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I think you are reading into it what you want to see...

According to analysts and reported in the financial press, like Bloomberg..etc..Apple was worth less than 3Billion and weeks away from a bankruptcy.

Yes, the deal pretty much sucked for MS...but I recall at the time the Gates and Jobs both believed the each of them would benefit from the others success,and if Apple failed it would hurt MS in the longer run.

I believe that to be true.

But it really ticked me off that later on Apple beat up MS daily in it’s ads and used MS as a foil to build sales..

But then Jobs was never known for his kindness...lol

According to analysts and reported in the financial press, like Bloomberg..etc..Apple was worth less than 3Billion and weeks away from a bankruptcy.

I know the facts based on Apple's balance sheets, not their Market Cap. . . and Apple was never down "close to bankruptcy" nor was Market Cap significant since it just represents Wall Street's estimations based on rumors and hype of the value of its stock times number of outstanding shares. Unless Bloomberg is talking about their liquid assets, which have been reported as high as $2.6 Billion when they included short term investments. . . but those aren't "liquid" enough for these purposes. . . they are talking the wrong data. The value of the outstanding equities is irrelevant.

As I said, Apple just bought NeXT for $429 Million, after their lowest ebb of operating losses. . . which were caused by taking inventory write downs. At the time of the Apple/Microsoft lawsuit settlement, Apple was literally "weeks away" from that low point, but heading away and up from it, not toward and down into it, in that they were three quarters from it, a little more than forty weeks into their recovery from just two quarters of losses. This is history.

Had Apple continued their worst quarter spending and sales at the same level of losses, Apple had enough reserves on hand to sustain that level of operations for almost seven years before exhausting their reserves. . . without laying off even a single employee. . . which would never be allowed happen. Steps would be taken to prevent such events. Why do you think the BoD canned the CEO Gil Amelio and elevated Steve Jobs to Interim CEO?

A few years after the completion of the settlement agreement the court released the three interlocking sealed agreements and they are now available on Scridb for anyone to read. . . and they make quite plain what went down, which company won, and which company lost. The only thing excluded was the amount of the ongoing license Microsoft would pay over five years to use Apple's QuickTime IP (among others) that were involved in the suit.

Apple dropped MS Internet Explorer on the anniversary of the agreement, but few Apple users were using it, preferring Netscape, and Apple introduced Safari. Microsoft did continue developing MS Office for Mac beyond the agreement because it was quite profitable.

In any case, the purchase of the stock was not a "bail out" by any means.