AppleShare is a discontinued product from

Apple Computer Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, in Silicon Valley. It is best known for its consumer electronics, software, and services. Founded in 1976 as Apple Computer Co ...

which implements various

network service In computer networking, a network service is an application running at the network layer and above, that provides data storage, manipulation, presentation, communication or other capability which is often implemented using a client–server or pe ...

s. Its main purpose is to act as a

file server In computing, a file server (or fileserver) is a computer attached to a network that provides a location for shared disk access, i.e. storage of computer files (such as text, image, sound, video) that can be accessed by workstations within a co ...

, using the AFP protocol. Other network services implemented in later versions of AppleShare included a

print server In computer networking, a print server, or printer server, is a type of server that connects printers to client computers over a network. It accepts print jobs from the computers and sends the jobs to the appropriate printers, queuing the jobs ...

using the Printer Access Protocol (PAP),

web server A web server is computer software and underlying Computer hardware, hardware that accepts requests via Hypertext Transfer Protocol, HTTP (the network protocol created to distribute web content) or its secure variant HTTPS. A user agent, co ...

, electronic

mail server Within the Internet email system, a message transfer agent (MTA), mail transfer agent, or mail relay is software that transfers electronic mail messages from one computer to another using the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. In some contexts, the a ...

, and SMB / CIFS server to support file sharing to

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

clients.

Earlier versions of AppleShare supported only the

AppleTalk AppleTalk is a discontinued proprietary suite of networking protocols developed by Apple Computer for their Macintosh computers. AppleTalk includes a number of features that allow local area networks to be connected with no prior setup or the ...

network transport protocol but later versions, sold under the name AppleShare IP, allowed use of the

TCP/IP The Internet protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, is a framework for organizing the communication protocols used in the Internet and similar computer networks according to functional criteria. The foundational protocols in the suite are ...

protocol stack, as used on most modern networks. AppleShare provided three different protocols for application-layer services: AppleShare File Server, AppleShare Print Server and AppleShare PC. AppleShare would operate with any physical network medium. Early installations used mainly LocalTalk (and more recently

Ethernet Ethernet ( ) is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in 198 ...

), but any physical medium could be used which could be directly or indirectly connected to an AppleShare server system. Equivalent third-party server products include the

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

Netatalk suite on

Unix Unix (, ; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multi-user computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, a ...

-like systems, and Services for Macintosh on

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

Windows NT Windows NT is a Proprietary software, proprietary Graphical user interface, graphical operating system produced by Microsoft as part of its Windows product line, the first version of which, Windows NT 3.1, was released on July 27, 1993. Original ...

and

2000 2000 was designated as the International Year for the Culture of Peace and the World Mathematics, Mathematical Year. Popular culture holds the year 2000 as the first year of the 21st century and the 3rd millennium, because of a tende ...

. Versions of Mac OS from System 7 onwards included Personal File Sharing, which is a more limited AFP implementation. The most obvious difference between Personal File Sharing and AppleShare is that the former supports only a small number of concurrent remote users. All versions of Mac OS were capable of acting as a client to an AppleShare server (via AFP and later SMB) over AppleTalk and TCP/IP protocols, although more recent versions of

macOS macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

have gradually removed support for AppleTalk in favor of standard TCP/IP. Third-party vendors created client software such as PC MACLAN (discontinued) and DAVE to implement client functionality on Windows systems. Other developers offered server software that provided similar functionality on Windows Servers such as GroupLogic ExtremeZ-IP, Cyan Software GmbH's MacServerIP, and NetATalk on Linux. Later versions of AppleShare also implemented the SMB and CIFS protocols which are the native file sharing protocols on Windows machines. Apple discontinued the AppleShare product line following the release of

macOS Server Mac OS X Server is a series of discontinued Unix-like server operating systems developed by Apple Inc., based on macOS. It provided server functionality and system administration tools, and tools to manage both macOS-based computers and i ...

, which provides equivalent functionality.

System requirements

AppleShare (IP) support from 3.0.1 for Macintosh.

References

{{reflist

Bibliography

* ''

InfoWorld ''InfoWorld'' (''IW'') is an American information technology media business. Founded in 1978, it began as a monthly magazine. In 2007, it transitioned to a Web-only publication. Its parent company is International Data Group, and its sister pu ...

'', 20 April 1987, page 62-64

External links

AppleShare Developer Documentation
- from developer.apple.com
AppleShare airs at last
- Network World, page 4, 1987
AppleShare and AppleShare IP File Sharing: Chart of All Limitations
- from support.apple.com via archive.org Network file systems Classic Mac OS Apple Inc. file systems Apple Inc. software Network operating systems

System requirements

See also

References

Bibliography

External links