When Steve Jobs returned to Apple in the late 1990s, he initially focused on saving the failing company by fixing Apple’s core platform, the Mac. This involved two primary strategies: releasing exciting new Macintosh computers to placate the fans and replacing the dated classic Mac OS over time with a more sophisticated platform called Mac OS X that was based on NeXTStep/OpenStep technologies from Apple’s previous company, NeXT.

By 2001, Jobs had succeeded in making Apple profitable again. On the Mac front, the company had released successful iMac and iBook computers for consumers in 1998 and 1999, respectively, and it revitalized its prosumer offerings with new Power Mac G3 and PowerBook G3 in 1999 and 2001. And as discussed previously in Programming Windows: Meanwhile, in Cupertino, the firm successfully launched Mac OS X in early 2001, giving Microsoft’s NT-based Windows family of products a technically credible competitor.