Nobuyuki Hayashi:
Most of Sony’s executives spends their winter vacation in Hawaii and play golf after celebrating new year. In one of those new year golf competitions back in 2001, ” Steve Jobs and another Apple executive were waiting for us at the end of golf course holding VAIO running Mac OS” recalls Ando; 2001 is the year, Mac OS X shipped and I am speculating this is Intel-version of Mac OS X, they hid for four and half years since then.
When Steve Jobs regained the control of Apple back in 1997, one of the first thing he did was to close all the Mac-compatible deals claiming it is destroying Mac’s eco-system. UMAX CEO almost got a deal with Steve Jobs that they’d become the sole manufacturer of Mac-compatible but Jobs ultimately decided otherwise. Steve Jobs believed that Mac-compatible business would harm not only Apple’s business but also the ‘Mac’ brand.
But that same Steve Jobs was willing to make an exception in 2001. And that exception was Sony’s VAIO.
If it’s true, it’s pretty wild. Jobs was very secretive about projects, but of course, there’s this story about Apple using VIAOs during the run-up to Intel Macs.
Additionally, while OS X on Intel was developed in secret, it’s grandfather NeXTSTEP ran on Intel processors. Jobs even ran OPENSTEP on a ThinkPad after returning to Apple.
Apple and Sony share a long history — the former built the floppy disk drive for the original Macintosh, so maybe it’s not so crazy after all.
Interestingly, when introducing the MacBook Air in 2008, Jobs compared it to the Sony TZ series of notebooks. While I’m sure this didn’t have much to whatever went down years earlier, you can’t help but wonder if it was a subtle jab at Sony’s leadership.