Yes. I can imagine it because they've already done so repeatedly. The first case I can think of was Apple working with IBM on the Taligent operating system (designed to compete with what became NT and NeXTStep) circa 1988. Then the PowerPC chip at the center of Macs for years was co-developed with Apple, IBM, and Motorola, and in later years IBM supplied the actual chips. Also, the Apple Network Server machines (circa 1996) ran AIX.

That’s what people were saying in 1991 when Apple first partnered with IBM:

https://www.nytimes.com/1991/07/04/business/ibm-and-apple-gi...

Since then, the Apple-IBM relationship seems to be the longest “on again, off again” in computing.

> Can you imagine the company that made this getting into bed with IBM!?

Remember PowerPC Macs?