“Sun’s Desktop strategy–‘Project Madhatter’–is taking shape
and it dominated questions from the floor at an analyst session in
San Francisco today. In charge of Madhatter is Curtis Sasaki–Sun’s
VP of Desktop Software–who was at Apple at the launch of the
original Macintosh in 1984, led the IIGS project and then followed
Steve Jobs to NeXT where he spent several years. More from Curtis
in a moment.“Madhatter actually arrived in September: a small and sensible
announcement, but one concealed beneath billowing clouds of gwana
gwana so thick that both SFO and Oakland airports were closed
briefly, as landing was considered too dangerous.“Sun simply said it will do a Linux desktop, and sell it in
bundles of 100 or so. It will only target certain markets
‘transaction workers’–public and education and call center or
retail staff, and it isn’t at all a consumer ploy. Very prudent, we
noted, as diving into a full on desktop war with The Beast has been
many a man’s folly: Ray Noorda, Mike Cowpland are two…”