AppleLink

AppleLink was the name of both Apple Computer's online service for its dealers, third-party developers, and users, and the client software used to access it.

The service was offered from about 1986 to 1994 to various groups, before being superseded by their short-lived eWorld and finally today's multiple Apple websites.

The "back end" of the AppleLink system was hosted on General Electric's Information Services (GEIS) (division) Mark III time-sharing mainframes and worldwide communications network.

Repeated attempts to negotiate a lower cost failed, and Apple management chafed at paying for a service that had no obviously measurable income.

Eventually Apple approached Steve Case of Quantum Computer Services, who ran a somewhat similar system for users of the Commodore 64.

Atlantis astronauts Shannon Lucid and James C. Adamson with the help of Dave Crego, an engineer at Apple, sent a message to Marcia Ivins, a shuttle communicator at Johnson Space Center.

To avoid a deluge of incoming mail resulting from the publicity of the event, Apple set up a number of obvious "honeypot" addresses not really used by the Shuttle crew, such as STS43@APPLELINK.

It was not lost on GEIS engineers that it included a version of their proprietary EF3 protocol which was never Apple's intellectual property to share with Quantum.

As a result, when GEIS developed the improved EFX and upgraded AppleLink, it never released source code to Apple, supplying only a copyrighted code-resource for the protocol.

Apple, encouraged by AOL's success and still wanting to turn the cost of AppleLink into a profit center, decided to re-enter the market.

After a months-long RFP process that included GEIS as an unsuccessful bidder, Apple approached AOL at the end of 1992 to host a private-label system known as eWorld.

AppleLink's server machines (not the GEIS mainframes) were named for various famous musical composers: Beethoven, Copland, Lennon, etc.