Imagine if Apple never had to launch the iMac in 1998!ĭespite the deal falling apart and several other differences of opinion over the years, Dell remained friends with Jobs. This would put Dell customers in a spot as Mac OS evolved since the company would not be able to provide customer support for it.ĭell said, had the deal gone through, “It could have changed the trajectory for Windows and Mac OS on PCs” and we couldn’t agree more.
Additionally, at the time, Dell wasn’t guaranteed access to Mac OS in the future. The royalty costs caused the deal to fall apart since Dell lost interest. “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 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. However, this would have cost Dell hundreds of millions in royalties.ĭell smiles when he tells the story. Jobs actually wanted Dell to load Mac OS alongside Windows on every computer sold. However, Jobs was worried that this would chew into the Mac’s market share because Dell PCs were cheaper. “Why don’t you license the Mac OS?”ĭell was convinced and offered to pay Jobs a licensing fee for every Dell computer sold with Mac OS. “He said, look at this – we’ve got this Dell desktop and it’s running Mac OS,” Dell tells me. Jobs persuaded Dell saying that PC buyers could choose between Mac OS and Microsoft Windows.
Dell refused, citing valid reasons that there were no applications for it and there was “zero customer interest.”Īfter rejoining Apple, Jobs reportedly tried pitching Mac OS to Dell in another licensing deal. Jobs claimed that the NeXT OS was superior to Windows and wanted Dell to use it on his company’s PCs. Had that materialized, it could have changed the PC industry as we know it.Īccording to Dell’s narration, the late Apple co-founder first approached him for a partnership after establishing NeXT following his exit from Apple. In a nostalgic conversation with CNET, Dell CEO Michael Dell revealed that at one time, Steve Jobs wanted the company to license Mac OS and run it on Intel-based PCs.
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