In 1997, after Jobs returned to Apple, the company he helped found in 1976, Dell’s founder and chairman, Michael Dell, was asked at a technology conference what might be done to fix Apple, then deeply troubled financially.
“What would I do?” Dell said to an audience of several thousand information technology managers. “I’d shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders.”
On Friday, apparently savoring the moment, Jobs sent a brief e-mail message to Apple employees, which read: “Team, it turned out that Michael Dell wasn’t perfect at predicting the future. Based on today’s stock market close, Apple is worth more than Dell. Stocks go up and down, and things may be different tomorrow, but I thought it was worth a moment of reflection today. Steve.”
The message was prompted by the 12 percent surge in Apple’s stock price last week, which pushed the company’s market capitalization to $72.13 billion, passing Dell’s value of $71.97 billion.
No comment.
Mr. Jobs omits the massive bailout from Microsoft for some reason. Dell hasn’t needed charity. I’m not convinced that MS has relinquished control either.
Amazing how out of date folks can get. The money loaned by M$oft, quite a few years ago, was repaid with interest — quite a few years ago.
Yeah I knew all the excuses would come out!
Stop spreading the bailout lies. It was over half a decade ago and hardly a bailout. Microsoft bought $150 million in non voting stock (out of what was an $8 billion company at the time) as a vote of confidence. The stock was sold several years ago at a profit. Steve Jobs had returned and fixed the ship, and Apple had over a billion dollars in cash at the time and did not need a “massive bailout”
LOL… what was it 100 million… how much cash did they have on hand at the time? about a billion dollars… Apple has consistently had a large amount of cash in short term investments… That whole thing was nothing more than a publicity stunt.
Of course MS copied and to this day copies. They got the mouse from Apple and now they’re stealing tabbed browsing from The firey Fox.
I’m glad that Apple is doing well, they deserve it. Their products are excellent and un-mateched. The iPod was their saviour and rightly so, it’s way better than its apparent “competitor”. The Zen… hahaha… that’s also a spiritual ideology. Do they want people to shout in prayer and hymn while listening to music or something? It’s also the name of a low-end economy car in India. The Zen… sheesh. And now they’ve got ZENcasts.
“Yay ZEN casting! It’s the future. We podcast in deep meditation!! woohoo!” – what next?! The ZenBook Pro?
Market value really means very little. Either Dell is undervalued or Apple is over-valued as Dell probably sells 5x as many computers.
Apple needs to need some headway with the Intel Macs to keep the faith.
Sailing up the Egyption river… de-nile.
“Then at the August MacWorld Expo, Apple cofounder Steve Jobs stunned the masses by accepting a $150 million bailout from Microsoft. Apple executives claimed it was the only way to save the beleaguered company.”
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/1997/web.whatnext/hit.miss/miss07.html
Apple doesn’t need the $150 million as much as it need positive press. Microsoft’s investment has helped to significantly raise the value of Apple’s stock. In my view, this is because the public perception of Apple Computer’s financial standing increased dramatically when the deal was announced. Ironically, because of the increase in Apple’s share price, Microsoft’s investment in Apple has also increased significantly in value.
http://www.atpm.com/3.09/page5.shtml
I wonder what you Apple heads would say if Apple bought some of MS’ stock when their share price was plummeting, causing MS stock to rise and then selling it a few years later?
Dell is selling hoards of Intel product whereas Apple is selling only a trivial amount of MS while also competing against MS. That’s an obvious difference don’t you think? Also Apple was facing a serious stock slide whereas Dell and Intel cut that deal while the good times rolled. In other words Dell gets the money because of its strength; Apple got the money out of MS’ need to deflect legal and PR problems, legal and PR problems not caused by Apple but that would have been caused by Apple’s implosion (likely bankruptcy).
To all you Apple defenders. You know Apple is a corporation right? And that if you dropped dead tomorrow they won’t care? I can understand people getting passionate about Linux because of the volunteerism but Apple is just a company that builds computers to make money. Overpriced computers, that are overpriced mostly because they look good not because they work well. They lie and cheat and steal just like other public corporations do. Find a real cause. If you’re having trouble I can suggest a few.
Milo, how about this more article.
“Microsoft answered that Steve Jobs wanted Microsoft to make a visible commitment to Apple and to the Macintosh and wanted Microsoft to become an investor. Microsoft agreed to do that because an investment seemed to make sense.”
Not to mention that Microsoft also got Apple to make IE the default browser as a part of this deal. The whole event was a two way street. If you want a better analysis, try . I trust them a bit more than that CNN report you quoted… That was a bit “Star Magazine” for me.
Well Peter you certainly have faith in MS’ press releases. I refer you to the second paragraph in my last post.
Steve I don’t know how you can criticize Dell for limiting CPU choices and not criticize the Mafia for killing people. Probably because this thread is about Apple, not about the millions of other institutions on this earth worth criticizing. I briefly addressed what you said but I’m not going to sit here all day playing moral equivalents. You can say whatever you want on the web about what computer you use, I don’t care because it could just as soon be a lie.
> From Simran:
>They got the mouse from Apple
Try again. Microsoft AND Apple “stole” the mouse from Xerox PARC.
>and now they’re stealing tabbed browsing from The firey Fox
Once a program has a feature that is deemed popular, other programs will adopt that feature. Was it not Opera that had tabs first and was copied by Mozilla?
Mr. Jobs omits the massive bailout from Microsoft for some reason.
Trivial.
The real issue is Microsoft’s Office, not “cash”.
That “massive” investment was insignificant to IE being the default browser, and Microsoft agreeing to keep producing Office for the Mac.
Keeping Office on the Mac is so vital to the Mac’s success, Apple just signed another 5-year deal with M$.
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2006/jan06/01-10Macworld2006PR.mspx
“Microsoft Corp.’s Macintosh Business Unit (Mac BU) today announced at Macworld Conference & Expo 2006 a formal five-year agreement that reinforces Microsoft’s plans to develop Microsoft® Office for Mac software for both PowerPC- and Intel-based Macs.”
Why do they need/want a “formal agreement”???
Wow, this is getting pretty heated. Weird.
Doesn’t anyone else see it as a little crazy that a COMPUTER company was saved by selling a (Sony) Walkman-type device instead of its core product i.e. COMPUTERS??? Hopefully the App-Intel alliance will allow them to gain more than a 3% market share.
I keep thinking the bottom has to fall out sometime once market saturation is realized i.e. everyone and their mother owns an ipod, but that doesn’t seem to be happening. It’s some kind of crazy mindset that they’ve created in their users to upgrade a perfectly good $400 music player for a nearly identical $400 music player that now has a color screen, or now plays video clips, or is now 1cm thinner, etc. Rolling out an incremental feature each year and selling the ipod as a lifestyle is pure Marketing genius.
Acutally it was BookLink Technologies with its InternetWorks browser that was first with tabs. 1994 that was. The idea is not new.
Though Opera “independantly” came up with it around the same time (but only released a working public version in ’96).
A zealotism, never letting facts get in the way of retoric 😉
I also believe that Douglas Engelbart invented the mouse around 1963. Bill English created an improved model in the early 1970’s at Xerox PARC.
http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa081898.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_mouse
Simple fact of the matter is Apple is innovating society in the entertainment area more than microsoft or Dell.
Ipod, Itunes, Superior art and music programs. The only thing Dell has innovated is the extended warranty and outsourcing.
Microsoft is xbox, and thats it for innovation. Oh yeah Viruses Invasions Spyware Trojans Adware. I’m sure the virus authors and mass mailers are having a great boom thanks to Microsoft.
“Market value really means very little. Either Dell is undervalued or Apple is over-valued as Dell probably sells 5x as many computers.
Apple needs to need some headway with the Intel Macs to keep the faith.
Comment by Pete Findlay — 1/16/2006 @ 11:48 pm”
Well Apple probably makes more money from the sale of one copy of iLife than Dell does from one of their sub-$500 shit-box PCs.
Dell sells a *lot* of stuff, but the vast majority of it is ultra-cut-rate junk. GM sells a lot more that Porsche does, but Porsche is insanely profitiable, and GM sells (Vette excluded) massive ammounts of irrelevant garbage.
“Microsoft is xbox, and thats it for innovation. Oh yeah Viruses Invasions Spyware Trojans Adware. I’m sure the virus authors and mass mailers are having a great boom thanks to Microsoft.
Comment by Incognito — 1/17/2006 @ 3:40 pm”
Aside from losing billions upon billions of dollars in new and exciting ways, I don’t quite see how the Xbox is innovative in whatsoever.
Losing money has nothing to do with it. Microsoft can’t give money away fast enough to ever be broke. Bringing a great entertainment system is. That is the only thing Microsoft has that is making headway at the moment.
Michael Dell needs either a bigger face or a smaller head. You could do a complete geometry lesson based on his head. It’s a big hexagon with Mr. Potato Head ears.
He kinda looks like Dubya trying to answer an easy question.