Apple didn't own the eWorld infrastructure, and at the time they couldn't afford the bill they were getting from GE Information Systems. https://en.m.wikipedia

Apple didn't own the eWorld infrastructure, and at the time they couldn't afford the bill they were getting from GE Information Systems. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/EWorld https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/EWorld In reading that Wikipedia article, I was reminded that another online service used by Apple morphed into AOL. I had an AppleLink dial up account as the tech support lead for all things Mac at work. It wasn't marketed as a consumer product. Another native-like front end for dialup service at the time was "First Class", which could be self-hosted by any provider. The Berkeley Mac User Group BMUG had a great FirstClass BBS.