

In 1996 AOL considered buying Apple. - dclaysmith
http://www.techflash.com/seattle/2011/08/ted-leonsis-aol-considered-apple-buy.html

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ja27
It's been a long time but at the time Apple had their own AOL-like community,
eWorld.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EWorld>

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huxley
The story is a bit more complex.

What we know as America Online was based on AppleLink Personal Edition which
was a joint project of Apple and Quantum Computer Services (which was run by
Steve Case).

By the late 1980s, their relationship foundered and AppleLink Personal Edition
was ported to Windows as PCLink and eventually the software and community was
re-branded as America Online. Eventually, Quantum Computer Services changed
their name to America Online.

America Online grew remarkably, so around 1994, Apple approached them to host
eWorld which was to be a re-branded version of America Online with a custom UI
and with billing handled by Apple.

eWorld failed due to a combination of high prices with little differentiation
from AOL, poor marketing by Apple, and the Spindler era budget constraints,
but even in the unlikely event that it had succeeded the Internet was
beginning to gain in popularity so eWorld would have died off not long after
it actually did.

