[jhbadger]

Windows 95 also came close to killing the Mac. Before then the difference between Windows and MacOS was so striking that it was obvious that anyone who really wanted a GUI interface would go for a Mac. But then the advantage became much less strong. If Jobs hadn't come back and brought NextStep, which becane OSX, I think the Mac would have gone the way of the Amiga.

[hota_mazi]

The reason why Apple didn't go bankrupt is not because Jobs brought NeXTStep, but because Bill Gates gave them money months away from having to shut down.

[jhbadger]

That was certainly important in the the short term (obviously Gates wasn't doing that to be nice but because having Apple die would look bad in the then ongoing antitrust investigations into Microsoft; it's the same reason Google sends money to Firefox today -- having a competitor is a great defense against accusations of monopoly).

But Jobs didn't just run a marginal company but turned it into a company which is comparable in worth (and often worth more than) Microsoft.

[rasz]

> Bill Gates gave them money

you mean was caught stealing and quietly settled https://www.theregister.com/1998/10/29/microsoft_paid_apple_...

TLDR: Apple was stealing with help of Intel, both companies scared by QuickTime positioning Apple as the leader in Multimedia (1991 Adobe Premiere build by ex Quicktime engineer on Mac platform, 1991 Avid ported from Apollo $workstations$ to Mac). When Jobs came back in 1996 he didnt like (or couldnt afford) all the litigation and promptly settled for $ and Microsoft support commitment (Office, IE) in exchange for letting MS save face.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Canyon_Company

"David Boies, attorney for the DoJ, noted that John Warden, for Microsoft, had omitted to quote part of a handwritten note by Fred Anderson, Apple's CFO, in which Anderson wrote that "the [QuickTime] patent dispute was resolved with cross-licence and significant payment to Apple." The payment was $150 million."

"Microsoft and Intel had been shocked to find that Apple's QuickTime product made digital video on Windows seem like continuous motion, and was far in advance of anything that either of them had, even in a planning stage. The speed was achieved by bypassing Windows' Graphics Display Interface and enabling the application to write directly to the video card. The result was a significant improvement over the choppy, 'slide-show' quality of Microsoft's own efforts. Apple's intention was to establish the driver as a standard for multimedia video imaging, so that Mac developers could sell their applications on the Windows and Mac platforms. Microsoft requested a free licence from Apple for QuickTime for Windows in June 1993, and was refused. In July 1993, the San Francisco Canyon Company entered into an agreement with Intel to deliver a program (codenamed Mario) that would enable Intel to accelerate Video for Windows' processing of video images."

"Intel gave this code to Microsoft as part of a joint development program called Display Control Interface."

"Canyon admitted that it had copied to Intel code developed for and assigned to Apple. In September 1994, Apple's software was distributed by Microsoft in its developer kits, and in Microsoft's Video for Windows version 1.1d."

[jandrese]

It is also notable that the Mac was stagnating just like the Amiga around that time. The successor to OS 9 was delayed for years and years before being cancelled. The hardware was getting more expensive but with only small incremental improvements in speed or capacity. The Centris and early Performa lines were just so mediocre. The 68k architecture was stalling out just as Intel was blowing everyone's doors off with x86. Jobs made a bad bet with PPC, but it was still way better than 68k and gave them enough breathing room to keep up with PCs for a bit.

[scarface_74]

Your history is way off. The PPC line came out in 1994 and was talked about as early as 1993. This wasn’t a rumor. This was Apple’s announce pipeline.

Jobs came back in 1997 and stayed with the PPC line until 2005. By then Apple was far from “beleaguered” thanks to the iMac, PowerBooks and iPod

[KerrAvon]

No, the 68k lineup was competitive or better with x86 for the entire duration of Amiga’s viable lifetime. Apple’s troubles came later, after they had already successfully transitioned to PowerPC.

[DerekL]

Apple switched to PowerPC a few years before the NeXT acquisition and Steve Jobs' return.

[jprival]

Yeah the Power Macintosh line, as the name suggests, introduced PowerPC in 1994. There were Performa versions of those as well. Jobs’ return as CEO roughly coincided with the beginning of the G3 era (calling them that instead of PowerPC 740 is already pretty Jobs-ian).