Info-Mac is an

online community An online community, also called an internet community or web community, is a community whose members interact with each other primarily via the Internet. Members of the community usually share common interests. For many, online communities may fe ...

news aggregator In computing, a news aggregator, also termed a feed aggregator, feed reader, news reader, RSS reader or simply an aggregator, is client software or a web application that aggregates syndicated web content such as online newspapers, blogs, ...

and shareware file hosting service covering

Apple Inc. Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Apple is the largest technology company by revenue (totaling in 2021) and, as of June 2022, is the world's biggest company ...

products, including the iPhone, iPod and especially the

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

. Established in 1984 as an electronic mailing list, Info-Mac is notable as being the first online community for Apple's then-new Macintosh computer. Info-Mac was the dominant

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

resource for Mac OS software and community-based support throughout the 1980s and early 1990s.

Original format

Info-Mac consisted of two distinct services: the ''Info-Mac Archive'', a user-submitted collection of nearly all contemporary

freeware Freeware is software, most often proprietary, that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user. There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license, or EULA that defines ''freeware'' unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for t ...

and shareware available for the Macintosh, and the ''Info-Mac Digest'', an electronic mailing list open to public participation. Both the Info-Mac Archive and Info-Mac Digest were operated by volunteers.

Info-Mac Digest

The Info-Mac Digest was published daily via Stanford University servers, and was itself archived on the Info-Mac Archive. At its height, the Info-Mac Digest was read daily by several thousand people, and was mirrored in the

Usenet Usenet () is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979, and it wa ...

group comp.sys.mac.digest. The Info-Mac Digest was published in "volumes" that covered the period of one calendar year, with some exceptions.

Info-Mac Archive

The Info-Mac Archive was the centralized collection of Macintosh software with over 100 mirror sites located around the world. At the time, disk space on a server was cost-prohibitive and hard to come by. Free public archives such as Info-Mac were often the only means for shareware authors to deliver their product over the Internet. Some early commercial software download sites, like CNET's Shareware.com, were originally mirrors of the Info-Mac Archive. Due to the low-bandwidth connections accessible by early Internet users, which made downloading large files an onerous task, Info-Mac partnered with Pacific HiTech to periodically publish CD-ROMs containing selected shareware and freeware from the archive. These CDs were sold through Mac-related magazines and publications. Licensing issues required software authors to specifically allow their contributions to be included on the CD-ROM through a statement in the file's abstract. The CDs allowed wider distribution to users who did not have network access or could not spare the long download times associated with software applications. As the software was encoded in

BinHex BinHex, originally short for "binary-to-hexadecimal", is a binary-to-text encoding system that was used on the classic Mac OS for sending binary files through e-mail. Originally a hexadecimal encoding, subsequent versions of BinHex are more simil ...

MacBinary MacBinary is a file format that combines the two ''forks'' of a classic Mac OS file into a single file, along with HFS's extended metadata. The resulting file is suitable for transmission over FTP, the World Wide Web, and electronic mail. The do ...

format it could be stored on non-Mac file systems such as a

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FTP The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a standard communication protocol used for the transfer of computer files from a server to a client on a computer network. FTP is built on a client–server model architecture using separate control and data ...

server. Starting with the Info-Mac VI CD-ROM, the discs included the utility "Spelunker" which allowed users to search the archive in a user-friendly manner. Starting with the Info-Mac VIII CD-ROM, the package included two discs to offer twice the shareware and freeware.

Decline and 2007 relaunch

The popularity of Info-Mac services in their original format waned in the late 1990s. As the growing popularity of the

World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet. Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web ...

and

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allowed software authors to distribute their own software, and for users to communicate on online

message boards An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are often longer than one line of text, and are at least temporar ...

, demand for Info-Mac's services grew beyond the capability of an all-volunteer staff to provide and maintain it at an acceptable level. Unable to maintain relevance on the rapidly evolving Internet, the Info-Mac Digest was discontinued in November 2002, while the Info-Mac Archive stopped accepting new file submissions in December 2005. In December 2007, Info-Mac was redesigned and relaunched with a

Web 2.0 Web 2.0 (also known as participative (or participatory) web and social web) refers to websites that emphasize user-generated content, ease of use, participatory culture and interoperability (i.e., compatibility with other products, systems, and ...

interface, combining previous Info-Mac Digest and Info-Mac Archive content with a modernized forum-based community and news aggregator.Info-Mac Reloaded
/ref> Today, Info-Mac has expanded to cover all Apple product lines. A new,

opt in OPT or Opt may refer for: Computing * /opt, a directory in the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard * Option key, a modifier key on Apple keyboards * Optimal page replacement algorithm, a page replacement algorithms for swapping out pages from memory ...

Info-Mac Digest automatically generated from forum content is published daily. Info-Mac also distributes an iOS app called iForum on the

App Store An App Store (or app marketplace) is a type of digital distribution platform for computer software called applications, often in a mobile context. Apps provide a specific set of functions which, by definition, do not include the running of the c ...

References

External links

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Info-Mac Archive

Info-Mac Digest
{{Authority control File hosting Internet properties established in 1984 Internet forums Macintosh websites Macintosh operating systems