This would have been a re-badged version of OpenStep, then named Rhapsody, well before OS X roadmap was plotted out, let alone released. NextStep/OpenStep had

This would have been a re-badged version of OpenStep, then named Rhapsody, well before OS X roadmap was plotted out, let alone released. NextStep/OpenStep had support for x86 since 1994, so it was all ready to go if Dell wanted to play ball. But it wouldn't have included any support for Classic Mac software. In other words, it wouldn't have supported any software at all, except for the few OpenStep devs still hanging on. But perhaps it would have been a good way to help kick-start OpenStep development. Apple's original plan was to ship OpenStep as the next generation Mac OS, while running classic Mac OS software in a VM. This OS was eventually released as Mac OS X Server in 1999 But this plan was hugely unpopular in the Mac community. Microsoft and Adobe told Apple that there was no way they would port Office and Photoshop to OpenStep, and that killed the original plan. This forced Apple to go back and tightly merge classic Mac OS and OpenStep, with the Carbon APIs and a ported version of the classic Mac Finder. And thus, Mac OS X was conceived. Three years later it was released. Two years after that, it was good enough to use. Two years after that, it was running circles around an aged Windows XP.