I somewhat disagree on your time frame. I was selling quadruple the amount of PC's than Apple well before the release of W95. Packard Bell, AST,IBM, soon Compaq, far out matched the Apple Brand in demand. As for W95 the anticipation was unmatched amongst ANYTHING previously released from ANY MFR. There were back orders over a year before the release date. We had over a million copies in stock and ready to fly three months before the release.
This pretty much fits in my comment. Remember I was talking about homes and not businesses. Businesses were pretty much locked up by then, the home market took over with the pre-orders (which were backed up by many vendors not quite ready), and it is where the industry saw massive growth as I am sure you got to enjoy. It is where there industry changed, and it changed due to growth spurred on by M$'s\Intel's anti-trust behavior and PC's becoming much cheaper than they were entering the 90's.
My comment also comes from an InfoWorld-Gartner report and a T. Rowe Price prospectus around '96 on Apple and what happened. Both have always stuck with me, and quite frankly got me to buy stock in the company at that time. Before the tech boom, a company making $500M+ is not a losing or dying company. They just did not grow with the rest of the industry so the spin is easy to say they are dying and dead if they are not growing (or firing, or buying companies, etc., just as it is today). Nevermind, the profit they pulled in and the consistent sales (which at that time Apple and MacMall sold the vast majority of Apple stuff. Heck Egghead still had sections dedicated to Apple before EggHead started getting displaced by competitors).
Apple was also big into patent development. Many patents were licensed by many of those growing companies in their hardware and software. M$ licensed the taskbar and startmenu idea from Apple for their Win95 OS, because Apple owned the patents on those concepts in the OS.
Now many colleges, which I mentioned "education and Apples NITCH", through out the country were using the Apple 2SE because as I said it DOMINATED the graphic design, publication industry(NITCH). After that Apple really began to fade compared to the MS OS development that was to follow. Topped with Him leaving the Company and serious compatability issues with the other side of the arena.
Apple will always have its "nitch" of users. But it was ran by and almost burried by the competition, mainly due to the development of software from the giant. Amperpage only went so far.. LOL
Spin, as K-12 or Higher Ed. is not graphic design or publication. While they did have a lock on those industries (and CAD since AutoDesk was too hefty in needs\price, and performance blew through most of the 90's), it was not their only "niches". Continuing to sell 10-15 million units annually during the dark years is not nitch, just a lack of growth. As a consumer who is used to using a PC at work and now as the cash on hand to buy something for home is going to point to the sale that is $1500 or less than the other option. That was probably Apples worst fail; not trying to get in on the growth with everyone else. They had the reserves at that time to undercut, but choose not too. Then again, if you are pulling in $500M+, why change the business plan.
Now as for network implementation Apple has never even been in the conversations. In modern times like today, not even option. How many Apple Blades are you running. You aren't. Pre early 90's it was the AS400 and other AS/IBM MFR'd main frame systems.
Networking has never been their strong suit. Nor anything they have dumped too much money into other than buying the tech from other companies. Until recently I would say it blew and was the bane of many. And that just from the desktop side. Servers were a no-go from the get-go.
Soon they were compatible with almost nothing as far as the most widely used software developed for the PC Side. Microsoft, while being sued as a Monopoly dumped MILLIONS into the company. One because they were being sued as a Monopoly. That some what opened the door for some compatability.
Games. Games was another major win for the PC side. Mostly from the mentality of the programmers (Apple was too locked down because they would not allow me to create my own system Windows and damnit I want to reinvent the wheel, oi glavin). But also because it was cheaper to develop games on the PC, and to hell is the video incompatibilities through most of the 90's, I was going to get money from Voodoo to write graphics specifically for them, or 3dfx, etc.
The thing with the Microsoft money towards Apple was more shush for their illegal reverse engineering of QuickTime that it was a quieting of Anti-trust. They just never expected Apple to call them out on it, and prove they used Apple code. Odd how they money was specifically to pay and back pay for that....odder still that Silverlight is essentially a streamlined Quicktime where Apple owns most of the patents used. Along with owning many of the patents used in the Aero interface (which were supposed to make it into the first System 10 (OSX), but if you can sell it and license it, why not do that then rush it into your own product first.
All goes beyond the hardware sales during those years.
