Apple pinned its hopes on a project started in 1987 to provide a next generation version of Mac OS, called Pink. The operating system never shipped, but it prompted Apple's adption of the PowerPC. Read the story here.

An interesting article - and I recall this ongoing process that ended up as Taligent. However, at the beginning the author states that the Mac had saved the company in the mid-eighties. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Mac was a money loser at first and it took some time for it to be really profitable. During that time, it was the profits from the Apple II that kept things going.