EWorld

eWorld was an online service operated by Apple Inc. between June 1994 and March 1996. The services included email (eMail Center), news, software installs and a bulletin board system (Community Center). Users of eWorld were often referred to as "ePeople." Based on a similar service from America Online, eWorld was expensive compared to other services and not well marketed, and failed to attract a high number of subscribers. The service was only available on Apple's Macintosh and Apple IIGS and had limited support on the Newton MessagePad handheld devices, though a PC version had been planned. In the early 1990s online services were becoming widely popular, just as Apple was looking into replacing their aging online service known as AppleLink. AppleLink had originally been developed at the urging of Jon Ebbs, Apple's head of support, who convinced the management that they could lower support costs using an online service. AppleLink had initially been available only to dealers when it launched in 1985, but was later opened to developers and became the de facto internal e-mail service within Apple. The "back end" of AppleLink was hosted by GE Information Services who charged Apple about $300,000 a year, as well as charging the end users up to$15 for daytime access to the system. Apple had tried to negotiate a better rate on several occasions, but GE knew that switching would cost Apple even more, and refused to lower the costs. Nevertheless, Apple began to implement changes. Before the advent of eWorld, Apple had started a consumer-oriented online support service known as AppleLink Personal Edition. Related to the older system in name only, this service was run by Quantum Computer Services, who earlier had established the Q-Link online service for the Commodore 64 personal computer. Quantum's Steve Case moved to California for three months to convince Apple to let Quantum run their new consumer service. In 1987, Apple allowed Quantum to run the service and granted them use of the Apple logo.