The Mac OS X 10.0 Public Beta from September 2000 didn’t have an Apple menu: the Apple icon was centred in the menu bar when there was available room and the system commands were with in the app menu’s commands.
The Clock was an app displaying the time in the Dock instead of the menu bar—likely a relic of its Unix ancestor NeXTSTEP. The Desktop also had its own app menu.
You can try Mac OS X 10.0 and NeXTSTEP 3.0 yourself on Infinite Mac.