SunWrite (etc) stepping on ISV toes?

[Dave Taylor]

I was quite interested to see the announcement from Sun Microsystems at
UniForum of their trio of SunWrite, SunDraw and SunPaint.  Based on
technologies from Island Graphics (hi Dan!) the three appear to be an
attempt to position the Sun as a Mac replacement, as well as the
high-power Unix workstation that it is.

One thing I can't help thinking about, though, is that the third party
companies like Interleaf and Frame must be pretty unhappy with not only
the announcement of these products, but about the official McNealy stance
that Sun is going to continue to develop the package until they have a
"competitive publishing system".  Where will that leave these third party
companies?

Also, has anyone actually used the three packages in question, and can
they compare them to the Macintosh products of the same name?  I'm
especially interested in hearing them compared to the new generation of
MacWrite and MacDraw that have only recently been released by
Claris/Apple.

What do the rest of you SunSpot readers think?  Do you think that the
packages are "the wave of the future" and a sure sign that Sun is
continuing their dominance in the workstation marketplace?  Or is it an
early release of the so-called SPARCintosh group to get some revenue for
their imminent move to the new Menlo Park facilities?  Or is it a sign
that Sun is muddying the waters and isn't really sure who their target
market is anymore?  Or??

Thanks for the input: via email, please.

-- Dave Taylor

guest of HP Laboratories:  taylor at hplabs.hp.com

NOTE: My views most certainly do not represent the views of Hewlett-
      Packard, and quite possibly do not represent the views of anyone
      else at all ...