It was absolutely financially /significant/, but you're correct that the software support helped shore up investor confidence.
Remember at the time that Apple had been running at a loss for the last year or two before this and had started to cut R&D funding. This is when Apple was struggling to hold onto about 2-4% of the personal computing market, dropping from about 10% just a year or two before. They had experienced a precipitous drop across the board, in technology, sales, and financials.
It was quite feasible to entertain thoughts of takeovers, hostile or otherwise, from Sun and Oracle. Either of them (and MSFT) had the ability to make it happen at the time. Oracle priced the effort at about $700m but expected a worst case scenario of about $1.5-2b. The motivation was mainly a "FU" move by Ellison to put Jobs back in control of Apple, but floated as a way of accelerating their JavaStation and client computing vision.
This was also when Apple laptops were burning people before burning people was cool. :-)
150 million dollars wasn't going to make of break Apple at the time. Amelio and Andersen floated a bond issue of many times that amount the past year to resolve cash flow concerns and 1997 was when Apple regained profitability. It was mostly a move to settle investor confidence by signifying Microsoft's bet on Apple's future success.
Remember at the time that Apple had been running at a loss for the last year or two before this and had started to cut R&D funding. This is when Apple was struggling to hold onto about 2-4% of the personal computing market, dropping from about 10% just a year or two before. They had experienced a precipitous drop across the board, in technology, sales, and financials.
It was quite feasible to entertain thoughts of takeovers, hostile or otherwise, from Sun and Oracle. Either of them (and MSFT) had the ability to make it happen at the time. Oracle priced the effort at about $700m but expected a worst case scenario of about $1.5-2b. The motivation was mainly a "FU" move by Ellison to put Jobs back in control of Apple, but floated as a way of accelerating their JavaStation and client computing vision.
This was also when Apple laptops were burning people before burning people was cool. :-)