The Steve Jobs deal with Michael Dell that could have changed the history of Apple and technology

In the decade since Steve Jobs passed away on October 5, 2011, the iPhone, Mac and iPad have helped make Apple one of the most valuable companies on the planet, with over a billion people now making Apple technology a part of their daily lives. .

This is a big change from 1997 when, after returning as interim CEO of an Apple that was months away from bankruptcy, Jobs was looking for help and got a cash investment of $ 150. million dollars from Microsoft and Bill Gates and gave Microsoft’s Internet Explorer a boost over the popular browser Netscape Navigator. But what is less well known is that he also attempted to strike a deal with Michael Dell and his namesake PC company that could have changed the course of Apple’s history and technology forever.

In a brief published this week titled Play Nice But Win, Dell talks about its teenage infatuation with the Apple II; about meeting Jobs, who was 10 years her senior, in a group of computer users; and on the partnership that never existed: Jobs wanted Dell to license the Mac operating system – Mac OS X – and ship it to his cheap, fast-selling Intel PCs. And despite the media describing the two as rivals, Dell says he and Jobs have become good friends, with Dell describing Jobs, who died on October 5, 2011, as a brilliant entrepreneur, savvy marketer, and dreamer and idealist who has helped lead one of the biggest business turnarounds in history and helped popularize consumer electronics, including the smartphone.

“Anyone who wants to do something extraordinary has to take a somewhat different and unconventional approach,” Dell, 56, said in an interview with The legacy of jobs. “You can’t follow the rules and do amazing things. Steve was definitely exceptional in that regard.”

Meeting with Steve Jobs

Dell’s fascination with technology started when he was a kid, he says, playing with his father’s slide rules and adding a machine – “it made that incredible noise every time it passed” – before to buy a National Semiconductor calculator when he was only 8 years old. “I loved math and I loved this idea of ​​a calculating machine,” he tells me.

While taking a math class at his public high school in Houston, the school fortuitously got a TTY terminal. “For me, it was just amazing to be able to write programs. It was the dawn of the personal computer era, ”says Dell. “The idea that you could have your own computer and that you could program it was the coolest thing I could have thought of, and it got me started.”

This fascination led to the beginning of his “Steve Jobs story”. In 1979, when he was 14, he begged his parents to let him buy an Apple II, which he remembers costing $ 1,298 at the time. After arriving, Dell unpacked what he describes as a beautiful computer and then immediately took it apart to see how it performed.

“I have this conviction that you have to take something apart to understand it,” he said. “I wanted to understand everything there was about how this machine worked. The great advantage of the Apple II at the time was that each of the chips was clearly marked and you could see exactly what it was. There were books you could get that described how each chip worked. … I ate it all. “

At the age of 15, Dell says he viewed Jobs not only as an IT pioneer, but also as an entrepreneur after meeting the Apple co-founder in the spring of 1980, when Jobs, then 25, , spoke to the Houston-based computer. user group to which Dell belonged.

“When he walked into the room at our meeting, it was like the waters were parting,” Dell writes in his book, Play To Win. “He spoke with sweeping metaphors… he was saying – with his personal computers – people would have the capacity to accomplish the unthinkable.”

Five years later, after starting Dell’s PC business in his college room, he met Jobs and called him a friend.

Fast forward to 1993. Jobs, ousted from Apple after falling out with the company’s board of directors in 1985, had started a new company called Next and created a beautiful (but expensive) workstation, with his own operating system, as well as software called WebObjects for building web applications. Dell says Jobs came to his home in Texas several times that year, trying to convince him to use the Next operating system on Dell PCs by arguing that it was better than Microsoft’s Windows software and that it was ‘It could undermine the market for Unix workstations touted by Sun Microsystems. The problem, Dell says, he told Jobs, was that there was no app for it and no customer interest.

Still, Dell’s company did a bit of work with Next and used WebObjects to create its first online store in the mid-90s.

In 1997, Jobs joined a struggling Apple after acquiring Next for $ 429 million and presented Dell with another business proposition. Jobs and his team had ported Mac software, based on Next’s Mach operating system, and had it run on the Intel x86 chips that powered Dell PCs. Jobs offered to license the Mac OS to Dell, telling it he could give PC buyers the choice between Apple’s software or Microsoft’s Windows operating system installed on their machine.

“He said, look at this – we have this Dell desktop and it’s running Mac OS,” Dell tells me. “Why don’t you license Mac OS?” “

Dell thought it was a great idea and told Jobs it would pay a license fee for every PC sold with Mac OS. But Jobs had a counter-offer: he feared the licensing system would undermine Apple’s own sales of Macs because Dell computers were less expensive. Instead, Dell says, Jobs suggested he just load the Mac operating system with Windows on each Dell PC and let customers decide which software to use, then pay Apple for each Dell PC sold.

Dell smiles when he tells the story, saying the deal was a fine attempt by Jobs, but it was not “an economic proposition that made a lot of sense” since it would have to pay Apple hundreds. millions of dollars in licensing fees even though its PC buyers weren’t using Mac OS. Another problem: Jobs would not guarantee access to Mac OS three, four or five years later. This could leave Dell customers using Mac OS with no luck as the software evolves.

Still, Dell acknowledges that the deal was a moment in the history of what could have been.

“It could have changed the trajectory of Windows and Mac OS on PCs,” says Dell. “But obviously they went in a different direction.”

This different direction led Jobs to continue to evolve the Mac OS inspired by Next and to retool the Mac product line, notably by adding the candy-colored iMac in mid-1998. In October 2001, Jobs unveiled the iPod music player, followed by the iPhone in January 2007, a move that cemented the company’s expansion into the consumer electronics market. Apple Computer Inc. renamed itself Apple Inc. the day the iPhone was announced. The iPad appeared three years later.

“Apple’s archenemy”

Dell and Jobs have faced each other over the years, but have remained friends throughout the process, even after Dell made a quote at an industry conference in late October 1997, which led to him being considered to be what he says is “Apple’s arch enemy”. At the time, Jobs, who had only returned from Apple for a few months, was still trying to get the company back on track financially.

Dell was then asked what it would do to fix Apple if he was its CEO. After pushing the question twice, Dell says he finally answered, frustrated, “What would I do?” I would shut down the company and return the money to the shareholders. “

The quote went viral and Jobs was clearly checked off. Dell says he contacted Jobs and explained the background to what he now recognizes to be an “unprofessional” comment. “He understood and wasn’t too bothered by it.”

But a few weeks later, Jobs used the quote to help motivate his team, Dell says. Jobs hosted a corporate event to showcase Apple’s new manufacturing and distribution system and online store. He threw a large photo of Dell onto the screen behind him, eliciting boos from Apple employees. Dell says during the rally, Jobs took a hit at his expense, telling his team that Dell was fundamentally jealous of Apple’s efforts, given that Dell had pioneered build-to-order.

“I probably would have done pretty much the same if I had been in his shoes,” Dell tells me, adding this addendum to the story of Play Nice But Win: “When the company you created fights for his life, you do whatever it takes. “

Even so, the Apple-Dell rivalry, real or imagined, did not hamper their friendship, Dell tells me, commenting on Jobs’ legacy. “We need dreamers and idealists – people who have an amazing and difficult view of how the future comes together – to lead things.”