4 ms·

> Apple went through that mode and was within a few weeks of dying. Luckily they debugged themselves. Not really, Bill Gates rescued them.

• gumby 11y ago
  >> Apple went through that mode and was within a few weeks of dying. Luckily they debugged themselves. > Not really, Bill Gates rescued them. Microsoft unquestionably kept them from dying at that point by giving them $150M. And probably it was a call from Jobs to Gates so I suppose you can say "Gates" instead of "Microsoft". But my point was that foolish management got Apple to that point and they replaced that with a smarter management approach (and replaced a bunch of people). Microsoft's cash lifeline wouldn't have helped them if they hadn't debugged themselves. Instead it would have simply have delayed death.
  • philwelch 11y ago
    > Microsoft unquestionably kept them from dying at that point by giving them $150M. Apple had $1.2B cash at the time. It was symbolic, not substantial, for either party.
    • gumby 11y ago
      philwelch, it took me a bit of rummaging but in fact I was 100% wrong.
• philwelch 11y ago
  I'm tired of this urban legend. Microsoft agreeing to maintain release parity for the Mac and Windows versions of Office did more than the 150MM, but the company was already profitable again and had almost ten times that amount of cash in the bank anyway.