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Originally Posted by lmimmfn
It was basically M$ doing everything to keep Apple in the game
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And not for some altruistic reason, but because getting their products onto other platforms gave them a greater hold over the market.
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Microsoft agreed to continue developing Office and other software for the Mac for the next 5 years, purchase $150 million of non-voting Apple stock, and made a quiet payoff estimated to be in the US$500 million-$2 billion range."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macworld/iWorld#1987
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I didn't know that. 0.5-2 billion would certainly have helped Apple stave off bankruptcy.
In the graph below we see that while sales increased dramatically between 1985 and 1995, profit remained low. Then Microsoft Windows 95 appeared on PCs while Apple's Copland failed, and Apple's sales fell dramatically causing them to lose $815 million in 1996 and $1,045 million in 1997. Their business model was clearly unsustainable and they were going down the drain fast.
When Steve Jobs came back in 1997 he said that Apple was only 2 weeks away from bankruptcy. That may not have been literally true because Apple had assets it could sell (and staff it could fire), but with sales continuing to fall and nothing to counter Windows 95 the business still wouldn't be viable.
According to
Wikipedia Apple had cash reserves of US$1.2 billion, making the US$150 million investment largely symbolic. But if they were losing over $1 billion a year that cash wouldn't last long. The sudden return to profitability despite declining sales is also suspicious. From this I conclude that Microsoft did indeed inject a lot more than $150 million into Apple, and it did prevent them from going bankrupt.