It's no secret that Steve Jobs has what some might call a vengeful streak. Witness, for example, how completely he obliterated the entire Newton project (despite his voiced attraction to the eMate)-- is there much doubt that the primary motive behind the axing was the Newton's association with former CEO and Jobs-firer Sculley? Oh, sure, you can argue that the Newton was unprofitable, that it was a money pit, that it lost the handheld wars-- but deep down, don't you believe that Steve was really flushing one of the remaining Sculley legacies? Because the Newton could have been turned into a wild success if Jobs had worked his inimitable magic on it, but we think he was happier to see the thing fail. And so it was goodbye Newton, hello Palm...

Now, if you take Steve's attitude towards the Newton, magnify it a hundredfold, and focus it on an external company, you have Steve's white whale: Dell. Ever since Michael Dell publicly said that if he were running Apple he'd "shut it down and give the money back to the stockholders," Steve's had his sights set on Dell-- which is pretty ambitious, given the vast differential between the two companies' revenues. Still, it's nice to aim high, right? Anyway, Steve took a shot back at Dell a couple of years ago when he unveiled Apple's new line of G3 Power Macs and the Dellesque online build-to-order Apple Store. In fact, he even had a "Think Different" commercial that was targeted at Dell-- though at some point he apparently decided that publicly chasing Moby Dell may not have been a good idea at the time, and the ad never aired. But what Steve has done is publicly note for the last several quarters how Apple is beating Dell's previously-industry-leading inventory numbers. Consider it a baby step.

Anyway, our point is this: if Apple really expects to tangle with Dell, it'll be a long battle, and one of the big weapons will be efficiency. Mike Dell himself is publicly predicting that one of the top five computer manufacturers will be forced out of the market within the next few years, according to a CNET article. Since he's talking about a company being dragged down by inefficiency, he's obviously not referring to Apple; he seems to be talking about Compaq, currently the largest PC maker in the game, whose cost structure is "about double" that of Dell's. What's interesting is that Compaq boxes are the ones that typically beat out the iMac at retail; if Compaq were really to drop out of the race, Apple might be on much better footing to snag even more consumer market share. And who knows? If Apple's actually decided to leap into enterprise sales by then, maybe Dell won't be such a huge target after all-- and maybe Steve will finally bag his whale (in the metaphorical, vegan-friendly sense, of course).