Check out this 1997 post by Shane F. Iseminger about the pros and cons of having Apple computers in the newsroom:

Apple is far from going out of business if you look at their stats - the mainstream press tech articles, which have decided they can’t say “Apple” without using the words “beleagured”, “ailing”, “ and ”struggling", aren’t always accurate. The mumblings that Apple will be gone in six months have been circulating for a year and a half. They have problems to solve, but they’ve solved most all of the ones threatening their welfare. They aren’t losing much money, if any, and have consistently produced some very high-quality hardware and software over the past 9 months. Many companies have been worse off than Apple ever was and come back. And secondly, Apple still has close to $1 billion in cash and lots of assets that can be transformed into cash should it be needed, and that’s doubtful. Thirdly, if Apple were to go anywhere, the Mac OS and the upcoming NT-class Rhapsody OS will be picked up by someone. And the new G3 machines, which generally outperform Pentium II machines of the same clock speed, are selling well as is Mac OS 8. Short answer: the Mac OS isn’t going to die soon. Not a concern.

Statistically there are fewer programs for the Mac OS, but in the real world you will rarely run into problems because you can’t get software for the Mac OS unless you are dealing in a specific niche market. Publishing has been one of the Mac’s strongholds and software developers know that to maximize profits they need to develop for both platforms.

NT is a powerful and stable OS but it is not the only answer. As I mentioned before the Mac OS is still popular and being developed at a fast rate. Mac OS 8 is the most stable OS Apple has produced in years. I run it for days on end without a crash. From observing several Windows and Mac OS systems I would say that the Mac OS crashes less than Windows 95 but a little more than NT. The Mac OS is also scheduled for integration of several NT-class technologies within the next 6–9 months. Also, Apple’s UNIX-based OS, code-named Rhapsody, is scheduled for release next summer and promises to be a direct competitor for NT. It also promises some excellent distributed-computing capabilities.

Hope in Rhapsody is one thing that kept the Mac faithful the Mac faithful. By 1997, the Mac OS was limping along, as Microsoft’s Windows NT was kicking its ass in terms of marketshare. I agree with Shane that OS 8 was the best to date (OS 9 was only marginally better in my opinion, but it did bring several nice updates related to the Internet), but it was still a 10-year old OS with 10-year old problems. After struggling for years with Rhapsody, Apple realized that buying out NeXT (and their Unix-based OPENSTEP operating system) was the only way to break clean from the past and roll out a OS that was stable and expandable enough to take on NT. If Apple hadn’t moved to OS X, I’m not sure Apple would have survived. Being viable only in certain niches only pays the bills for so long.