When Apple licensed the Mac OS and Mac ROMs to third parties, in '94, the first clones hit the market in '95.<p>The truth of the matter is, they did it too late, and when they did, their competition released Windows 95, and later Windows NT 4 ... which were seen as big improvements over their predecessors, and Mac OS 7 wasn't that great compared to Windows.<p>Practically, it was too little, too late, and it only lasted until 97.