In 1994, Apple began licensing Mac OS to a handful of select vendors who paid Apple $80 per machine to use the operating system. As the years went by, it became apparent that this wasn't such a great idea. The clone manufacturers produced relatively low-cost machines that cannibalized Apple's most profitable product line, and the clones of significantly expanding the footprint of the Mac platform.

So when Jobs returned to Apple, he knew the Mac OS licensing program had to go. He declined to license Mac OS 8 to the clone vendors upon its release in 1997, thus effectively ending the clone program (one manufacturer, UMAX, did manage to license OS 8 until 1998, however).

Jobs believed strongly in controlling the total user experience from hardware to software, and that could not be achieved if the hardware end was out of Apple's hands. Clones watered down the Macintosh brand, and if they had remained, Apple could not have become as proficient at the secrecy, desire, and new product execution as they later became famous for.