Before System 7, Apple offered the world two products called AppleShare File Server and AppleShare Print Server. The file server lets you view and work with the files on another Mac (the server Mac). The server Mac’s hard drive icon appears on your desktop just like any ordinary disk, even though it isn’t connected to your Mac quite as directly as a hard drive is.
The print server offers a place to store background-printing printer files (on the server Macintosh). By getting the printing process off your Mac, your computer’s attention turns to other work as soon as a file is delivered over the network to the server.
To store your printer-bound files on the print server, you select a printer listed in the Chooser — but in fact, it isn’t a physical printer at all but the server software mimicking a real printer. You can’t tell the difference between a real LaserWriter and the server by looking at the Chooser. Therefore, using the print server is what they call transparent — you don’t even know that it’s happening.
Using file service, however, isn’t as transparent. To bring another Mac’s disk icon onto your desktop, you have to take some strange steps, which we’ll cover shortly.
TOPS of the line
AppleShare File Server software cost a little more than most individuals or small businesses could afford. Not only was the price tag up in the clouds, but AppleShare File Server required a dedicated Macintosh to run — a Mac that did nothing but serve files — which added thousands to the total cost.
Other companies rushed in with less expensive alternatives to the Apple software. TOPS, for example, not only allowed network users to exchange files but also connected to IBM PCs and clones. For years, TOPS was quite successful. It was wiped off the map, however, when Apple decided to build file-sharing features right into the standard Mac system software: System 7.
