People forget that Apple of today probably wouldn't be around if Microsoft hadn't given them $150M to save them from bankruptcy in 1997[1].

With the introduction of IE in 1995 and its deep integration into Win95 and ruthless take-no-prisoners assault on Netscape, Microsoft was probably already aware that they were starting to resemble a monopoly, given Apple's poor sales and market share at the time. My personal take is that MS propped up Apple to help appear to have a competitor ahead of the Antitrust action in 2001[2].

[1]https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/29/steve-jobs-and-bill-gates-wh...

[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....

I really don’t think that people “forget” that. You’re effectively saying “if Microsoft continued to be predatory and anticompetitive to the degree they were, there wouldn’t be [other option]”. What’s the point? Seems self-evident.

>probably wouldn't be around if Microsoft hadn't given them $150M to save them from bankruptcy in 1997

I'm _pretty_ sure Apple could have gotten the money from elsewhere if they really had to. It's history now, so we'll never know for sure, but I'd bet that they could have found other investors if they really had to. People seem to think it's a black and white scenario - money from MS or death! But I don't think it ever was.

The 70's through 90's were littered with the corpses of computer companies that were outcompeted and never recovered - the IBM PC/DOS/Windows 3.x effectively killed not only the competing CP/M (8080/Z80) market for PC's, but outcompeted the Amiga, Atari ST, and of course the entire 8-bit market was obsoleted by the 16-bit 80[2]86. Apple's struggle to enhance MacOS to keep up (vs Win95/NT juggernaut) at that time are well documented. At least Apple still had some brand recognition, so maybe you are right.