Michael Dell is most familiar to long-time Apple fans as the man who told a crowd in the late-1990s that, if he was running the company, “I’d shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders.”
With Aaron Sorkin and Danny Boyle’s Steve Jobs movie currently making waves, Conan yesterday unveiled his hilarious trailer for what a Michael Dell biopic might look like.
If you ever wanted to see a Hollywood version of the Dell story — complete with inspirational lines like “Don’t think different; think same” — this is probably the closest you’re ever going to get. Check it out below.
Michael Dell has, incidentally, backed down from his fateful “shut down Apple” comments in recent years.
During a Q&A at TechCrunch’s Web 2.0 Summit in 2011, he “clarified” the infamous statement, saying that he only suggested he would close shop at Apple because he was so dedicated to running Dell at the time.
No comment.
Luke Dormehl is a U.K.-based journalist and author, with a background working in documentary film for Channel 4 and the BBC. He is the author of The Apple Revolution and The Formula: How Algorithms Solve All Our Problems … and Create More, both published by Penguin/Random House. His tech writing has also appeared in Wired, Fast Company, Techmeme and other publications.
8 responses to “Steve Jobs movie is dramatic, but Michael Dell’s is hilarious”
In the late1990s, he was right. Hindsight.
He clearly wasn’t right. Even at the time, a lot of people thought it was a ridiculous thing to suggest.
The late 90s is exactly when the Apple revolution started when Jobs returned. He was clearly wrong about Apple but took his own advice and gave the money back to the shareholders.
Dell has never had anything but an efficient supply chain. Now everyone else–especially Apple–has copied that, and Dell has squat.
dell have now best laptop line ever. better than apple.
Hahahaha. Dell is still in the dark ages with slow out dated hard drives. Total FAIL.
DELL XPS15 ————- 512GB PCIe Solid State Drive
Apple 21.5-inch iMac – 500GB (5400-rpm) hard drive
dark ages? where?
kiss my…
What’s funny is look what happened to Dell, they effectively did what Dell told Jobs to do. Dell bought back all of the shares giving people small amounts of money while the company is just hanging on to low margin PC business. Freaking Dell. Yeah, one of the four letter words of the tech industry and it rhymes with HELL.