And at the Gartner Symposium and ITxpo97 here today, the CEO of competitor Dell Computer added his voice to the chorus when asked what could be done to fix the Mac maker. His solution was a drastic one.
"What would I do? I'd shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders," Michael Dell said before a crowd of several thousand IT executives.
Dell's comments follow Steve Jobs's keynote address at the Seybold trade show last week in San Francisco, where the Apple cofounder seemed to win over attendees with his explanation of why he had made certain key decisions, killing the clone market and aligning more closely with Microsoft. The Seybold crowd--as well as some Apple employees--also seemed to be buoyed by the increasing role Jobs has taken on at the company as board member and interim CEO.
But others, like Dell, appear to think that Jobs's expanded role isn't helping. There is some concern that Apple will have a hard time recruiting a top-notch CEO because of Jobs's presence.
Others fear that Apple could end up completely in Microsoft's camp by deciding to use the NT operating system on its servers. Apple is reportedly planning to come out with network computers that would require high-end servers to function.
While many industry executives have offered opinions on how to right Apple's ship, no high-level executive has made as blatant a comment as Dell's.
Steve Jobs has been assaulted for decades as a spendthrift, hopelessly devoted to research.
Well, what other company makes a COOL downloadable TV the size of a cell phone?
Just pay your engineers enough to design a good product Michael and you won't have to sound so silly all the time. Oops, sorry times up....Here drink this iTonic and you'll forget you were ever in the Tech Industry....just like everyone else has......AND....If you know the right people you might even wind up working for a record label some day.
Lame...so, so lame.
brendan
I'd be careful complaining about Michael Dell being weird. Look
more carefully at the date on this article. He said that back in
1997. I doubt he'd suggest closing Apple today.
Good luck in your future career.
Dave
This was copy paste e-mailed to me today and I raged into a response mode.
Not sure there aren't those who feel that way now about Apple who deserve such a tirade but that doesn't stop me from being lamer than Michael Dell. That is the price I pay for not reading the header....hmm
But still....Apple doubters have paid a bigger price for thier lack of vision than I ever will for being hasty to come to Mac's defense.
I do stand corrected,
brendan
has kept Dell running as a company. It's difficult to picture Michael
in that role. So maybe Michael is just a powerless figurehead? And
if so, who's really running the store???
are up $9.02, at $146.28. With 864,948,000 shares outstanding,
Apple has a market value of $126,524,593,440.
DELL are valued at nearly half that - just $66,172,115,820
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If ever there was proof of Michael Dell being a complete putz, this must surely be it.
How does it feel, Michael, to know that in the period of time that includes the DotCom crash, you sat on your posterior doing nothing while the object of your derision rode the wave of each significant industry trend, and could now buy your company and shut it down just for the LOLz?
Putz.
- by JonnyNoxious March 4, 2009 9:30 PM PST
- I know this is a really old article, but I'd say that Michael Dell is the usual near-sighted businessman. Near-sighted in that he has no long-term vision of/for the future. Steve Jobs is a "big picture thinker," which is why he's more famous/respected than Michael Dell. We can talk all day about market shares, etc.. but Michael Dell didn't really do anything special: He started sourcing components, assembling those into a working computer, then licensing an operating system he had absolutely NOTHING to do with.
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- by SJokay March 22, 2009 10:57 AM PDT
- Apple uses the same components as other PC manufactures. Essentially, Apple makes PC's. It is OS X that sets them apart from the crowd.
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(13 Comments)His computers were crap then, and they're crap now. I don't give a rat's @ss about how many companies that use Dell, etc (see: Institutional/Corporate discounts/giveaways). Apple builds a better machine (or, rather, sources and assembles FAR better components) , and I've all the manufacturers (including some from outside this country).
I'm not a fanboy, either. I used Windows 3.1-Windows XP. That's the last version I actually owned, and it will be the last.
Granted, Apple offers one of the best 'packages' to the consumer on the market (cool looking cases, packaging). However, I'm a firm believer that if other manufactures charged a premium like Apple did, and reconstruct their offerings to reflect this, the "quality" line would be blurred.
At this point in time, in my opinion, OS X is the best consumer desktop OS, especially since Microsoft pulled the distribution plug on XP (or made the process of obtaining XP harder). I think XP was the better overall OS from 2001-2006, but has become outdated since. MS may gain ground on the 'new OS' market when Windows 7 is retail, but until then, people are looking for better alternatives to Vista.