I think that was what MS was worried about, since MS needed Apple alive for their court case.
Apple could basically have done the same thing recently to save the PPC platform, give Amiga a leg up with the G5 and help them with their new machine. Which would likely have been enough computer sales to save PPC as a viable computing platform.
But they weren't under pressure to keep the PPC or Amiga alive, so killing a competitor by ignoring them wasn't potentially lethal.