MACINTOSH CLONES

Not exactly. Back in the mid-'90s Apple was obsessed with survival, at the time being little more than a rounding error in terms of market share.

- 

RANDOM ACCESS MEMORIES 1995

What? Apple was once so obsessed with perfection, it cloned its Macs?

So the firm hit upon a cunning plan: do an IBM and license the Mac ROM and system software to third parties. The idea was to flood the market with affordable Mac-compatible machines, enticing new users to the platform. Once hooked, converts would tire of the cheapies and demand the real thing: expensive, shiny new Macs from Apple itself.