete against it by cloning its best features.

Hackers don't like it, and Sun never found a way to get much revenue from it. But Java as a product and a platform can only be described as an unqualified success.

I've never really understood why Java took off in the enterprise the way it did. Was it just the automatic garbage collection and no pointers was a killer feature over C++?

For a certain class of developers: yes, it is. The IT world needs to be able to build big projects with big teams of mediocre talent. They can't handle the pointer bugs of C++, not the runtime-only bugs of dynamic languages. Java was a breath of fresh air in this world.

hah, their Mountain View campus is now the Googleplex

The title should include the date of the article. I do remember the Silicon Graphics debacle and how arrogant some SG employees were before the blow-up of the company.

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