Steve Jobs wanted Sony to use Mac OS on Vaio notebooks
One of the things that helped Apple to make Mac computers more attractive to a range of users out there was the move from PowerPC to Intel processors way back in 2005. With that move, it meant that people interested in Mac machines that couldn't give up Windows entirely could run both operating systems on one computer. An interesting potential deal between Apple and Sony has recently come to light.
A Japanese journalist named Nobuyuki Hayashi claims that a former Sony president named Kunitake Ando told him of an interesting meeting held between Sony and Steve Jobs in 2001. Ando says after a round of golf with other Sony executives in Hawaii, at the end of the course stood Jobs and another Apple exec with a computer in hand.
Ando says that the two Apple workers were holding a Sony computer running Mac OS. Jobs is said to have told them that he liked the Sony line of computers so much he would make an exception to the clone killing Apple usually undertook and allow Sony to make Mac OS computers.
Ando says that the timing was bad and that sales of Sony laptops were starting to take off and no deal was ever reached. The story may be a bit hard to believe, but Jobs reportedly had a respect for Sony and other execs at the firm reportedly had Mac OS running on Sony hardware around the office. Had the deal between Sony and Apple been successful, we might have a number of computer makers building Mac machines today. Yesterday word surfaced that Sony wants to sell its PC business.
SOURCE: The Verge