Apple Software Dispatch from 1994

[mac2612]

Awesome, thank you so much!

If you're cool with it, I will put it on macintoshrepository also as it appears to be a fairly stable place to park things (at least for now).

I'm really curious about the unlock key system they were using back in the day as there doesn't appear to be any documentation or information on how it worked that I've been able to find.

Going to start digging into it but my 68k disassembly skills are pretty rusty, so we'll see

 

[nglevin]

If you were dealing with anything Adobe-related at the time (mid 90s), Type On Call was a little hard to escape.

A CD with fonts that you could "unlock" with codes by calling Adobe through credit card purchases. Horrendously expensive, not that convenient, but if you didn't want to buy the entire Adobe Font Folio package it did its job. Peter Cohen then at Macworld had a nice summary of what it did, and why.

Most of these CD-ROM based catalog services died the moment dial-up internet became more mainstream. They're about as interesting to me personally as AOL CDs, though I can see the novelty. 

EDIT: A problem with revisiting old threads is that I completely missed dcr's excellent post above name checking Adobe TOC before I did. Welp. Consider my ruminating a bit of flavor text expanding around what that was.

 

[dougg3]

If you're cool with it, I will put it on macintoshrepository also as it appears to be a fairly stable place to park things (at least for now).

No prob! Feel free to post it along with the CD code -- I'd much rather see it end up somewhere with a permanent link, I just didn't have the time to deal with it.

 

[nglevin]

Another CD-ROM service worth calling out; Metatec Nautilus, a Compuserve spinoff, was kind of a CD-ROM magazine mostly populated with BBS shareware, some articles, and product demos. With each volume, they had a rotating selection of software that you could buy by phone.

There absolutely were Mac and PC versions of Nautilus made. I think the earliest versions used HyperCard before they quickly switched to cross-platform SuperCard, with color.

Probably the most interesting thing to come from the short lived era of CD-ROM subscription services, in my opinion. They managed to last until about the mid-90s.

Somewhere in that mess, Blender started as a premium priced CD-ROM magazine, long after Nautilus started. I can't recall if they sold products through that. If you happen to find any of the CD-ROM issues, they were pretty neat Macromedia Director 4 showpieces.

 

[Ajaxermd]

Hi, I went to look for this on Mac Repository and couldn't find it.  Does anyone have a link to Software Dispatch?  Much appreciated, would love to load in on my Performa 575.

 

[dougg3]

Hi, I went to look for this on Mac Repository and couldn't find it.  Does anyone have a link to Software Dispatch?  Much appreciated, would love to load in on my Performa 575.

 Hey @Ajaxermd, I uploaded it again and here is the link now:

https://www.filehosting.org/file/details/913360/AppleSoftwareDispatch.7z