March 8, 1998: What’s in a Number? Several Million Dollars

When Gil Amelio was running the show at Apple, Mac clones were seen as something that would help Apple grow market share. When Steve Jobs replaced the good Dr., the clones fell out of favor. Instead of a vehicle to increase Apple's slice of the computing pie, clones were suddenly regarded, at least by Steve, as "leeches."

Actual leeches might have a significant role to play in certain medical procedures but when the metaphorical variety is sucking off profits they've got to go. The problem was that Apple had signed contracts agreeing to allow clone makers to use the Mac OS as long as they were shipping system 7.x.

Realizing that the difference between system 7.x and system 8.0 was largely confined to the identifying numerals, Apple renamed what was planned as system 7.7 to system 8.0, thereby voiding several contracts with the mere addition of three tenths of a release. Thanks to Apple's about-face on the subject of clones, the clone makers had to find new things to do once system 7 became system 8, this month in 1998.