Michael Dell: Apple innovation ‘certainly different than what Steve would have done’

On October 6, 1997, in response to the question of what he’d do if he was in charge of Apple, Dell founder and CEO Michael Dell stood before a crowd of several thousand IT executives and answered flippantly, “What would I do? I’d shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders.”

For that, he earned the focus of none other than Steve Jobs:

The rest is history.

These days, Dell — who first met the Apple co-founder in 1980 as a coder teen and used an Apple II back then — is in a reflective mood.

“Certainly amazing how the smartphone, the iPhone has changed all of our lives,” Dell told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Tuesday.

“Steve was an amazing leader who changed the industry forever … changed the way we think about computing. Now we’ve got 5 billion people walking around in the world today with computers in their pockets and Apple was an enormous part of making that happen,” Dell said.

“Apple’s continued to innovate,” Dell said. “I think it’s certainly different from what Steve would have done. He had a different approach, his own approach. But Apple is an incredible company.”

MacDailyNews Take: Alternate headline: A grain of sand comments on the Hope Diamond.

Dell knows innovation like a chipmunk knows quantum physics.

BTW: Apple is currently worth 28.84 times the value of Dell.

I’ve got to hand it to Dell for being positive and gracious with these recent comments. Yes, an idiotic comment, but the poor guy has surely eaten plate after plate of crow for his “return the $$ to the shareholders” comment.

I probably would have left the country and lived undercover if I was in his shoes.