Enlarge / Nope, that's not an Xbox, Playstation, or even a Dreamcast... (credit: Macgeek.org's Museum) Apple in mid-1993 was reeling. Amidst declining Mac sales, Microsoft had gained a stranglehold over the PC industry. Worse, the previous year Apple had spent $600 million on research and development, on products such as laser printers, powered speakers, color monitors, and the Newton MessagePad system—the first device to be branded a "personal digital assistant," or PDA.