Editing AppleTalk (section)

==History==

===AppleNet===
After the release of the [[Apple Lisa]] computer in January 1983, Apple invested considerable effort in the development of a [[local area network]]ing (LAN) system for the machines. Known as '''AppleNet''', it was based on the seminal [[Xerox XNS]] [[protocol stack]]<ref>{{cite magazine |first=John |last=Markoff |author-link=John Markoff |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-C8EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA14 |title=Apple plans slower, affordable local area network |magazine=[[InfoWorld]] |date=14 February 1983 |page=14}}</ref> but running on a custom 1&nbsp;Mbit/s [[coaxial cable]] system rather than Xerox's 2.94&nbsp;Mbit/s [[Ethernet]]. AppleNet was announced early in 1983 with a full introduction at the target price of $500 for plug-in AppleNet cards for the Lisa and the [[Apple II]].{{sfn|Oppenheimer|2004|loc=Slide 3}}

At that time, early LAN systems were just coming to market, including [[Ethernet]], [[Token Ring]], [[Econet]], and [[ARCNET]]. This was a topic of major commercial effort at the time, dominating shows like the [[National Computer Conference]] (NCC) in Anaheim in May 1983. All of the systems were jockeying for position in the market, but even at this time, Ethernet's widespread acceptance suggested it was to become a ''de facto'' standard.<ref>{{cite magazine |first=David |last=Ahl |author-link=David Ahl |url=http://www.atarimagazines.com/creative/v9n8/188_1983_National_Computer_Co.php |title=1983 National Computer Conference, May 16-19, Anaheim, California |magazine=[[Creative Computing (magazine)|Creative Computing]] |date=August 1983 |page=188}}</ref> It was at this show that [[Steve Jobs]] asked Gursharan Sidhu a seemingly innocuous question: "Why has networking not caught on?"{{sfn|Sidhu|Andrews|Oppenheimer|1989|p=xxiii}}

Four months later, in October, AppleNet was cancelled. At the time, they announced that "Apple realized that it's not in the business to create a networking system. We built and used AppleNet in-house, but we realized that if we had shipped it, we would have seen new standards coming up."{{sfn|Bartimo|1984|p=45}} In January, Jobs announced that they would instead be supporting [[IBM]]'s Token Ring, which he expected to come out in a "few months".{{sfn|Bartimo|1984|p=45}}

===AppleBus===
Through this period, Apple was deep in development of the Macintosh computer. During development, engineers had made the decision to use the [[Zilog SCC|Zilog 8530]] serial controller chip (SCC) instead of the lower-cost and more common [[UART]] to provide [[serial port]] connections.{{sfn|Oppenheimer|2004|loc=Slide 6}} The SCC cost about $5 more than a UART, but offered much higher speeds of up to 250&nbsp;kilobits per second (or higher with additional hardware) and internally supported a number of basic networking-like protocols like IBM's [[Binary Synchronous Communications|Bisync]].<ref>{{cite book |url=http://html.alldatasheet.net/html-pdf/96934/ZILOG/Z8530/1414/11/Z8530.html |title=Zilog Z8530 User's Manual |publisher=[[Zilog]] |page=1{{hyp}}1}}</ref>

The SCC was chosen because it would allow multiple devices to be attached to the port. [[Peripheral]]s equipped with similar SCCs could communicate using the built-in protocols, interleaving their data with other peripherals on the same bus. This would eliminate the need for more ports on the back of the machine, and allowed for the elimination of [[expansion slot]]s for supporting more complex devices. The initial concept was known as '''AppleBus''', envisioning a system controlled by the host Macintosh polling "dumb" devices in a fashion similar to the modern [[Universal Serial Bus]].{{sfn|Oppenheimer|2004|loc=Slide 9}}

===AppleBus networking===
The Macintosh team had already begun work on what would become the [[LaserWriter]] and had considered a number of other options to answer the question of how to share these expensive machines and other resources. A series of memos from Bob Belleville clarified these concepts, outlining the Mac, LaserWriter, and a [[file server]] system which would become the [[Macintosh Office]].{{sfn|Sidhu|Andrews|Oppenheimer|1989|p=xxiii}} By late 1983 it was clear that IBM's Token Ring would not be ready in time for the launch of the Mac, and might miss the launch of these other products as well. In the end, Token Ring would not ship until October 1985.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.techfest.com/networking/lan/token.htm |title=Token-Ring Technical Summary |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120422020240/http://www.techfest.com/networking/lan/token.htm |archive-date=22 April 2012 |url-status=dead |at=Section 1.2}}</ref>

Jobs' earlier question to Sidhu had already sparked a number of ideas. When AppleNet was cancelled in October, Sidhu led an effort to develop a new networking system based on the AppleBus hardware. This new system would not have to conform to any existing preconceptions, and was designed to be worthy of the Mac – a system that was user-installable and required no configuration or fixed network addresses – in short, a true plug-and-play network.{{sfn|Oppenheimer|2004|loc=Slide 10}}{{third-party inline|date=June 2012}} Considerable effort was needed, but by the time the Mac was released, the basic concepts had been outlined, and some of the low-level protocols were on their way to completion. Sidhu mentioned the work to Belleville only two hours after the Mac was announced.{{sfn|Sidhu|Andrews|Oppenheimer|1989|p=xxiii}}

The "new" AppleBus was announced in early 1984,<ref group="N">AppleBus is mentioned by name in Steve Jobs' introduction of the Macintosh at the Boston Computer Society meeting in 1984. It appears just after the 7:20 mark [https://web.archive.org/web/20140126180506/http://techland.time.com/2014/01/25/steve-jobs-mac/ in the video].</ref> allowing direct connection from the Mac or Lisa through a small box that is plugged into the serial port and connected via cables to the next computer upstream and downstream. Adaptors for [[Apple II]] and [[Apple III]] were also announced.<ref name="jb">{{cite magazine |first=Jim |last=Barimo |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=lC4EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA45 |title=Apple, waiting for IBM net, links micros with AppleBus |magazine=[[InfoWorld]] |date=26 March 1984 |pages=45–46}}</ref> Apple also announced that an AppleBus network could be attached to, and would appear to be a single node within, a Token Ring system.{{sfn|Bartimo|1984|p=45}} Details of how this would work were sketchy.{{sfn|Bartimo|1984|p=45}}

===AppleTalk Personal Network===
Just prior to its release in early 1985, AppleBus was renamed '''AppleTalk'''. Initially marketed as '''AppleTalk Personal Network''', it comprised a family of network protocols and a physical layer.

The physical layer had a number of limitations, including a speed of only 230.4&nbsp;kbit/s, a maximum distance of {{convert|1000|ft|m}} from end to end, and only 32 nodes per LAN.{{sfn|Oppenheimer|2004|loc=Slide 15}} But as the basic hardware was built into the Mac, adding nodes only cost about $50 for the adaptor box. In comparison, Ethernet or Token Ring cards cost hundreds or thousands of dollars. Additionally, the entire [[networking stack]] required only about 6&nbsp;kB of RAM, allowing it to run on any Mac.{{sfn|Oppenheimer|2004|loc=Slide 19}}

The relatively slow speed of AppleTalk allowed further reductions in cost. Instead of using [[RS-422]]'s balanced transmit and receive circuits, the AppleTalk cabling used a single common [[electrical ground]], which limited speeds to about 500&nbsp;kbit/s, but allowed one conductor to be removed. This meant that common three-conductor cables could be used for wiring. Additionally, the adaptors were designed to be "self-terminating", meaning that nodes at the end of the network could simply leave their last connector unconnected. There was no need for the wires to be connected back together into a loop, nor the need for hubs or other devices.

The system was designed for future expansion; the addressing system allowed for expansion to 255 nodes in a LAN (although only 32 could be used at that time), and by using "bridges" (which came to be known as "routers", although technically not the same) one could interconnect LANs into larger collections. "Zones" allowed devices to be addressed within a bridge-connected internet. Additionally, AppleTalk was designed from the start to allow use with any potential underlying physical link,{{sfn|Oppenheimer|2004|loc=Slide 17}} and within a few years, the physical layer would be renamed '''LocalTalk''', so as to differentiate it from the AppleTalk protocols.

The main advantage of AppleTalk was that it was completely maintenance-free. To join a device to a network, a user simply plugged the adaptor into the machine, then connected a cable from it to any free port on any other adaptor. The AppleTalk network stack negotiated a network address, assigned the computer a human-readable name, and compiled a list of the names and types of other machines on the network so the user could browse the devices through the [[Chooser (Mac OS)|Chooser]]. AppleTalk was so easy to use that ad hoc networks tended to appear whenever multiple Macs were in the same room.<ref>{{cite magazine |first=Lee |last=Larson |url=http://www.math.louisville.edu/~lee/macwritings/LCN9910.shtml |title=LocalTalk to EtherTalk? |magazine=Louisville Computer News |date=October 1999}}</ref> Apple would later use this in an advertisement showing a network being created between two seats in an airplane.<ref>{{cite AV media |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsqDtvTRsoM |title=Apple Computer Ad - Powerbook Networking}}</ref>

===PhoneNet and other adaptors===
Slow but inexpensive, AppleTalk became widely popular.{{r|satchell19870817}} A thriving third-party market for AppleTalk devices developed over the next few years. One particularly notable example was an alternate adaptor designed by [[Berkeley Macintosh Users Group|BMUG]] and commercialised by Farallon as [[PhoneNET]] in 1987.{{sfn|Oppenheimer|2004|loc=Slide 28}} This was essentially a replacement for Apple's connector that had conventional [[Telephone jack and plug|phone jacks]] instead of Apple's round connectors. PhoneNet allowed AppleTalk networks to be connected together using normal telephone wires, and with very little extra work, could run analog phones and AppleTalk on a single four-conductor phone cable.

Other companies took advantage of the SCC's ability to read external clocks in order to support higher transmission speeds, up to 1 Mbit/s. In these systems, the external adaptor also included its own [[clock]], and used that to signal the SCC's clock input pins. The best-known such system was Centram's '''FlashTalk''', which ran at 768&nbsp;kbit/s, and was intended to be used with their [[TOPS (file server)|TOPS]] networking system.<ref>{{cite magazine |first=Tim |last=Brown |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KB0EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA27 |title=AppleTalk Made Faster |magazine=[[Network World]] |date=26 October 1987 |page=27}}</ref> A similar solution was the 850&nbsp;kbit/s '''DaynaTalk''', which used a separate box that plugged in between the computer and a normal LocalTalk/PhoneNet box. Dayna also offered a PC expansion card that ran up to 1.7&nbsp;Mbit/s when talking to other Dayna PC cards.<ref>{{cite magazine |first=John |last=Battelle |url=http://www.accessmylibrary.com/article-1G1-7626749/daynatalk-accelerators-ship-product.html |title=DaynaTalk accelerators ship |magazine=[[MacWEEK]] |date=23 May 1989}}</ref><ref>{{cite magazine |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=czAEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PT70 |title=Get More Net Work Out Of Your Network |magazine=[[InfoWorld]] |date=11 December 1989}}</ref> Several other systems also existed with even higher performance, but these often required special cabling that was incompatible with LocalTalk/PhoneNet, and also required patches to the networking stack that often caused problems.

=== AppleTalk over Ethernet ===
As Apple expanded into more commercial and education markets, they needed to integrate AppleTalk into existing network installations. Many of these organisations had already invested in a very expensive Ethernet infrastructure and there was no direct way to connect a Macintosh to Ethernet. AppleTalk included a protocol structure for interconnecting AppleTalk subnets and so as a solution, EtherTalk was initially created to use the Ethernet as a backbone between LocalTalk subnets. To accomplish this, organizations would need to purchase a [[LocalTalk-to-Ethernet bridge]] and Apple left it to third parties to produce these products.{{sfn|Oppenheimer|2004|loc=Slide 31}} A number of companies responded, including [[Hayes Microcomputer Products|Hayes]] and a few newly formed companies like Kinetics.

=== LocalTalk, EtherTalk, TokenTalk, and AppleShare ===
By 1987, Ethernet was clearly winning the standards battle over Token Ring, and in the middle of that year, Apple introduced '''EtherTalk 1.0''', an implementation of the AppleTalk protocol over the Ethernet physical layer. Introduced for the newly released [[Macintosh II]] computer, one of Apple's first two Macintoshes with expansion slots (the Macintosh SE had one slot of a different type), the operating system included a new Network [[System Settings|control panel]] that allowed the user to select which physical connection to use for networking (from "Built-in" or "EtherTalk"). At introduction, Ethernet interface cards were available from [[3Com]] and Kinetics that plugged into a [[NuBus|Nubus]] slot in the machine. The new networking stack also expanded the system to allow a full 255 nodes per LAN. With EtherTalk's release, AppleTalk Personal Network was renamed '''[[LocalTalk]]''',{{sfn|Oppenheimer|2004|loc=Slide 30}} the name it would be known under for the bulk of its life. Token Ring would later be supported with a similar '''TokenTalk''' product, which used the same Network control panel and underlying software. Over time, many third-party companies would introduce compatible Ethernet and Token Ring cards that used these same drivers.

The appearance of a Macintosh with a direct Ethernet connection also magnified the Ethernet and LocalTalk compatibility problem: Networks with new and old Macs needed some way to communicate with each other. This could be as simple as a network of Ethernet Mac II's trying to talk to a LaserWriter that only connected to LocalTalk. Apple initially relied on the aforementioned LocalTalk-to-Ethernet bridge products, but contrary to Apple's belief that these would be low-volume products, by the end of 1987, 130,000 such networks were in use. AppleTalk was at that time the most used networking system in the world, with over three times the installations of any other vendor.{{sfn|Oppenheimer|2004|loc=Slide 32}}{{third-party inline|date=June 2012}}

1987 also marked the introduction of the [[AppleShare]] product, a dedicated [[file server]] that ran on any Mac with 512&nbsp;kB of [[RAM]] or more. A common AppleShare machine was the [[Mac Plus]] with an external [[SCSI]] [[hard drive]]. AppleShare was the #3 [[network operating system]] (NOS) in the late 1980s, behind [[Novell NetWare]] and Microsoft's [[MS-Net]]. While NetWare had more than 50% of the NOS market, AppleTalk users were the happiest.<ref name=didio19880711>{{cite magazine |first=Laura |last=DiDio |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MRMEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA17 |title=Study finds NetWare to be OS of choice |magazine=[[Network World]] |date=11 July 1988 |page=17}}</ref> AppleShare was effectively the replacement for the failed Macintosh Office efforts, which had been based on a dedicated file server device.

===AppleTalk Phase II and other developments===
A significant re-design was released in 1989 as '''AppleTalk Phase II'''. In many ways, Phase II can be considered an effort to make the earlier version (never called Phase I) more generic. LANs could now support more than 255 nodes, and zones were no longer associated with physical networks but were entirely virtual constructs used simply to organize nodes. For instance, one could now make a "Printers" zone that would list all the printers in an organization, or one might want to place that same device in the "2nd Floor" zone to indicate its physical location. Phase II also included changes to the underlying inter-networking protocols to make them less "chatty", which had previously been a serious problem on networks that bridged over wide-area networks.{{sfn|Oppenheimer|2004|loc=Slide 34}}

By this point, Apple had a wide variety of communications products under development, and many of these were announced along with AppleTalk Phase II. These included updates to EtherTalk and TokenTalk, AppleTalk software and LocalTalk hardware for the [[IBM PC]], EtherTalk for Apple's [[A/UX]] [[operating system]] allowing it to use [[LaserWriter]]s and other network resources, and the Mac [[X.25]] and [[MacX]] products.

Ethernet had become almost universal by 1990, and it was time to build Ethernet into Macs direct from the factory. However, the physical wiring used by these networks was not yet completely standardized. Apple solved this problem using a single port on the back of the computer into which the user could plug an adaptor for any given cabling system. This '''FriendlyNet''' system was based on the industry-standard [[Attachment Unit Interface]] or AUI, but deliberately chose a non-standard connector that was smaller and easier to use, which they called "Apple AUI", or '''[[AAUI]]'''. FriendlyNet was first introduced on the [[Quadra 700]] and [[Quadra 900]] computers, and used across much of the Mac line for some time.{{sfn|Oppenheimer|2004|loc=Slide 36}} As with LocalTalk, a number of third-party FriendlyNet adaptors quickly appeared.

As [[10BASE-T]] became the de facto cabling system for Ethernet, second-generation [[Power Macintosh]] machines added a 10BASE-T port in addition to AAUI. The [[PowerBook 3400c]] and lower-end Power Macs also added 10BASE-T. The [[Power Macintosh 7300]]/[[Power Macintosh 8600|8600]]/[[Power Macintosh 9600|9600]] were the final Macs to include AAUI, and 10BASE-T became universal starting with the [[Power Macintosh G3]] and [[PowerBook G3]].

===The capital-I Internet===
From the beginning of AppleTalk, users wanted to connect the Macintosh to [[Internet protocol suite|TCP/IP]] network environments. In 1984, Bill Croft at [[Stanford University]] pioneered the development of IP packets encapsulated in DDP as part of the SEAGATE (Stanford Ethernet–AppleTalk Gateway) project. SEAGATE was commercialized by Kinetics in their LocalTalk-to-Ethernet bridge as an additional routing option. A few years later, [[MacIP]] was separated from the SEAGATE code and became the de facto method for IP packets to be routed over LocalTalk networks. By 1986, [[Columbia University]] released the first version of the Columbia AppleTalk Package (CAP) that allowed higher integration of Unix, TCP/IP, and AppleTalk environments. In 1988, Apple released [[MacTCP]], a system that allowed the Mac to support TCP/IP on machines with suitable Ethernet hardware. However, this left many universities with the problem of supporting IP on their many LocalTalk-equipped Macs. It was soon common to include MacIP support in LocalTalk-to-Ethernet bridges.{{sfn|Oppenheimer|2004|loc=Slide 36}} MacTCP would not become a standard part of the [[Classic Mac OS]] until 1994,{{sfn|Oppenheimer|2004|loc=Slide 43}} by which time it also supported [[SNMP]] and [[Point-to-Point Protocol|PPP]].

For some time in the early 1990s, the Mac was a primary client on the rapidly expanding Internet.{{citation needed|date=June 2012}} Among the better-known programs in wide use were Fetch, Eudora, eXodus, NewsWatcher, and the NCSA packages, especially [[NCSA Mosaic]]<ref>{{Cite magazine |last=Calore |first=Michael |title=April 22, 1993: Mosaic Browser Lights Up Web With Color, Creativity |language=en-US |magazine=[[Wired (magazine)|Wired]] |url=https://www.wired.com/2010/04/0422mosaic-web-browser/ |access-date=2017-10-14}}</ref> and its offspring, [[Netscape Navigator]].{{sfn|Oppenheimer|2004|loc=Slide 46}} Additionally, a number of server products appeared that allowed the Mac to host Internet content. Through this period, Macs had about 2 to 3 times as many clients connected to the Internet as any other platform,{{sfn|Oppenheimer|2004|loc=Slide 51}}{{third-party inline|date=June 2012}} despite the relatively small overall microcomputer market share.

As the world quickly moved to IP for both LAN and WAN uses, Apple was faced with maintaining two increasingly outdated code bases on an ever-wider group of machines as well as the introduction of the [[PowerPC]]-based machines. This led to the [[Open Transport]] efforts, which re-implemented both MacTCP and AppleTalk on an entirely new code base adapted from the Unix standard [[STREAMS]]. Early versions had problems and did not become stable for some time.{{sfn|Oppenheimer|2004|loc=Slide 54}} By that point, Apple was deep in their ultimately doomed [[Copland (operating system)|Copland]] efforts.

===Legacy and abandonment===
With the purchase of [[NeXT]] and subsequent development of [[Mac OS X]], AppleTalk was strictly a legacy system. Support was added to Mac OS X in order to provide support for a large number of existing AppleTalk devices, notably [[laser printer]]s and file shares, but alternate connection solutions common in this era, notably USB for printers, limited their demand. As Apple abandoned many of these product categories, and all new systems were based on IP, AppleTalk became less and less common. AppleTalk support was finally removed from the macOS line in [[Mac OS X v10.6]] in 2009.<ref name="snow_leopard_printing">{{cite web |url=http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3771 |title=Mac OS X v10.6: Mac 101 – Printing |access-date=2 September 2009}}</ref>

However, the loss of AppleTalk did not reduce the desire for networking solutions that combined its ease of use with IP routing. Apple has led the development of many such efforts, from the introduction of the [[AirPort]] router to the development of the [[zero-configuration networking]] system and their implementation of it, Rendezvous, later renamed ''[[Bonjour (software)|Bonjour]]''.

As of 2020, AppleTalk support has been completely removed from legacy support with macOS 11 Big Sur.