[walrus01]

The move was more to acquire a rock solid Unix/BSD based operating system with serious multitasking functionality, for the purpose of building professional workstations... If you look at the G4 power macs and G4 powerbook laptops from the 2000 to 2006 era the result is evident. Legacy MacOS on PowerPC was a dead end.

At that time in 1996 they knew that Microsoft was going to take the NT kernel and build it into something very stable and more consumer friendly. NT 3.5 and NT4.0 never saw widespread consumer adoption, only in corporate environments. But the later release of Windows 2000 was significantly more stable and capable than legacy MacOS.

[erikj]

Apple even considered licensing the NT kernel before the acquisition: http://lowendmac.com/2013/the-rise-and-fall-of-apples-gil-am...

[walrus01]

I forgot about that. Windows NT 3.5 and I think 4.0 were ported to the DEC Alpha CPU architecture and shipped on a number of (very expensive) DEC workstations at the time. So it is not totally nuts to possibly port it to the then-current Apple/Motorola PowerPC architecture as well.

https://www.google.com/search?q=dec+alpha+windows+nt&ie=utf-...

[geesejuggler]

I thought there once was a Windows NT version for PowerPC, but it was never released, or was pulled short after release. Never seen it in action though.

[linguae]

It was released; in fact, I actually have a Windows NT 4.0 CD that has a PowerPC version on the disk, alongside an x86 version.

[yuhong]

But short-lived. First was NT 3.51, and it did not even make it to NT4 SP3.

[EGreg]

I remember BeOS was being developed to replace tor MacOS and they had the BeBox, pre-emptive multitasking and even multiprocessor support. Jean-Louis Gassee never got the opportunity.

EDIT: Actually he HAD the opportunity and because he passed it up we have Mac OS X today!!

From Wikipedia:

In 1996, Apple Computer decided to abandon Copland, the project to rewrite and modernize the Macintosh operating system. BeOS had many of the features Apple sought, and around Christmas time they offered to buy Be for $120 million, later raising their bid to $200 million. However, despite estimates of Be's total worth at approximately $80 million,[citation needed] Gassée held out for $275 million, and Apple balked. In a surprise move, Apple went on to purchase NeXT, the company their former co-founder Steve Jobs had earlier left Apple to found, for $429 million, with the high price justified by Apple getting Jobs and his NeXT engineers in tow. NeXTSTEP was used as the basis for their new operating system, Mac OS X.

[twoodfin]

Even Windows 95/98 had a significantly stronger multitasking architecture than classic Mac OS.

[yuhong]

Though OS/2 2.0 would have been even better once sound etc was added. Another reason why I disliked the entire debacle.

[pjmlp]

The only thing I miss from OS/2 is SOM, which was much better than COM.