December 7, 1992: Star Trek

Bill Gates once said, "I want a Mac on a PC," when exhorting his engineers to make an early version of Windows a little more palatable. Years later Apple was considering the “Mac on the PC” question as well.

The reason was a Skunk Works project known as Star Trek. The idea was to get the Mac OS running on Intel processors. Andy Grove, Intel co-founder, was a huge proponent of the idea. Bill Gates was not as enthusiastic, likening the plan to "putting lipstick on a chicken."

The Star Trek team pulled off the task of getting Mac OS to run on Intel processors and presented the results to the powers that be this week in 1992. A short time later, the project leader Roger Heinen, in what must have been the purest of coincidences, left Apple for Microsoft, essentially dooming the project.

Source: Apple Confidential 2.0, 230