4 ms·

One word: Networking. Mac OS and Windows were awful at networking at that time (and Mac OS remained awful at network for some time beyond this point). UNIX var

One word: Networking. Mac OS and Windows were awful at networking at that time (and Mac OS remained awful at network for some time beyond this point). UNIX variants, OS/2, and the BSDs were the options at the time for decent networking...Mac OS wasn't in the running.

wmf 13y ago
OTOH, in those days classic Mac OS was quite popular as an Internet server running WebStar and AIMS.
pbsdp 13y ago
MacTCP was acceptable, but certainly didnt stack up against the UNIX variants.
__david__ 13y ago
Not sure why you would say this. My first job was running phone lines through the lowered ceiling to hook up localtalk for the Macs. It worked wonderfully. Even back then Apple was very auto-configure-y which made finding printers and file servers very easy. Just go into Chooser and there they all were. IP over localtalk was not difficult either. After a couple years it moved to ethernet (coax, yay!) and that worked fine too. Networking Macs has always been extremely easy.
- fzzzy 13y ago
  I agree. The Mac was great at networking in 1993. Sure, MacTCP and MacPPP may have had strange configuration UI but localtalk and ethertalk Just Worked, and getting MacTCP and MacPPP working wasn't too hard.
- laumars 13y ago
  My memories of AppleTalk wasn't so fond - though I can't for the life of me remember why as it seems so long ago now and I've filled my brain full of a few decades more technojunk since. But I do remember being joyful when it came time to port the various Mac LANs over to TCP/IP.
grbalaffa 13y ago
Both Mac and Windows may lagged behind the various unixes at the time in terms of WAN technologies (such as TCP/IP), but the Mac had fantastic LAN capabilities in the form of AppleTalk. Auto-discoverability and auto-setup was a dream. Just give your Mac a name, enable sharing, and you were off and running! Anyone on the network could find your stuff and share with you. All done with human-readable names and very simple GUI tools. There was even good cross-subnet capabilities in the form of AppleTalk "zones", although you had to have routers which could speak AppleTalk in order for it to work. But when it did work, man was it nice! Far ahead of Windows at the time, and still superior in many ways when it came to ease of use vs. the zeroconf stuff of today.
rbanffy 13y ago
You must be joking. IIRC, almost everything Windows 3.11 had out of the box was already present on Macs for ages. Shared printers, p2p file servers, instant messaging (that was an add-on) and more. And better - it all just worked. I remember that, at the time, the e-mail client/server that came with 3.11 was nice and I don't remember anything like that on Macs, but, with that exception, System 7 was orders of magnitude better than 3.11.

wmf 13y ago

OTOH, in those days classic Mac OS was quite popular as an Internet server running WebStar and AIMS.

pbsdp 13y ago

MacTCP was acceptable, but certainly didnt stack up against the UNIX variants.

__david__ 13y ago

Not sure why you would say this. My first job was running phone lines through the lowered ceiling to hook up localtalk for the Macs. It worked wonderfully. Even back then Apple was very auto-configure-y which made finding printers and file servers very easy. Just go into Chooser and there they all were. IP over localtalk was not difficult either. After a couple years it moved to ethernet (coax, yay!) and that worked fine too. Networking Macs has always been extremely easy.

fzzzy 13y ago
I agree. The Mac was great at networking in 1993. Sure, MacTCP and MacPPP may have had strange configuration UI but localtalk and ethertalk Just Worked, and getting MacTCP and MacPPP working wasn't too hard.
laumars 13y ago
My memories of AppleTalk wasn't so fond - though I can't for the life of me remember why as it seems so long ago now and I've filled my brain full of a few decades more technojunk since. But I do remember being joyful when it came time to port the various Mac LANs over to TCP/IP.

grbalaffa 13y ago

Both Mac and Windows may lagged behind the various unixes at the time in terms of WAN technologies (such as TCP/IP), but the Mac had fantastic LAN capabilities in the form of AppleTalk. Auto-discoverability and auto-setup was a dream. Just give your Mac a name, enable sharing, and you were off and running! Anyone on the network could find your stuff and share with you. All done with human-readable names and very simple GUI tools. There was even good cross-subnet capabilities in the form of AppleTalk "zones", although you had to have routers which could speak AppleTalk in order for it to work. But when it did work, man was it nice! Far ahead of Windows at the time, and still superior in many ways when it came to ease of use vs. the zeroconf stuff of today.

rbanffy 13y ago

You must be joking. IIRC, almost everything Windows 3.11 had out of the box was already present on Macs for ages. Shared printers, p2p file servers, instant messaging (that was an add-on) and more. And better - it all just worked. I remember that, at the time, the e-mail client/server that came with 3.11 was nice and I don't remember anything like that on Macs, but, with that exception, System 7 was orders of magnitude better than 3.11.