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vmpaul · Sep 13, 2002, 01:23 AM

I have nothing to say about it. Other than I did see a guy walking around Seybold this week with a eWorld t-shirt.

Plus, I always seem to be a thread killer I though I'd start a thread for once.

starman · Sep 13, 2002, 01:58 AM

I still have an eWorld CD in my closet with the rest of the old developer CDs I have.

Mike

Thrax · Sep 13, 2002, 02:16 AM

Anyone try using an eWorld disc to sign up for the service recently? I remember trying this a few months after eWorld ended. I got a message telling me to sign up for America Online.

As for the service itself, it was weak. Take AOL, change a few things that sound like good ideas on paper but in reality make the service unusable, don't have any good exclusive content besides ZiffNet, only offer it to Mac users but claim for two years that a Windows version is coming soon, and charge more than AOL and you get eWorld.

Sword of Orion · Sep 13, 2002, 02:55 AM

I liked eWorld - especially that soothing female voice informing me that I had mail. Beats that guy that AOL uses any day...

starman · Sep 13, 2002, 08:34 AM

Do you have a .wav of that?

Mike

daimoni · 01:56 AM

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Thrax · Sep 13, 2002, 09:45 AM

You forgot about Applelink Personal, which later became America Online. Apple owned 50% of that company at the time - the company that became AOL owned the other half. If only they knew how popular it would become...

That makes it three strikes.

Gene Jockey · Sep 13, 2002, 09:51 AM

Yeah, I still have the floppies around at my parents house. Thay were cannibalised for backups, but they still say "eWorld" on them. I don't remember much about it, except that it was slow, but then everything was slow on my 2400 bps screaming machine of a modem in 1994. Probably one of my first e-mail addresses... ::tear::

--Josh

daimoni · 01:56 AM

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vmpaul · Sep 13, 2002, 11:05 AM

Originally posted by daimoni:
Strike One:
First there was Applelink (in partnership with GE?)... which was so expensive for mere mortals that the only people who used it were Apple employee's (pretty much free for them) so they could work remotely from home. It was before it's time - but still lame.

Oh man, I forgt about AppleLink. That was pretty revolutionary in its time. We had a developer account we used to use all the time. I thnk we had it even before we had an internal e-mail system. I was at a start-up then.

eWorld was pretty neat though. If it had survived it would have been a pretty impressive bit of programming. The interface was great. You sign in and you navigate by going through town and clicking on the buildings.

It was a clone of AOL's underlying technology but Apple took it to the next level with an elegant interface. AOL (like MS) only tend to develop somethingh till it's just good enough and loose it upon the world. Apple products alway feel as if they really thought it through.

Who was CEO when that was released?

maxelson · Sep 13, 2002, 11:16 AM

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it was Pepsi guy.

ink · Sep 13, 2002, 11:35 AM

Originally posted by Thrax:
You forgot about Applelink Personal, which later became America Online. Apple owned 50% of that company at the time - the company that became AOL owned the other half. If only they knew how popular it would become...

That makes it three strikes.

Quantum owned all of QuantumLink (QLink) and PCLink (QLink for clones). So while Apple may have owned half of AppleLink, they didn't own half of what was AOL back then. I have my QLink fan-page still up:

http://inconnu.isu.edu/~ink/new/qlink/

Was eWorld based on AppleLink at all??

cpt kangarooski · Sep 13, 2002, 12:07 PM

Originally posted by Thrax:
You forgot about Applelink Personal, which later became America Online. Apple owned 50% of that company at the time - the company that became AOL owned the other half. If only they knew how popular it would become...

That makes it three strikes.

Feh. In 1979 Jef Raskin wrote, as part of the Macintosh project, a document describing an Apple Computer Network that is very similar to AOL. They could've just been the whole thing, later becoming Apple/Time-Warner or some such

So now we're up to four strikes.

(Could be five, if you want to include not following up on John Draper's modem for the Apple II, but I won't hold it against them, given what Draper would've been doing with it.)

vmpaul · Sep 13, 2002, 12:57 PM

Originally posted by cpt kangarooski:

Feh. In 1979 Jef Raskin wrote, as part of the Macintosh project, a document describing an Apple Computer Network that is very similar to AOL. They could've just been the whole thing, later becoming Apple/Time-Warner or some such

So now we're up to four strikes.

(Could be five, if you want to include not following up on John Draper's modem for the Apple II, but I won't hold it against them, given what Draper would've been doing with it.)

Wow, those are amazing documents. Wasn't Woz doing something similiar with WATS or the phone system when he was introduced to Jobs?

Can you imagine Apple/Time-Warner? How would the world be different if Apple had evolved into 95% market share and MS was only 5%?

Would we be on the MsNN board rallying against the colossus that is Apple?

Don't mean to divert the topic.

daimoni · 01:57 AM

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deedar · Sep 13, 2002, 01:59 PM

eWorld was very cool. I was sad when it went away. Although weak by today's standards, it was way ahead of it's time - at the time - about all that there was to compare it to was AOL, Prodigy and Compuserve - These others may have been better for news and event content, but eWorld was truly a community!

http://www.apple2world.jp/apple2/A2W...ure/eWorld.gif

BlackGriffen · Sep 13, 2002, 04:49 PM

Originally posted by deedar:
eWorld was very cool. I was sad when it went away. Although weak by today's standards, it was way ahead of it's time - at the time - about all that there was to compare it to was AOL, Prodigy and Compuserve - These others may have been better for news and event content, but eWorld was truly a community!

http://www.apple2world.jp/apple2/A2W...ure/eWorld.gif

That's pretty funny because I don't remember running in to more than a half dozen people during the few months I was on eWorld. It didn't take long for us to switch to AOL, though, for price reasons, then to a local company for unlimited time (same price, too).

BlackGriffen

vmpaul · Sep 14, 2002, 12:49 AM

Originally posted by daimoni:

And remember the guys who started Hotmail? Yup, they were ex-Apple too.

And so the brain-drain continues...

And Palm as well, I think? What a shame. Great product people. Maybe not enough business experience though.

BlackGriffen, I remember it the same. Pretty sparse. Started off with a flurry but quickly became a ghost town.

Thrax · Sep 14, 2002, 07:57 AM

Originally posted by ink:

Was eWorld based on AppleLink at all??

No, it was based on America Online. Apple did plan to move its AppleLink customers to eWorld, though.

Ironically, eWorld was discontinued before AppleLink was.

malvolio · Sep 14, 2002, 11:17 AM

Originally posted by Sword of Orion:
I liked eWorld - especially that soothing female voice informing me that I had mail. Beats that guy that AOL uses any day...

There's an Entourage sound set of eWorld stuff. I have that lovely voice informing me of new mail right now.

derbs · Sep 14, 2002, 11:25 AM

can you send us a link to that soundset?

malvolio · Sep 14, 2002, 12:02 PM

Here.

Thrax · Sep 14, 2002, 12:14 PM

Originally posted by maxelson:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it was Pepsi guy.

I think "The Diesel" was in charge by then. The Pepsi guy was probably there when it was in the planning stages, though.

typoon · Sep 14, 2002, 12:28 PM

Yes I remember eWorld as well. Such fond memories

cpt kangarooski · Sep 14, 2002, 12:49 PM

VMPaul--
Well, IIRC, Steve and the Woz were introduced to each other around 1970, 1971 by a mutual acquaintance, Bill Hernandez, I think.

This would've been _around_ the time that Woz was working on the Cream Soda Computer. Maybe a little while after. Since they were blue boxing in 1971, it was something that happened not long after they met. And of course, they also met Draper at about that time -- he turns up in connection to the Steves all through the 70's.

The only other thing I can think of that the Woz did back then related to telecommunications is that in 1975 he designed a terminal for Alex Kamradt, who was setting up a local timesharing service. When he had gotten it basically working, Woz tested it out by hooking it up with Draper to the ARPANet. Woz was already designing the Apple I at this point, but imagine if he'd seen the value in (legal) telecommunications from such an early stage.

His Dudeness · Sep 14, 2002, 04:59 PM

eWorld was the best online service I've ever used, in terms of quality of people you met. There were no obnoxious pre teen losers that you see today. I once was talking to doctors, lawyers, and scientists all over the world. Nowadays on crap like AOL, there are sex maniacs and those irritating pre teen spammers...

BlackGriffen · Sep 14, 2002, 06:28 PM

Originally posted by cpt kangarooski:
VMPaul--
Well, IIRC, Steve and the Woz were introduced to each other around 1970, 1971 by a mutual acquaintance, Bill Hernandez, I think.

This would've been _around_ the time that Woz was working on the Cream Soda Computer. Maybe a little while after. Since they were blue boxing in 1971, it was something that happened not long after they met. And of course, they also met Draper at about that time -- he turns up in connection to the Steves all through the 70's.

The only other thing I can think of that the Woz did back then related to telecommunications is that in 1975 he designed a terminal for Alex Kamradt, who was setting up a local timesharing service. When he had gotten it basically working, Woz tested it out by hooking it up with Draper to the ARPANet. Woz was already designing the Apple I at this point, but imagine if he'd seen the value in (legal) telecommunications from such an early stage.

I always thought that Woz was the tech geek and Jobs was the visionary/entrepreneur. I'd be willing to bet, though, that jobs is less the originality type, and more the "run with someone else's ideas to the extreme" type.

BlackGriffen

Paco500 · Sep 14, 2002, 11:08 PM

I was an eWorld subscriber till the bitter end. Mostly out of loyalty to Apple, but also because it was the only way (at the time) to send/receive email w/ my newton. Well, there was a hack for AOL, but I never went down that road.

I was sad when it went away.

olePigeon · Sep 15, 2002, 06:19 AM

It's too bad Apple had all these promising technologies. If they had just "stuck with it" a couple more years, who knows what would have happened.

Apple would be a LOT bigger now if they hadn't killed of AppleLink.

And just imagine if they had stuck with the Newton. What a shame. Ironic thing is that the 2100 is STILL superior to the Palm, minus the color LCDs of course (and wouldn't that be a kickass hack!)

The Palm is chugging along with a 33MHz Dragonball at only 5.4 MIPS, while the Newton screams along with up to 220MHz StrongARM (via upgrade) at up to 250 MIPS, running circles around the Palm. Plus, the Palm is limited to 128MB of flash memory. Meanwhile you can get an ATA interface for your Newton, plug it into a laptop HD and you have 40GBs to play with. Probably why there's an MP3 player for the Newton.

I'm still waiting confirmation on Newton 2100. I hope I get it.