Apple CEO John Sculley’s quest to extend the Macintosh’s reach in the business market took an important step in November 1987 with the launch of MultiFinder, an extension to the System Software 5 operating system that finally enabled a form of multitasking on the Mac. This gave Apple a jump on IBM’s long-promised multitasking OS/2 by a few weeks. And while the Mac never posed a serious challenge to the IBM PC and its clone army in the overall business market, the combination of MultiFinder with more expandable machines like the Macintosh II helped to cement Apple’s place as the primary alternative microcomputer platform for many business users.