"It may not be the last laugh, but on Friday afternoon, after the close of the stock market, Steve Jobs, the chief executive of Apple Computer, shared an e-mail chuckle with his employees at the expense of Dell, a big rival. The message was prompted by the 12% surge in Apple's stock price last week, which pushed the company's market capitalization to $72.13 billion, passing Dell's value of $71.97 billion," reports The New York Times.
In 1997, shortly after Jobs returned to Apple, the company he helped start in 1976, Dell's founder and chairman, Michael Dell, was asked at a technology conference what might be done to fix Apple, then deeply troubled financially.
"What would I do?" Dell said to an audience of several thousand information technology managers. "I'd shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders."
