When it shipped in 1987, the “Open Mac” Macintosh II let third parties create plug-in cards and associated software to bring features to the Macintosh line that would not otherwise be available. It enabled Apple itself to do the same.
It was on the Mac II that Alan led an Apple effort to bring Ethernet (the underlying network used in his thesis) to the Mac. Based on Apple’s then-standard AppleTalk system, “EtherTalk” would be only the very beginning of Alan’s involvement with the Open Mac.
In 1991, Apple debuted its very popular PowerBook line of laptops. These early PowerBooks included a built-in modem which could use the phone lines to dial in to company and university networks. But the PowerBooks needed something on those networks to dial in to.
Alan and his team at Apple worked to create an “Apple Remote Access” dial-in server which used a Mac II and “ARA MultiPort Server” plug-in cards to enable up to 16 concurrent Macs to remotely dial in and connect to the network that Mac II was on.
Although not an original design goal, it quickly became clear that if a Mac acting as an ARA server were on the Internet, the Macs dialing in could be on the Internet as well. Early prototypes of this type of dial-up Internet access, including one at Alan and Priscilla’s Cupertino home, were developed to begin to explore the feasibility of such a system.
When in late 1994 Alan and Priscilla decided to move their home from Cupertino to Ashland, Oregon, Alan was able to start a company to commercially offer easy-to-use ARA-based dial-up Internet service to Mac users nationwide, all courtesy of the Macintosh II series of Open Macs.
The name of the company Alan created, and ran for the next 25 years, to provide this Open Mac-based Internet service: Open Door Networks.
To be continued. Stay tuned.