How Sun Got Around to Not Buying Apple

A report citing former Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy reveals that Apple was set to be bought by Sun (the makers of the Java platform) back when Sun was up, and Apple was down.

The outcome would have spelled a huge loss for today’s consumers, suggests McNealy, who admitted that "If we had bought Apple, there wouldn't have been iPods or iPads ... I'd have screwed that up."

In a talk on Feb. 24 with another former Sun CEO, he revealed that Sun was poised to buy Apple when the former was wealthy, and in a good position to make expensive acquisitions.

"Back in late 1995 early '96, when we were at our peak, we were literally hours away from buying Apple for about $5 to $6 a share,” said former Sun CEO Ed Zander, according to eWeek.

“Honest to gosh, I was at an analysts' meeting in San Diego on a Tuesday morning and was getting ready to announce that we were going to buy Apple.”

“I don't know what we were going to do with it, but we were going to buy it. (Apple) had no CEO at the time, Steve (Jobs) wasn't there, but we didn't get it. Why didn't we buy it?" he said.

McNealy continued, "We wanted to do it," adding that "There was an investment banker on the Apple side, an absolute disaster, and he basically blocked it. He put so many terms into the deal that we couldn't afford to go do it."

Zander concluded, saying "Just think, that if that night had been different, I don't know what would have happened.”

Apple is currently the most valuable technology company in the world, with its stock trading at close to 350 at the moment, with the potential to scale up to 400 soon, according to multiple analysts.