June 20, 1994: Apple launches eWorld, a subscription service for Mac homeowners that’s designed to compete with America On-line and different nascent on-line properties. Half messaging service and half information aggregator, the early web service offers clients entry to electronic mail, a bulletin board, and software program downloads and help.
Apple envisions eWorld, which runs on Macs and Apple IIGS computer systems, competing with heavy hitters like AOL, Delphi, CompuServe and Prodigy. Sadly, Apple’s on-line service is doomed from the beginning.
Apple eWorld: Early on-line service primarily based on AppleLink
The origins of eWorld hint again to a different Apple proto-social community, known as AppleLink, meant to attach Cupertino with its sellers and help facilities. Within the early Nineteen Nineties, when CEO John Sculley nonetheless steered the ship at Apple, the corporate determined to show AppleLink right into a consumer-facing service.
To satisfy its ambitions, Apple acquired an information middle within the San Francisco Bay Space from banking large Citigroup. It additionally got here to a licensing settlement with America On-line, the corporate that constructed the fundamental expertise behind eWorld.
As with lots of its companies, Apple designed eWorld as a “walled backyard” so Cupertino may management the person expertise. Within the Nineteen Nineties, nonetheless, this was not an enormous departure from the norm. As a result of no one fairly knew what the web would rework into, everybody from AOL to CompuServe did one thing related. Unique content material supposedly would differentiate the businesses’ choices.
A ‘walled backyard’ method to the web
Photograph: Apple
In some methods, eWorld was a bit like Apple’s Information app. It served as an aggregator of stories and leisure from different companies, all filtered via a well-known Apple interface.
Taking a look at eWorld at the moment, it seems overly cartoony in a approach that distracts from, quite than provides to, the person expertise. The premise was to show the web (or, not less than, a restricted model of it) right into a SimCity-style settlement, with completely different buildings representing completely different companies.
This made a bit extra sense at a time when explaining the web was nonetheless vital. It was an summary thought, so Apple did what it had efficiently performed with the Mac’s graphical person interface — which “borrowed” the metaphor of the desktop to clarify computing ideas to a brand new viewers. Full web-browsing help on eWorld didn’t arrive till 1995.
Apple’s flawed execution of a web based service
Regardless of its limitations, eWorld wasn’t low cost. Two off-peak hours with its dial-up service value $8.95. An hour of service past that (or in the course of the day) set individuals again $4.95.
The larger drawback was granting entry to eWorld. As anybody who remembers Apple within the Nineteen Nineties is aware of, Cupertino suffered no scarcity of nice concepts on the time. The issue was turning these concepts into viable merchandise.
Apple deserted a proposed 1995 Home windows model of eWorld as a result of finances cuts, though it was greater than three-quarters completed. Because of a strategic failure, Apple didn’t bundle eWorld on Macs till late 1995 — though a few of its rivals did.
Finally, eWorld picked up solely 147,000 customers. Apple finally phased out the web service in 1996, with remaining clients migrating to AOL.
