Applelink

[Fact 1]: In 1991 the service had grown substantially, and the company was renamed as America Online Inc.

[Fact 2]: All the systems, including the AppleLink community, were united behind the scenes as part of GEIS' worldwide E-mail service and could exchange mail with each other and all GEIS mail customers, using addresses like MICHAEL@APPLELINK or JOHNDOE@GEIS.

[Fact 3]: 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.

[Fact 4]: 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.

[Fact 5]: During this time the system, with the Windows client, also became the foundation for Microsoft's first on-line service for developers, the .On August 28, 1991, AppleLink, running on a [[Macintosh Portable was used to send the first e-mail from space, aboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis, mission STS-43.

[Fact 6]: Eventually, the GEIS products were renamed and after a Rewrite , again renamed in 1992.

[Fact 7]: 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.

[Fact 8]: Subsequently Apple moved all of its services and replaced all of the AppleLink content.

[Fact 9]: The system was ready for launch in mid-1994.However by this point the rapid rise of the Internet was generally killing off all smaller online services and BBSes, and online systems were generally seen as antiquated.

[Fact 10]: In the late 1980s the service was also opened up to software developers, who could use it both as an end-user support system, as well as a conduit to Apple development for questions and suggestions.AppleLink used client software written in Pascal under contract to Apple by Pete Burnight/Central Coast Software.

[Fact 11]: It was handed over anyway as part of the Macintosh source code, thanks to John Sculley, Apple's CEO at the time.