Michael Dell, famous for making affordable PCs with his name tattooed on ’em, is also infamous for once saying if he was CEO of Apple, he would “shut it down and give money back to the shareholders”. Well he totally didn’t mean it like that. Or kind of did. Or something. It’s confusing.
But Dell has finally backtracked on that 1997 comment! Well, I don’t know. You tell me. At the Web 2.0 Summit, TechCrunch asked Michael Dell if he regretted saying he would shut down Apple and Dell tried to explain that his answer was “misconstrued”. Um, I’m not really sure you can get any clearer than what you said Delly. Anyway, he said he first tried to dodge the question but eventually said what he really meant was:
“The meaning of my answer was that I’m the CEO of Dell, I don’t think about being the CEO of any other company, I’m not a CEO for hire, so if you asked me what I’d do for any other company, it’s not really something I think about.”
So it’s not Apple specifically! Dell only knows Dell and because he’s not CEO of Apple, he has no idea what he would have really done. Seems like a half-hearted attempt to cover his ass. To be fair, Apple back then wasn’t even close to being the Apple of today so it wasn’t like he was crazy for saying that. Also to be fair, if Apple did fail, I’m sure Dell would have never backtracked on his comment. [TechCrunch, Image Credit: Getty]
