Video of Steve Jobs calling out Michael Dell: "We're coming after you buddy"

On October 6, 1997, Dell CEO Michael Dell was asked what he would do to help what was then an ailing Apple. Dell famously responded, "What would I do? I'd shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders."

Dell's quip, in a few years time, would eventually take on a life of its own amongst the Apple faithful once Steve Jobs began righting the Apple ship and propelling company shares to unprecedented heights thanks to products like the iMac and the iPod.

With the benefit of hindsight, it's certainly easy to poke fun at Dell's statement. But at the time the comments were made, Steve Jobs wasn't laughing. Quite the contrary, Dell's statement served to fuel Jobs' competitive fire.

In the Steve Jobs biography, Walter Isaacson relayed how Jobs, in response to Dell's quip, sent an email to Dell which read, "CEOs are supposed to have class. I can see that isn't an opinion you hold."

Moreover, Jobs, just one month later, even took a few minutes to publicly address Dell's statement while discussing Apple's new online store in November of 1998. Jobs' "indignation" might have been hammed up a bit, but Isaacson notes that Jobs "liked to stoke up rivalries as a way to rally his team..."

Jobs remarked to the enthusiastic crowd:

Recently, video of Jobs' comic retort was posted online for the first time. It's vintage Jobs.

Interestingly, Dell a few years ago backtracked a bit, alleging that his infamous statement was misconstrued:

And in the irony of ironies, it was Michael Dell who, in February of 2013, decided to take his company private and return money back to his own shareholders.