August 28, 1990: Licensing Revisited

Six years after the Mac was introduced and five years before Microsoft had grabbed the GUI gauntlet with Windows 95, an Apple Vice President came up with four interesting ideas.

Idea number One: License the OS. Number two: License the OS and hardware. Number three: starting a new Apple brand or four: A whole new company that would port the OS to Intel (unimaginatively called Macrosoft).

While any of the solutions might have worked (except Mac OS on Intel, everyone knows that is just too stupid for comment) Sculley, on the advice of Spindler rejected the all the suggestions.

Dan Eilers suggestions may have been rejected in 1990 but, with Sculley ousted Spindler did license the Mac OS to other hardware makers, companies were started to port the Mac OS to Intel and Steve Jobs did finally make the jump to Intel hardware. Mr. Eilers made his suggestions this week in 1990.