Steve Jobs Wanted Sony VAIO Laptops to Run Mac OS X

Steve Jobs wanted Sony VAIO laptops to run Mac OS X, according to a new report from Japanese writer Nobuyuki Hayashi.

Akio Morita, the co-founder of Sony, was a hero to Steve Jobs and Morita also adored Jobs. "There are actually two American youngsters Morita was particularly fond of and took good care of: One was Michael Jackson, and the other was Steve Jobs" recalls Kunitake Ando, the ex-president of Sony, Inc.


Ando said that Morita often invited Jackson and Jobs to Sony and gave them personal tours. Due to their close relationship, the companies also worked together on some projects. For example, Apple's QuickTime team had helped Sony develop their ATRAC audio file format.

However, most notably, Steve Jobs actually wanted Sony to run Mac OS X on their VAIO notebooks, reveals 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.

While Ando liked Jobs, the timing was bad for the company. It had just finished optimizing VAIO's hardware and software specifically for Windows and the team behind the computer opposed the move, asking 'if it is worth it.' Thus, the idea never became reality.


Ando recalls that Steve Jobs would casually visit Sony. "He always calls me out of sudden and asks 'can I go visit you today?'" recalls Ando. And as soon as he enters Sony buildings, he explore it at his free will saying "everything I've ever wanted to do is already done at Sony. He often demanded to bring the latest Sony products to him. And in most cases, he already knew very well about the products inside out."

"Steve Jobs always had opinion on each of our product" said Ando. "When we launched PSP (PlayStation Protable), he complained why we were still using discs. He told discs are so out-of-date."

Notably, Ando reveals that Steve Jobs was the inspiration behind GPS in its Cybershot cameras. Taking a Cybershot in his hand Jobs said, "if this thing had a built-in GPS, I can record everything that happens to my life." Sony took that device and now many of its cameras do have built-in GPS. Ando says "this idea of built-in GPS for camera originated from Steve Jobs."

Finally, Jobs was very interested in SonyStyle, the company's retail business. He asked Ando why they were running it and how. Ando explained "volume resellers would sell your products well but they don't tell the customers what you want to do with your products. And that is what we want to do at our retail store."

"And that is exactly what we need" replied Steve Jobs.

More details in the full report linked below...

Read More [via Verge]