A Look Back at AppleTalk

While Bonjour technology for creating instant networks is fairly new, Apple had long ago pioneered AppleTalk, which enabled instant networking without any configuration but was limited to the Apple platform. To connect a printer to a network, all you had to do was connect it to the network. Then, you could open the Chooser on your Mac OS 9 or earlier computer, select the printer from the list of available printers, and print to it. You typically didn't need special knowledge to configure the printer.

Similarly, connecting Macintosh computers to a network and sharing files was easy: Just enable file sharing on one computer and look in the Chooser on the other computers to find the shared system on the network.

AppleTalk made simple plug-and-play configuration and network browsing possible, allowing Macintosh computers to thrive in locations where traditionally a network administrator was not available, such as K12 schools and small businesses.

Mac OS X still supports AppleTalk to allow you to connect and access AppleTalk devices in a network, although this support is slowly being phased out. For example, as of Mac OS X version 10.4, Apple file-sharing services can be discovered via AppleTalk, but the connection itself must be made using TCP/IP.