Apple somehow managed to claw it's way to releavance from a weaker position in 1998 (with PoserPC!) So if they had their act together they could have done better in the early 90s.

hey squandered their early lead in the US among consumers and education and also ignored the international market.

Not gonna lie Wintel was a formidable force. Microsoft was ruthless in cornering the market.

But technically, OS/2 and MacOS gave Windows a run for it's money, arguably superior on some respects, and you could say the same for PowerPC and Intel.