[kalleboo]

The problem was that Apple's deal with the clone makers paid them a fixed amount per MacOS license, since the people who negotiated the deals assumed clone makers would get into a low-end price war like the PC clones.

Instead clone makers ate Apple's high-margin, high-end, machines. So Gil Amelio, CEO at the time, bumped the MacOS version to 8 in order to renegotiate the deals (which were all for MacOS 7.x) to pay Apple a %age of the value of the machines instead, so that even if someone sold a high-margin machine instead of Apple, Apple would still make a profit on the deal.

Gil Amelio got ousted by Steve Jobs, who contrary to popular belief, actually attempted to continue the clone license negotiations, but even he failed. In the end, only UMAX got a MacOS 8 license, and the program died out.