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Maybe DOS/Win16 compatible would have been a better term.

I run into people who stumble over the confusion of "emulator" versus "compatible" for that era Mac computers. They think it is software emulation and cannot conceive of a hardware solution. . . and are hidebound in their ignorance that Apple could never have ever had anything that was compatible with ANYTHING non-Apple manufactured. After all, they know for a fact that everything Apple was proprietary. . . despite the fact that SCSI was NOT proprietary to Apple.

despite the fact that SCSI was NOT proprietary to Apple.

The original 25 pin SCSI connector, however, was definitely non-standard (and lacked for adequate grounding compared to its 50 connector counterparts). Plus special terminators needed for timing reasons in the IIfx, for instance.

During late Sculley, Apple had problems being compatible with itself. Besides the standard Nubus slots (which was NOT Apple proprietary, but a TI design), there was the SE slot, the processor direct IIsi slot which didn't quite fit in the MAC SE/30 processor slot. For one period they even went crazy with model specific install diskettes ... TRULY unApple. The onboard NIC dongle made the back of the well-equipped Mac a bit unwieldy.

On the other hand, the serial ports on the original Macs (128K through Plus) were vanilla 9 pin affairs, already starting to be done on the PC side. When Apple went over to the round RS-922 (or whatever it was), it was a feature, not an attempt to lock folks out. Same goes for the original plug and play connector, the Apple Desktop Bus, which 3rd party vendors adapted mice and keyboards, but also scanners and modems for.

Steve was a jerk on the software side in the early years, though, and we have him to blame for Jazz and dBase:Mac.