4 PowerPC 604 processors in a DayStar Genesis MP 600. Only $16k USD! ($31k in 2023 money.)
Except for UMAX, who accepted the new clone terms (that would give Apple a % of sale price instead of a [too-low, assuming that the clones would be a race to the bottom] fixed fee per machine sold) and actually got to distribute MacOS 8 for a while.
The clones licensed System 7, so jobs took the next version, branded it 8 and forced it out, cutting them off.
To be fair, System 8 was more than just a service update for System 7: it introduced the Platinum UI, the Appearance API, a multithreaded Finder, and various Copland features. (This was quite a rich update, maybe second only to System 7. It would have been a bit strange to just give this all away as System 7.7.)
Then 8 felt like a huge shift to the modern. Yes, would have been weird to be 7.7. An ideal break point.
Seems odd the clones licensed by OS version, not duration.
9 didn’t have the same change feel.
(And, yes, 7.6 was a major step in terms of stability. There was also some pre-PPC, pre-OpenDoc version of System 7 that was pretty stable, but with all those major integrations that came with the further iterations, things became a bit "delicate".)
Going off fuzzy memory.
And then Classic/Carbon/Cocoa came around.
A lot more, eventually. System 8.6 brought a fully pre-emptive kernel with multi processing (http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?topic=3656.0)
Problem was that, for backwards compatibility, all applications ran in a single pre-emptively scheduled task that cooperatively scheduled between them. You could write additional tasks that got scheduled preemptively, but they couldn’t make all system calls (https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Ca...)
Spindler made the original clone deals assuming they would be chasing aggressively low pricing as seen in the PC market but instead the clones ate Apple's high-end market, replacing Apple's high-end margin with cheap OS licenses. So Amelio wanted to renegotiate the deals to be based on the value of the machine so that Apple would not lose from a clone maker selling a high-end machine instead of Apple.
Jobs as iCEO continued the negotiations (after all, NeXT was also an OS-only company at that point so Jobs wasn't necessarily sold on the idea that Apple had to sell hardware) but nobody aside from UMAX bit on the more expensive MacOS 8 license (so yeah there was one clone they had a MacOS 8 license - you can find UMAX MacOS 8 CDs out there) so Jobs gave up, and there were no other clones.
So Amelio started it and Jobs finished it.
Also didn't help that a 2 hour presentation by Amelio felt like weeks!
Amelio started to focus on things like reducing the amount of SKU's and pushing hard on Education. Steve took that and actually communicated this to the world.
And that was the big thing Steve managed to do. Capture peoples imagination and put out the image that Apple wasn't dead in the water. By leaning hard on those few things that made them different at the time - like the iMac.
https://everymac.com/systems/powercc/powertower/powertower20...
Just as with M1, it depends on your workload.
For instance, in the old school PBS show, The Computer Chronicles, they mention a prepress shop using the first PowerPC Macs that saw one of their workflows go from hours to minutes.
Over time Intel became faster, but there was a period of ~1-3? years when PPC was faster. AFAIR :)
Cash or money orders only.
Delivery will be in 6 to 8 years. :P