The Apple-Dell deal that never was -- and could have changed history

Speaker 1: I wanted to understand everything there was about how this machine worked. And the great thing about the apple two back then was each of the chips was clearly marked, and you could understand exactly what it was there. There were books that you could get that described how each circuit worked. And it was, it was very transparent, you know, unlike today, where you have like these huge black box, you know, chips [00:00:30] that, that combine all sorts of functions and it's really impossible to know what's inside. Uh, so yeah, I, I, I just ate it all up. When Steve went back to apple, he took next OS with him and it became Mac OS. And so he came to see me, you know, a couple of times and said, Hey, look at this, we've got this Dell, you know, desktop, and it's running Mac OS, you know, why don't you license the, [00:01:00] the, the Macs. Speaker 1: Great, sounds great. Uh, the only problem was, you know, he wanted a fee for every machine we sold, including the, the, the, you know, the, the windows machines. And he also wouldn't guarantee us access to the Macs like three or four or five years later, which created, did a real problem for us. So it was a, it, it, wasn't an economic, uh, proposition that, that made a lot of sense. [00:01:30] I think we need, we need dreamers and I'll say idealists, and, you know, people that, that, that have a, a, uh, unbelievable and, you know, uh, a difficult vision, right? For, for how, how, how, how the future comes together. I think, you know, anybody who's gonna do something amazing, you know, has to, has to have a, a somewhat different unconventional approach. You can't be following the rules [00:02:00] and making amazing things ha happen. And, you know, Steve, Steve was certainly exceptional in that regard.