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Former General Electric CEO Passed on Buying Apple for $2 Billion in 1996
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Many people think like this nowadays. They're afraid they might miss out on the next big explosive company so investors are quick to jump on up and coming start-ups like Facebook, twitter, gopro, etc...some are busts and few are ever successful.
Jack Welch would have been so focused in identifying the "bottom 10%" of employees every year (it's in his book) that he would've finished driving Apple into the ground.
It's like learning to ride a bicycle, the bike naturally goes where you are looking.
Interesting. Apple can just do what it wants now - if the stock price falls it has enough cash to buy itself off the market, and stop the nonsense analysists.
Skipping, of course, the ... iMac ...........
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The fans have steve jobs to thank, not microsoft, as bill gates didn't initiate the deal. Steve jobs initiated it when microsoft was faced with being broken up by the clinton administration for monopoly. It was in microsofts best interest to take the crappy deal and to also develop (hundreds of millions of extra dollars and man power hours) the MS office suite and IE for the macintosh.
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'Now, I'd like to talk about meaningful partners' Steve Jobs Macworld Boston August, 1997
http://www.mac-history.net/apple-hi...ve-jobs-returns-bill-gates-appeares-on-screen
May 18th, 1998 US Justice Dept files Anti-Trust violations against Microsoft Corp.
Whether or not it provided actual legal cover or was just about PR and appearances, the timeline certainly supports the 'myth'.
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Glad I bought thousands in Apple stock back in the early '90s when it was around $3 a share. And people said it was stupid to buy a company that was headed for bankruptcy.
Steve Jobs would have STILL developed his vision and products with his own company and that's as far as we can safely assume; yeah Microsoft played a financial aid role but no one is going down on their knees dude, you can also stop drinking from the "Apple should thank everyone for their success" tea pot and the Microsoft cool aid pitcher man. LOL.
I am just thankful to everyone that has made possible for us to enjoy such fantastic products in the last three decades, from Apple to Google and every other tech company in between.
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If GE had bought Apple back then, I am very confident that Apple wouldn't exist today. Jobs is what made the Apple we have today... the company was floundering and ready to go away without him. Today, its got a more substantive structure to continue without him... but time will tell how long that goes.
It's a far more interesting question you're asking - would Steve have still been able to bring products like the iPod, the iPad, and the iPhone to market w/o Apple? Personally, I doubt it.
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I sure hope we aren't suggesting GE were "idiots" for passing on that deal. Hindsight is always 20/20
Jack Welch is an evil troll, personally responsible for creating some of the hellish conditions that white collar Americans have been living under for years. So glad he didn't have a chance to destroy Apple OR to benefit from their genius.
I think Death was invented to take people like him from the earth, clearing space for better people--which would be almost anyone. Sure it means all of us end up dying too, but it is almost worth it just to see such evil eradicated. It is the great equalizer even if it sucks.
I think Death was invented to take people like him from the earth, clearing space for better people--which would be almost anyone. Sure it means all of us end up dying too, but it is almost worth it just to see such evil eradicated. It is the great equalizer even if it sucks.
Awfully egotistical of everyone to assume that if Apple had not popularized (note: not "invented") touch screen phones and tablets, that nobody else would have done it.
Nah… we'd be using a NeXTphone.
Many people fail to understand that phones with touchscreens and no keyboards were already in the pipelines for many OEMs. So while it might have taken a little longer (Apple proved the market was generally ready) - it would have happened. App stores already existed.
Would the landscape look different? Sure - but the same could be said about what the iPhone would be like if it weren't for the competition as well.
Why do people keep repeating this fairy tale? The money MSFT ponied up (~$150 MM) was part of a much larger settlement of a lawsuit brought by Apple over copyright infringement and outright theft of IP by MSFT and INTC. Jobs allowed Gates to save face by making that announcement of the "investment" in preferred shares. The money itself didn't save Apple, the settlement bitch-slapped Microsoft and forced them to continue Office on the Mac and cross license several key patents.
Google "San Francisco Canyon Software" for the whole sordid story.