This article has been indexed from MacRumors: Mac News and Rumors – Front Page
The 10 year anniversary of Steve Jobs death took place earlier this week, sparking tech leaders to share their stories of Apple’s former CEO.
Dell CEO Michael Dell spoke to CNET, reminiscing about the time that Steve Jobs aimed to get Dell to license Mac OS to run on Intel-based PCs and how that might have changed the PC industry.
As the story goes, Jobs first approached Dell about a partnership after being ousted from Apple and establishing NeXT. Jobs wanted Dell to use the NeXT operating system on Dell PCs, and he claimed that it was better than Windows.
Dell told Jobs that it wasn’t going to happen because there were no applications for it and “zero customer interest.”
After Jobs rejoined Apple, he once again attempted a software licensing deal, trying to get Dell to license Mac OS. At the time, Jobs pushed Dell by telling him PC buyers could choose between Apple’s software or Microsoft Windows.
“He said, look at this – we’ve got this Dell desktop and it’s running Mac OS,” Dell tells me. “Why don’t you license the Mac OS?”
Dell thought it was a good idea and wanted to pay Jobs a licensing fee for every PC sold with Mac OS, but Jobs was worried about PC sales cannibalizing Mac sales because PCs were cheaper. Jobs instead wanted Dell to load Mac OS alongside Windows on every PC, which would have cost Dell hundreds of millions in royalties.
Dell smiles when he tells the story. “The royalty he was talking about would amount to hundreds of millions of dollars, and the math just didn’t work, because most of our customers, especially larger business customers, didn’t really want the Mac operating system,” he writes. “Steve’s proposal would have been interesting if it was just us saying, “OK, we’ll pay you every time we use the Mac OS” – but to pay him for every time we didn’t use it … well, nice try, Steve!”
The royalty cost dissuaded Dell from the deal, as did the lack of a guarantee that Dell would continue to have access to Mac OS years in the future. De
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Read the original article: Steve Jobs Asked Dell to Pre-Install Mac OS on PCs and Pay Hundreds of Millions in Royalties