April 13, 1991: Coming Soon, a Whitebox Macintosh?

Apple wanted a license to RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computing) and IBM had the technology. IBM wanted a new OS and Apple had something to offer in that area.

What Apple was offering was Pink, the next generation Mac OS. What it was running on was an IBM PS 70. What it looked like was Mac OS 7. The people who saw it were IBM engineers and the guy providing the dog and pony show was none other than Apple President John Sculley.

IBM wanted to finish the OS but other factors got in the way and the project was never completed. Still, the demo did pave the way for Apple's adoption of RISC chips in the PowerPC line. The demo that got the ball rolling, and the first time a Mac-ish OS ran on PC hardware occurred this month in 1991.