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Taking It All Back (8/29/99)
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One thing about Michael Dell-- you won't see him stubbornly sticking to a public statement he once made if swallowing his pride will make more money for his company. The infamous statement to which we refer, of course, was his comment a couple of years ago that if he were running Apple, he'd "shut it down and give the money back to the stockholders." Wow. Not much confidence in Steve Jobs or the power of the Macintosh faithful, huh, Michael? And since then, it seems that Steve has adopted Dell as Apple's personal corporate rival; there were (unaired) Dell-targeted commercials, Dell-beating inventory levels, etc.
But Mike, while never explicitly admitting he was wrong, is owning up in one of those "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" ways. According to a Reuters story, at the recent Dell DirectConnect customer conference, Mike gave the crowd a "glimpse of a small, stylish computer it will begin offering this fall"-- a computer that's targeted at the "cool consumer." Gee, what could have inspired the creation of that "small, stylish computer"? Could it possibly be the phenomenal consumer sales success of the iMac? A system made by a company that Dell himself had valued at no more than the cash it could raise by shutting down? Hmmm, interesting.
Now, while we seriously doubt that Dell would do something as silly as making their "small, stylish computer" resemble the iMac, we sincerely hope they do-- because the ensuing lawsuit would be great fun. Sure, it's kind of cool to watch Apple take on the likes of Future Power and emachines, but a legal battle between Apple and Dell would be entertainment gold, baby. Aw, heck; let's just throw Steve and Mike into a big metal cage, toss in various implements of destruction, and see who's left standing at the end.
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SceneLink (1748)
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And Now For A Word From Our Sponsors |
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 8/29/99 episode: August 29, 1999: Power Mac G4 specs and pricing make their way onto the 'net-- so are they real, or what? Meanwhile, Apple's stock continues its "meteoric rise" following another analyst upgrade and Seybold just days away, and Michael Dell (sort of) admits he was wrong by introducing an iMac-inspired consumer PC...
Other scenes from that episode: 1746: Spilling The Beans (8/29/99) Well, we sat on some "very interesting information" all weekend, concerned that we'd be the ones spoiling the potential surprise, but now that the exact same info has surfaced at Accelerate Your Mac, Think Secret, and various other virtual locations (and will likely spread faster than the Melissa virus), we figure we can probably discuss it with impunity... 1747: $65 With A Bullet (8/29/99) Speaking of Seybold, it's not uncommon for a Steve Jobs keynote at any event to spark some higher trading of Apple's stock. So what'll happen on Tuesday after Steve announces whatever it is he's going to announce?...
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