473:. To ensure that all messages are delivered in a reasonable time on a network where machines might appear and disappear at random (when they are turned on and off), AOCE has a 15-minute timeout in which it repeatedly tries to deliver pending messages. If the user is using a dialup connection on a modem, AOCE keeps the line open for a full 15 minutes before giving up on disconnected user, driving up long distance bills to deliver a potentially tiny message.
449:, typically could not be run together because of a lack of memory. While newer machines were able to run AOCE more comfortably, as an email system intended to be run on diverse networks of heterogeneous machines the requirements greatly impaired market acceptance. Simply downloading and installing separate stand-alone client applications for each mail system the user actually had would use considerably less disk space, and had no constant
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337:(BBSs). Each email system used its own standards for collecting and storing information, which required users to run multiple clients to access the different services. Although a single-mailbox system could be constructed by administrators with the use of email gateways, these tended to be expensive and technically challenging to maintain.
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maintenance. The server was not ready in time for the release, and did not ship for another year. When it did it was likewise slow and resource hungry, largely a side effect of various features of the Mac OS that makes it unsuitable for server applications—a role for which it was never designed in the first place.
566:. The book documenting the system is larger than all of the books describing the rest of the pre-System 7 Macintosh combined. Adding a simple feature like "mail this document" to an application requires wading through hundreds of pages of documentation, and writing a core AOCE component is many times more complex.
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and queue viewer. PowerTalk provides a set of standard forms for interacting with the items in the queues, and a common interface for mail, and a universal mailbox. Encryption is supported by a single keychain that remembered all your passwords and digital signatures, encrypting them together so only
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By early 1993 the client side of AOCE was nearing completion, which was then referred to as PowerTalk. Apple started a pre-release marketing campaign, telling larger customers and even third party email vendors that AOCE would soon arrive and change the market completely. Their claim was that nothing
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Several parts of the AOCE engine are useful on their own, such as the
Keychain. However, in order to get the keychain, the user must install all of AOCE, a cost the users were not willing to pay. Many years later the keychain was finally shipped as a stand-alone component in Mac OS 9. The encryption
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AOCE's Open
Directory and related software introduced the concept of directory entries (such as business cards) as first-class desktop objects. This is used to create a drag-and-drop metaphor for mail, fax, and other directory-based activities. Each endpoint, a mail server for instance, is driven by
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AOCE normally store users' email on each personal computer, as opposed to a server. This not only allows the user to read mail offline, but also removes the need for a single machine with huge storage space. Small networks can be set up simply by installing the standard client software; the machines
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to have it appear in the message. Disk usage is also a problem because each message is stored as a separate file, requiring 1 kB or more of space in an era where 40 MB and 80 MB disks are still common. Thus a few hundred messages are enough to fill the free space on the drive. Backing up email was
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When the product finally shipped after years of hype, users were dismayed to find that to install it requires a machine with 2.5 MB of RAM minimum, and needed 4 MB to run well. This is the maximum available RAM in many Mac systems of the era. Removing unneeded components do little to address this,
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An optional server can be installed for performance and maintenance needs for those sites that required it. In this case any attempted delivery would be intercepted immediately by the server, thereby avoiding delays if the recipient was not online. The server then delivers the message on behalf of
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At one end of the system, AOCE focuses on the underlying delivery and addressing systems, generalizing the email concept so the system can be used to deliver anything from email to word processor documents to print jobs. Addressing was another issue the market was struggling with, so AOCE offers a
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Users can share documents directly simply by dropping the address on the document, or vice versa, bypassing a message at all – the document would arrive automatically in the other user's mailbox. Delivery of email (which in this scenario is nothing more than a text document in a specialized
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While PowerTalk was generally an interesting system, a combination of design features made it frustrating to use. For instance, the addressing system is so deeply embedded into the core of the system that simply typing in a new address is an ordeal. First the user clicks on a button, selects the
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AOCE and PowerTalk were heavily marketed between 1993 and 1996, but the hardware requirements meant that most users couldn't even install or use it. Developers were likewise stymied by the complex system, and since the installed base was so small their potential sales were even smaller. In 1996,
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The project started by looking at existing mail systems and trying to find common concepts and problems. The team also found problems with existing email systems. They tended to support plain text mail only, and rarely supported non-English characters. Support for mobile users was poor, often
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The system could not know who a user was, because the single-user Mac OS 7 does not require users to log in. Thus documents had to be delivered to a user's machine. This does not work well when the user has two or more machines, making the concept of a universal mailbox difficult to achieve in
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stores various login credentials in an encrypted file. This allows the users to use a different username and password on the various systems, placing them in the keychain database for secure storage. This requires only a single password for the keychain; AOCE can retrieve the credentials for a
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Many of these problems were intended to be solved with the PowerShare server, which acts as an always-on, always responsive super-peer. The basic AOCE protocol notices these machines when attempting delivery, and sends to them first, thereby eliminating the delays and centralizing storage and
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gave AOCE one star out of five, citing profoundly poor usability, documentation, hardware resource requirements, and telephone technical support. A network administrator of five years, Beckman failed to even properly send email after three dedicated days, saying "setting up and maintaining a
405:, where engineers spend considerable time designing a system that does everything. Invariably these projects fail as the demands are not only incredibly difficult to meet, but often fail to meet real user needs. Often the ideas themselves are good, but buried inside unusable implementations.
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single universal addressing mechanism and address book, one that could support not only people's email addresses, but the addresses of things like printers and fax machines as well. These could be looked up in an interface much easier to use than the existing
Macintosh solution, the
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that, in theory, can be used with practically any store-and-forward type of environment. This is used within AOCE not only to service mail, but faxes, printing and even directly sending files from one machine to another without enclosing them in a mail message or needing a
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relying on third party workarounds that were of dubious reliability. And they were all based on a dedicated email server that was typically complex to set up, and often excessive for small installations with only a few people in an office.
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None of the existing products could give the user what they really wanted: a single universal mailbox and a single universal address book. In this pre-Internet era, savvy users often had mailboxes on their corporate network,
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and communicate directly. AOCE understands that users are not always connected to the network, so outbound mail is cached on the sender's machine until both the sender and recipient are online. Even on a
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and signing support is arguably also useful (although not widely deployed), and it reappeared in Apple's bundled Mail application starting with Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar in August 2002.
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in Boston in mid-1993. At the show the developers found that the choice of naming was unwise, due to confusion between PowerTalk and Apple's new
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format), or of anything else, was handled entirely by plugins, allowing the user to collect mail from all of their sources into a single inbox.
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likewise almost impossible as a side-effect of the design; the mail was spread out over the network, some of it remote and inaccessible.
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Development of AOCE started in 1989, largely the "pet project" of Apple Fellow
Gursharan Sidhu, formerly engineering lead at Apple for
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this is valuable, as many users turn off their computers at night and the mail would must wait until the next morning for delivery.
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else would be able to compete with its usability, power, and lack of maintenance overhead – all hallmarks of the Apple way.
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are able to read and compose mail while mobile. Everything automatically updates upon reconnection to the office LAN.
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that states a
Knowledge (XXG) editor's personal feelings or presents an original argument about a topic.
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AOCE was publicly released in
September 1993, part of the System 7 Pro bundle that also includes
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mail server for workgroup installations, and a number of additional technologies such as
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PowerShare server is not a chore for the fainthearted" with daily tasks being "odious".
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in 1995 when it was finally selling, but by this point, the market was moving toward
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quietly dropped its efforts to market AOCE, and the project quickly disappeared.
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Adoption of AOCE among third party developers was slow due to a complicated
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mail engine, which is the primary client-side interface to the system, the
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1990-1995: Apple vs. Microsoft in the
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a plug-in extension that is driven by a common AOCE-supplied
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personal reflection, personal essay, or argumentative essay
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Set of technologies introduced for the
Classic Mac OS
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457:address type, types it in, and then finally clicks
101:. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.
469:Even the remote access functionality is doomed by
401:The AOCE project suffered from what is known as
542:(Internet mail), and LAN-based servers such as
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366:Since the mail is stored locally, users with
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665:Apple Open Collaboration Environment (AOCE)
519:a single password needed to be remembered.
64:Learn how and when to remove these messages
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674:AOCE - The next great Macintosh Advantage?
445:and AOCE and the other Apple technology,
417:The system was first widely shown at the
237:Learn how and when to remove this message
219:Learn how and when to remove this message
161:Learn how and when to remove this message
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110:"Apple Open Collaboration Environment"
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260:in the early 1990s. It includes the
250:Apple Open Collaboration Environment
99:adding citations to reliable sources
501:platform. AOCE is not supported in
634:"PowerShare Collaboration Servers"
609:. January 23, 1993. Archived from
25:
45:This article has multiple issues.
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884:Macintosh Programmer's Workshop
578:In August 1994, Mel Beckman of
487:Worldwide Developers Conference
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53:or discuss these issues on the
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534:, networking standards like
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965:Hierarchical File System
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372:AppleTalk Remote Access
354:discover each other on
335:bulletin board systems
199:by rewriting it in an
985:Macintosh File System
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403:second-system effect
95:improve this article
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803:Graphing Calculator
613:on October 11, 2004
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1040:Sosumi sound
950:Creator code
925:Balloon help
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773:Applications
646:September 3,
644:. Retrieved
642:. p. 66
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617:December 24,
615:. Retrieved
611:the original
606:
603:"Mac OS 7.6"
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1065:WorldScript
1000:MultiFinder
789:Drive Setup
557:file server
436:utilities.
434:AppleScript
298:LaserWriter
1111:Categories
960:Extensions
930:Bomb error
915:Apple menu
898:Technology
858:SimpleText
793:DVD Player
780:Calculator
589:References
528:CompuServe
503:Mac OS 7.6
466:practice.
440:Deployment
327:CompuServe
308:products.
306:networking
302:AppleShare
274:encryption
266:PowerShare
121:newspapers
50:improve it
1060:Type code
1030:QuickTime
1025:QuickDraw
874:HyperCard
867:Developer
833:Scrapbook
818:PowerTalk
607:apple.com
574:Reception
548:QuickMail
532:AppleLink
427:PlainTalk
356:AppleTalk
341:Solutions
331:AppleLink
312:Objective
280:support.
262:PowerTalk
56:talk page
18:PowerTalk
1096:Software
995:Managers
975:Keychain
970:HFS Plus
848:Stickies
838:Sherlock
764:Mac OS 9
759:Mac OS 8
753:Mac OS 7
749:System 7
744:System 6
739:System 5
729:System 1
722:Versions
639:MacWorld
581:MacWorld
526:such as
509:Overview
495:CyberDog
425:system,
387:Keychain
325:such as
920:At Ease
889:ResEdit
879:MacsBug
785:Chooser
499:OpenDoc
409:Release
348:Chooser
292:History
195:Please
135:scholar
1015:OSType
980:Labels
955:Dogcow
798:Finder
376:modems
276:, and
137:
130:
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116:
108:
1122:Email
905:Alias
536:X.400
516:queue
142:JSTOR
128:books
1020:PICT
648:2019
619:2021
546:and
540:SMTP
538:and
530:and
491:SMTP
254:AOCE
114:news
564:API
383:RSA
361:LAN
329:or
97:by
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636:.
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459:OK
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