Dell Tries To Call Out Apple. Fails.

This weekend a Dell VP named Bob Pearson attempted to call out Apple on it's green cred. One thinks that Dell might focus instead on making products consumers actually want to buy, but I suppose that's beside the point. Here are Mr. Pearson's thoughts on the Dell blog:

"Companies who choose to lead have an obligation to be open and transparent." No they don't, they just have to lead.

Apple doesn't "join key conferences." Don't conferences entail a carbon footprint? A 500 person conference that involved a medium length plane ride to get there would have a carbon footprint of 625,000 pounds.

"Employees aren't allowed to blog." Probably because Apple employees are busy making products people want to buy, rather than outsourcing support functions to India so that Bob Pearson has time to blog.

Apple hasn't "set goals for itself, they just declare success after the fact." Well, actions speak louder than words. Any moron can set goals. I'm living proof of that. My goal is to jog 5 miles per day. My reality is chair and Chick-Fil-A.

Dell offers "free recycling." They have to. Dell products are suboptimal, cheaply made, and break. People want to throw them away. People want to hold onto their Macs. I still have every Mac (6 of them) I've bought in the last 10 years. They still work. I don't have to throw them away. Better yet, I don't want to.

It's easy to act wax pompous on your green "goals." But being green means little if your business is failing. The way things are going Dell will go green by ceasing to make computers.

Ten years ago Dell stock was $33 per share. Today, it's $11. Ten years ago Apple stock was $9. Now it's $90. Apple has $25 billion in cash in the bank. Dell's market cap is $22 billion. Apple could buy Dell outright without borrowing a dime.

Michael Dell joked a few years back that Apple should be sold and the cash returned to its shareholders. The joke now appears to be on Michael Dell. I take that back. It's on his shareholders.

Follow Ron Galloway on Twitter: www.twitter.com/rongalloway

Comments

[SabrinaFair]

If I weren't going to be cremated, I would be buried with my Mac. I love it!

[BillShea]

Shouldn't the Secret Service be investigating some of the originators of these comments?

[KevG]

The problem with this is that it's all snark without addressing the very real fact that Apple is lousy at the green angle. Their products are full of toxins, their marketing model is all about planned obsolescence, and their leading devices are minimally (or not at all) serviceable or repairable by the consumer.

Good companies *do* have a responsibility in this area, Mr. Galloway, and to put personal pettiness above the bigger picture is to not only feed into the worst stereotypes about Apple fans, but to further enable its worst tendencies.

Apple has resurrected itself by creating beautiful products that are turning into millions of tons of toxic waste. They need to do better, as everyone does. Nothing Dell does or doesn't do absolves Apple of its responsibility.

Think different--support open-source, sustainable choices.

[Jim64]

Didn't Microsoft tell everyone they'd need new computers to run Vista?

Planned obsolescence.

And if Apple only has 10% of the market, they are only making 10% of the impact of PC's on the environment. Actually studies show that Macs haver a much longer life-cycle than PC's, so PC's are dumped faster. Thanks for killing the planet for us all PC users.

[JTHC75]

""Employees aren't allowed to blog." Probably because Apple employees are busy making products people want to buy, rather than outsourcing support functions to India so that Bob Pearson has time to blog."

Haha, no. It's because Apple has an obsessively secretive corporate culture. You should talk to some of the people who work there. Not only will they not tell you what they do, but they don't know what their coworkers or cubicle neighbors are doing. Nobody talks about their projects because no one wants to risk getting fired by Steve. They make good products, but I would not want to work there.

This article is some pretty weak sauce though. Fanboy = Sad.

[copernikus]

Dell is failing because their business model - manufacture then sell direct to consumer - has been usurped by low cost offshore contract manufacturers. Exacerbating this, their primary competitor, HP, finally fired their incompetent CEO, got someone in that could actually run the company, and became a more formidible competitor. Contrary to what you say, quality is far down the list of Dell's problems.

Also, I would argue that Microsoft, not Dell and HP, is Apple's primary competitor. If I'm going to buy a computer, I decide what OS I want then select the hardware.

[KarateKid]

I bought a Dell laptop for my daughter when she went off to college. The laptop literally fell apart within six months, but when I called customer service, they refused to do anything. That's the last time I will ever buy a Dell. I got her a MacBook instead, and since then, no problems, customer service always responds, they stand behind their product. So, is it any wonder Dell is going down the drain?

[CrackerJacker]

LOL, hater.

[AnnfromCA]

I love the Apple ads, frankly. Very clever.

Made me think about switching.

I loved my original Dell. The last one, not so much.

[luke150]

I have a DELL for 9 years and it is working great, so let's not generalize senselessly. Having said that, Apple is the best, of course. Its market value includes revenues from great products such as IPhone and IPod. So total market value it is not a good direct comparison of desktop quality.

[Jim64]

There is no way it's running Vista. While I have Leopard installed on my 9 year old old Cube. It is my music server for the whole house.

Try that with a 9 year old Dell running Windows 98 or XP.

[notb observer]

I've never owned any other computer than a Mac, 4 in all, including my latest MacPro Quad Xenon. They all still work, but I only run the older G4 and MacPro.
Apple isn't perfect of course, and they have done some thing over the years that have annoyed me, but they make products are are highly useable and typically beautiful. Their dependability, easy of use and compatibility largely outweighs the higher cost and what used to be incompatibility with PCs for me.
Buying and owning a Mac is a completely different experience from buying a PC, sort of like buying a neato little sports model compared to a Ford Taurus.
I also have a 5G iPod which I obviously bought well into the iPod craze. A colleague at work had one and I fiddled with it and was sold ! I now have all my CDs and then some on my iPod and MacPro. With the iPod, I can take 3 weeks worth of music to my car or wherever I go.
While Dell and other PC manufacturers have been operating under the principle of volume and offering low grade products, in my opinion, Apple has always been about innovation and quality.

[SekhmetHathor]

Yeah and despite all this my mac sits under my desk collecting dust and my home built PC sits on top of my desk. Macs are great if you want to spend a fortune on Mac products, since compatibility is an issue with Macs. Oh, and how about paying more money for the same software? That's nice. Gotta love the bubble gum skins and the dummy interface made for people who don't understand computers and don't want to understand computers.

Do you actually have any evidence that "Dell products are suboptimal, cheaply made, and break", or is this just another fanboy opinion?

As it sits now over 90% of computers worldwide are PC's running XP. That isn't much of a testament to the greatness of Mac if you ask me.

I won't buy an i-pod either because I don't get caught up in silly and expensive trends. Why should I pay a bunch of money for a candy coated mp3 player when I can buy one with more memory for less money? Oh, because it says Mac on it. That's high school mentality.

[OkieIntellectual]

Here here! I've always been of the opinion that people who buy Macs must not realize that since they dumped Motorola for the Intel processors, Mac is selling them the same thing they can get from Dell but charging them $2500 more for it. Plus I like to upgrade. If I want a newer, better video card in my PC, I buy and install a newer, better card. Its that simple and I've done it dozens of times. If you want to do the same thing to a Mac, you have to buy a new Mac.

[Jim64]

I've been buying Macs for 20 years and never once paid $2500 for one.

Oh, and the last Mac I had I upgraded the video card no problem. Ran like a dream.

Great misinformation campaign Okie. Maybe you need to do a little more research next time. And just so you know, I can upgrade my hard drive, mouse, keyboard, speakers, printer, monitor, software and memory all using the same products you would buy. And Macs run more software and OS's than a PC........­....... Amazing, isn't it?

[Jim64]

"Do you actually have any evidence that "Dell products are suboptimal, cheaply made, and break", or is this just another fanboy opinion?"

Yes, I do. Dell continually has one of the lowest customer satisfaction ratings and support service ratings in the industry. Apple's is nearly 50% higher and enjoys the highest ratings in the industry.

Any other questions?

The reason PC's are prolific isn't due to superiority. It was due to Microsoft's business practices in the early days, locking corporations across the world into their proprietary system.

Also, in regards to compatibility with Macs. Did you know Macs now run more OS's and software than a PC? It's true. Macs can run any OS a PC can run plus Mac OSX. And you may not know, but Apple makes some of the best software in the world. From my perspective I see PC's as limiting in this regard.

[CrackerJacker]

I love Dell. I've had several Dell machines over the years, and despite being "cutting edge" to them, the machines failed to last a calendar year. I also love that they sold machines that only accepted specific "Dell-Branded" RAM chips, making a cheap upgrade impossible because there was only one supplier(I have no idea if they still practice this, only that I and several friends over the years suffered due to this). In a way, it was sort of Dell doing the Apple "thing" of providing purpose-built machines with not much upgradability, but they did it in the Windows market. And they did it badly.

The one thing Dell did smart, was in the beginning of the business, they sold their lousy machines to people who didn't know better - people who formed the majority of customers at the time. Now if anyone asks me what to do for a PC, I'll build one for them, as long as they pay for the parts. Or suggest they get a Mac.

[SekhmetHathor]

I just upgraded memory (ULTRA) and video card (Nvidea GeForce) in a Dell laptop. What are you talking about?

[CrackerJacker]

Dell had a former policy of only allowing RAM that was sold direct from Dell, and shaped to fit an adapted DIMM slot, meaning unless you wanted to void your warranty by using a knife on the coving around the slot, you couldn't fit standard DIMM's.

It may well have been something Dell don't do anymore, but it was a pretty annoying bugbear to work through.

[nudger]

Dell's views aside, we've been pointing out for a while now that Apple's performance (environmental and otherwise) is notably inconsistent with its brand image. At Vanno, Apple is #58 out of the 66 electronics companies that our users have reported on.

[kgvs72]

Apple is just as shady as Dell and Microsoft. First, a computer manufacturing company should offer a computer recycling program, period. I remember when Mr. Jobs shook hand with Bill Gates to receive a cash infusion to keep the company alive.

If you have a fifth gen iPod and the 6th came out, you're SOL if you think you're getting a firmware upgrade. If you own a iPod touch you have to pay for your firmware upgrade.

I wouldn't be surprised if the next gen of OS X totally bails out on G4 hardware. I'm sure the next gen after will be the G5s.

[quiviran]

Apple will, for $30, send you a prepaid box to package up any Apple product and ship it to its recycling vendor. What more do you want?

As far as products getting out of date enough to stop receiving software updates, unless you're collecting updates for updates sake, you should arrive at a stable configuration that accomplishes your computing objectives. At that point, use it 'til it breaks. (That will happen, so always backup your work)

[eserick]

@kgvs72
When will we ever hear the end of this nugget of misinforma­tion....
'....when Mr. Jobs shook hand with Bill Gates to receive a cash infusion to keep the company alive.
'
I'm sure you love to quote this one, since it seems to back up your anti-Apple prejudice. At the time Bill Gates appeared on stage with Jobs, Apple had $6B in the bank, so the $150M invested by MS was nothing more than a pat on the back to cement the agreement to develop Office for the Mac for the next 5 years. Just how does an investment(they bought Apples shares and made a handsome profit to boot) save a company that already has 40x that amount in ready cash?

'I wouldn't be surprised if the next gen of OS X totally bails out on G4 hardware. I'm sure the next gen after will be the G5s.'

Well since it's no secret that Snow Leopard will contain new core technologies optimised for modern multi-core processors, graphics chip processing and Open CL graphics optimised for chips only now being manufactured then I would say this was a lame attempt to inject some conspiracy theory plot. By the way, good luck with getting Windows 7 to work on your old Pentium... it won't.

[HTooley]

Apple has bailed out on their previous OS. Windows kept on supporting theirs (for backword compatibility) for way to long.

Why would anyone want a 32 bit chipset supporting a 64 bit OS?

We are currently working on an upgrade from a 32 bit Unix OS to a 64 bit Unix OS. Our code is being recompiled for the 64 bit system, although a 32 bit compilation option is available. Why do you think we are doing it? For fun? No, we are doing it so we can take advantage of the new OS and the speed that it provides.

Frankly, I'm a little tired of all of the OS hype. I've worked with MVS, Unix, Windows. They all have their strengths and weaknesses.

I now have a new Vista machine and I like what I'm seeing. It is a Dell (my first) and it didn't come loaded up with a bunch of crap like my previous machine. Is it as 'green' as the Apple? I really don't know. But then again, I can take it to a recycler that specializes in electronics to accomplish that task with my old computer and all of the other assorted dead receivers, tv's, microwave ovens that are collecting dust around the house. Going green is not just in the buying of the product. It's what you do with it when it dies. And having it 'shipped' to a recycler has environmental costs as well.