In a Technology Review interview, Dell CEO Michael Dell said his company is the first to include wireless technology in notebooks.
Say what? Apple beat them to the punch by more than a year. Dell said, “right now our notebook team is continuing to drive very, very hard on size, weight, wireless integration — we were the first to integrate wireless into notebooks, with integrated antennas.”
Wrong, wrong, wrong, Michael, you are wrong. Apple offered iBooks with integrated antennas for AirPort wireless connectivity back in 1999.
“It was a breakthrough in portable computing,” Greg Joswiak, Apple’s senior director of hardware product marketing, told MacCentral. “It’s really interesting that Michael Dell would say this when he knows better. Here at Apple, we felt so strongly about wireless networking that we had AirPort antennas and slots in every Macintosh, desktop and laptop, before Dell implemented wireless technology in its first notebook.”
In fact, the AirPort technology has been one of the main factors in rebounding educational sales for Apple. According to statistics from the IDC research firm, Apple is leading the way in both desktops with a 27.7 percent share and portables with a 34.7 percent share of the education market.
According to an IDC report, Apple has nearly twice as many desktop and portable computers in schools as its nearest competitor. In May, at the 22nd Annual National Educational Computing Conference (NECC), Apple CEO Steve Jobs said that Apple had sold over 500,000 AirPort Base Stations and AirPort cards.
“We’re number one in the educational market when it comes to wireless technology and portables,” Joswiak said. “We’re competing head to head with Dell in this market. Michael Dell must have been feeling the pressure to make such a statement.”