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http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2009/08/dayintech_0806/

Holy Crap. I'd totally forgotten all about that! Wow, yeah, that was a big deal back then.

apple

Apple?

Apple came pretty close to having the lights turned off. Microsoft stepped in and injected some cash. http://news.cnet.com/2100-1001-202143.html or from Wikipedia: At the 1997 Macworld Expo, Steve Jobs announced that Apple would join Microsoft to release new versions of Microsoft Office for the Macintosh, and that Microsoft made a $150 million investment in non-voting Apple stock.[62]

This is a myth. Microsoft bought a symbolic amount of stock. At the time Apple had over a billion dollars of cash in the bank. Microsoft was making over $300M a year in revenue from the Office product on the Mac platform, so it was in their best interest to keep up development. The only reason they were going to stop was to strong-arm Apple.

Back then Apple wasn't in great shape, running at a marginal loss or profit, but other companies at the time, like Compaq, were bleeding hundreds of millions of dollars in losses per quarter.