Jason Snell has written a great piece on the Mac clone program:
The mid-’90s were a weird time for Apple. Microsoft and Intel dominated the computer industry so much that Apple’s tiny market share just kept shrinking, and Apple struggled to make money. You might think that allowing other companies to compete with Apple would just make things worse, but desperate times called for desperate measures, and Apple CEO Michael Spindler (who had taken over for the deposed longtime CEO John Sculley) decided to take those measures.
The clone strategy was designed to allow third-party hardware makers to create systems to serve markets that Apple didn’t serve very well, allowing Mac OS to penetrate into areas where Windows was winning and turn the tide. But that didn’t really happen. Instead, Apple found itself boxed in on both sides.
No mention of the Macintosh clone program is complete without this video:
…or this Power Computing ad:
