10 years ago Michael Dell said Apple should close shop

[Terse]

I loved Dell's comment when I heard it... What a riot!
This was before Engadget'S "CE-Oh no he didn't!" segments.

Jobs is the KING of CE-Oh no he didn't!

Remember the jump to RISC PPC?
Jobs "The current 68K and x86 architecture will not be able to adapt to RISC, and have at best 2 generations - or 5 years of life left."

Remember the jump from Apple to NeXT?
Jobs: "The platform that Apple now uses has at best 2 generations - or 5 years of life left."

Remember the jump from PPC to x86?
Jobs: "Intel (x86) offers us a stronger processor roadmap."

Oddly, this latest time he didn’t say “what we’ve abandoned has at best 5 years of life left in it.”  Maybe he finally learned his lesson?  

Could it be that Michael Dell really did go to Microsoft and threaten them to prevent Xbox 360 from running an PPC version (with Rosetta-like realtime translation for x86 apps) of Windows XP?

[Terse]

Kronos wrote:

He was also right on the death of the 68k.... how long has it been since a 680x0 has been on par with other desktop-CPUs ?

So he was only wrong bout x86, but how much do today RISC-hidden-behind-a-CISC-interface zombies have to do with the 486s popular back when he made that prediction ?

But had the industry (particularly Apple) continued to back the 68K would it not also have gone the RISC-and-CISC route too?

I do agree that apple made the right choice in backing x86.  It makes litle sense to fight a whole industry by almost completely bankrolling the opposing technology.  Jobs said as much this last time with the switch to x86.