AppleLink

Apple launched AppleLink in the mid-1980s as a private network for staff, dealers and developers: email, bulletin boards and technical documentation, running on the GE Information Services network that also carried GEnie. Hourly rates were steep enough that it was mostly used on the company's dime, and an APPLE.LINK address marked you as someone who worked close to Apple.

For ordinary users, Apple commissioned a consumer edition from Quantum Computer Services, the company behind Quantum Link. The partnership fell apart in 1989 and Quantum launched the service on its own as America Online. Apple tried again with eWorld in 1994 and shut it down two years later — by which point AOL had millions of subscribers and the web was arriving anyway.