[TorbjornLunde]

According to John Sculley’s in the book Points of View a tribute to Alan Kay, Apple invested in Cray hardware in order to simulate what the computing power of a desktop 10 years ahead would be and what kind of possibilities it would offer.

In 1987, Apple also invested in a Cray XMP 48 super computer which enabled our engineers to experiment with what real time manipulation of multidimensional objects on a screen would look and feel like many years before such computational power would be available on general purpose personal computers.

You can buy the book or download a PDF of it for free here: http://vpri.org/pov/