Keep in mind that Apple didn't have much to lose, in the years leading up to OS X they were scrambling for market share lost to Windows 95, and already in a fre

Keep in mind that Apple didn't have much to lose, in the years leading up to OS X they were scrambling for market share lost to Windows 95, and already in a frenzy over a failed modernization attempt (Copland) that was intending to maintain backwards compatibility. They were truly desperate, on the verge of going bankrupt under a "corporate rehabilitator" CEO with no Steve Jobs in sight. Microsoft had a good thing going, with the massive success of MS-DOS and Windows 95 it was imperative that the next generation consumer OS, Windows 2000, could run programs from their existing well-respected platform without users noticing the gap. (With OS X, you noticed the gap -- totally different UI style when in Classic Environment, and the Carbon API for easy porting was a mess that went unadopted by developers)