The Chooser is an application program for

Macintosh The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and ...

systems using the

classic Mac OS Mac OS (originally System Software; retronym: Classic Mac OS) is the series of operating systems developed for the Macintosh family of personal computers by Apple Computer from 1984 to 2001, starting with System 1 and ending with Mac OS 9. The ...

. The Chooser started out as a

desk accessory A desk accessory (DA) in computing is a small transient or auxiliary application that can be run concurrently in a desktop environment with any other application on the system. Early examples, such as Sidekick and Macintosh desk accessories, used s ...

and became a standalone application program as of

System 7 System 7, codenamed "Big Bang", and also known as Mac OS 7, is a graphical user interface-based operating system for Macintosh computers and is part of the classic Mac OS series of operating systems. It was introduced on May 13, 1991, by Apple Co ...

. The Chooser allowed users to connect to AppleShare file servers (via

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 n ...

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

), enable or disable the network access, and select which printer to use.

History

The original Macintosh computer included two high-speed (for the era)

serial port In computing, a serial port is a serial communication interface through which information transfers in or out sequentially one bit at a time. This is in contrast to a parallel port, which communicates multiple bits simultaneously in parallel. ...

s that were used for most external connectivity. This included

printer Printer may refer to: Technology * Printer (publishing), a person or a company * Printer (computing), a hardware device * Optical printer for motion picture films People * Nariman Printer ( fl. c. 1940), Indian journalist and activist * Jame ...

s, which had to be adapted for use on the Mac through the addition of such a port, or an adaptor. Any device could be plugged into either port, which meant that some system needed to be used to identify which port had a printer, possibly both. A small desk accessory called ''Choose Printer'' allowed the printer driver and serial port to be selected for the connected printer. It did this by listing known printer drivers, displayed as icons of the printer model in question, and allowing the user to select it by clicking on the icon. The icons were expected to physically resemble the printer in question and were contained in the drivers'

resource fork The resource fork is a fork (file system), fork or section of a computer file, file on Apple Inc., Apple's classic Mac OS operating system, which was also carried over to the modern macOS for compatibility, used to store structured data along with t ...

. At this point the two serial ports appeared, allowing the user to indicate which port that printer was connected to. When Apple introduced the

LaserWriter The LaserWriter is a laser printer with built-in PostScript interpreter sold by Apple, Inc. from 1985 to 1988. It was one of the first laser printers available to the mass market. In combination with WYSIWYG publishing software like PageMaker, ...

, its very high cost meant that the only cost-effective way to use it was shared among a small workgroup of Macintoshes. This necessitated the inclusion of

, a simple networking implementation which used low-cost cabling and the same physical

RS-422 RS-422, also known as TIA/EIA-422, is a technical standard originated by the Electronic Industries Alliance that specifies electrical characteristics of a digital signaling circuit. It was meant to be the foundation of a suite of standards that ...

serial port hardware. It was a natural extension of ''Choose Printer'' to include the ability to select the LaserWriter and also which port was used to connect its network connection. As AppleTalk became useful for other types of networking, such as file sharing, the ''Choose Printer'' accessory was renamed to simply ''Chooser''. The Chooser became the main point to add top-level configuration options for both networking and printing. Starting with

Mac OS X 10.0 Mac OS X 10.0 (code named Cheetah) is the first major release of macOS, Mac OS X, Apple Computer, Apple's desktop and server operating system. It was released on March 24, 2001 for a price of $129 after a Mac OS X Public Beta, public beta. Mac ...

, the Chooser was replaced by

macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...

's integrated networking features in the Finder. For the printing functions, they are now found in the separate Print Center (10.0 - 10.2) and

Printer Setup Utility The Printer Setup Utility was an application in Mac OS X that served to allow the user to configure printers physically connected to the computer, or connected via a network. The Utility provided more specific tools than the more user friendly p ...

(10.3 and later) applications.

References

*"Chooser." Mac & Power Mac Secrets. Ed. Mary Bednarek. 2nd ed. San Mateo: IDG, 1994. 74. Print. Macworld. -----(Unused Source) {{Mac OS Classic Mac OS