cross-posted from: https://lemmy.capebreton.social/post/392224
With the release of Mac OS X 10.6, “Snow Leopard,” Apple discontinued its support for the AppleTalk local area networking system. Introduced in 1985 as a quick way to connect Apple computers and peripherals to each other, AppleTalk was a low-cost, medium performance network, perfect for homes and many offices.
The basic AppleTalk hardware was built into every Mac computer so networks could be established without any prior setup or need for a centralized router or server. Apple Talk networks could also be connected to each other, forming internets, or use a variety of physical media like Ethernet, Token Ring or Apple’s own LocalTalk.
AppleTalk was ultimately displaced by TCP/IP-based systems, but for most of the 1980s and ‘90s was Apple’s main networking technology.
For those not clear, AppleTalk was created at a time where there was no universal standard in networking. The “standard network” you think of today, a bunch of computers plugged into a router, existed but wasn’t the de-facto setup. There was still experimentation going on.
Apple ported some of the AppleTalk features, such as Network Discovery, into Bonjour which was introduced in 2002. Once that became mature, there was no reason to keep AppleTalk around.