Judging from the screenshots MAE strikes me more like a BasiliskII-esque emulator except the toolbox ROM has been extended to support similar-to-A/UX backdoor access to the UNIX layer. (Filesystem access, clipboard import/export, etc. It also looks like it supported "commando"-type wrapping of some UNIX shell commands.)
http://web.archive.org/web/19980613012744/www.mae.apple.com/technical/3.0/White_Paper3.html
Ardi Executor was much closer to a WINE-style API emulator. MAE ran a hacked System (7.5.3 on the last version.) Executer uses neither the toolbox ROM nor a copy of the Apple system software.
(Yet another fumblefingered edit... the link to the Executer article on Wikipedia was broken and apparently I can't edit it now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executor_(software)
That one should work.)