As for the ME thing, MS was wrong there as well ME was *CRAP* but once you start pushing it you need to keep it around a bit when there are other alternatives so large organizations can migrate.
“Apple also sells their own systems not just the OS”
I have an Apple IPOD. I have not tried OSX, but having used Itunes, I am scared to death of an Apple OS. ( and I do OS support for a living :-)
In those cases the OEM OS usually doesn't matter. Although they probably exist, I haven't seen a large organization that didn't have its own image for the computers it buys. The first thing that happens is that the OEM-provided OS goes away.
Finally OS9 was a dog and had to die, that being said apple should have left it at the vets a bit longer before putting her down.
They did, in the Classic environment. You just couldn't boot straight to OS 9. The modern version of that is a VM.