Steve Jobs had proposed to Dell to put Mac OS X on his PCs |Macgeneration

You just have to do much to change the course of the story.Here, what would have happened if, in 1997, Michael Dell had accepted the deal that Steve Jobs offered him, just returned to Apple's controllers to save the box on the edge of bankruptcy?At the time, the Jobs team had adapted what was going to become Mac OS X to Intel X86 processors (already!), Which of course motorized the computers of the Texan Assembly.

Apple's co -founder's proposal was as follows: Dell would give the choice between a preinstallation of Mac OS or Windows on his PCs.Michael Dell, who reveals the anecdote in his autobiography Play Nice But Win, replied that it is a great idea and that he is ready to pay license fees for each of his computers sold with Mac OS.But Jobs made a counter-offer by suggesting that all PCs had to embark the two operating systems, charge to the user to make their choice at start-up.

Steve Jobs did not want the license system to undermine Mac sales, because obviously Dell's PCs were much more affordable.The counter-offer would have allowed Apple to touch something on each sale of Dell computer, whether the user uses Mac OS or not.For Dell, it did not hold the road economically speaking.In addition, Steve Jobs could not engage in access to Mac OS for the three, four or five years to follow.

"It could have changed the trajectories of Windows and Mac OS on PC," says Michael Dell to Cnet.A year later, Apple launched the first iMac, and we know the rest.

This is not the first time that Steve Jobs has approached his counterpart with Dell to offer him a collected-tight partnership.In 1993, then at the head of Next, he went several times to Michael Dell's house, Texas, to try to convince him to install Nextstep on his PCs.Jobs argued that its operating system was better than Windows, and that Dell could devour the UNIX work stations market by Sun.

The problem, according to Dell, was that there was no use for this kind of proposal, and therefore no interest on the part of customers.The assembler still worked with Next, using his Webobjects software to design his first online store.Which served as an example to follow and beat for what would one day be the Apple Store.

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Friends and sometimes enemies

In 1979, Dell received from his parents an Apple II which he dismantled to see how it was inside.The following year, Dell and Jobs met for the first time at a conference, when the first was 15 years old and the second 25 years.The teenager had of course been caught up in the distortion field of reality that surrounded Steve Jobs during his demonstrations.It was five years later that he embarked on the computer business.

Between Michael Dell and Steve Jobs, we especially remember the bibbilles and especially the murderous remark of the PC manufacturer to whom we had asked, in October 1997, what he would do if he was holding the reins of a company tooin difficulty that apple." What I would do ?I would close the business and make the shareholders money!»».Steve Jobs did not keep him rigor, at least not immediately;The two men explained it and "[Jobs] understood and that didn't bother him too much".

But a few weeks later, during a corporate seminar, Steve Jobs used the famous sentence to motivate its employees!The boss of the apple had paid the vial of his competitor, because according to him Dell was jealous of Apple's efforts."In his position, I would probably have done the same thing," says a very magnanimous Michael Dell, "when your business fights for his survival, you have to do everything possible".

Despite everything, Michael Dell and Steve Jobs remained friends.He describes the one who left us ten years ago in this way: "We need dreamers and idealists, people who have an incredible and difficult vision of the way the future is combined, to advance thethings ".It is impossible to "follow the rules and do incredible things.In this regard, Steve was exceptional ”.