Site History

Site History TheMacISP is the new name for AppleISP which is owned by So What Software, Inc. Although we have been in business for over 20 years serving the Apple/Macintosh community, Internet Services are a relatively new phenomena. So What Software, Inc. decided in mid 2000 to support this market segment with a Mac Exclusive Internet Service Provider. About the Artwork The site artwork is composites of various historical cartoons/engravings intermixed with original artwork, special acknowledgement is due to political cartoonist Thomas Nast (1840-1902) for his unforgettable cartoon of the Tammany Hall political machine in "Who Stole the People's Money?" Harper's Weekly (Aug. 19, 1871) and which we draw from for some of our cover art characters.

In the Beginning enlarge-> August 18th 2000, 3 guys meet in a hotel room in San Jose California to plan the creation of a Mac specific Internet Service Provider. We have a little money and far less sense but we do have a lot of Programming, Network and ISP experience so by October 1st we have opened the doors, gone live and even hired our first employee. We offer $17.95 unlimited dialup in 21 states, $19.95 hosting and $249.95 server collocation. The marketing kicked in by the 10th of the month and by the 11th, we had our first customer. October 1, 2000 Accommodating Apple enlarge-> In February of 2001 Apple Computer Company Lawyers sent a complaint that we were infringing their intellectual property rights. So... we got rid of the "Apple like" colors, removed some references and in general decorated as if we were not Apple Computer company although we believe we never did in the first place. We have widened our coverage to 48 states as well as gaining redundancy in our dialup pool and are running our first limited time special of $12.95/mo. for 56K dialup. Business continues to grow at a rapid rate. We also bought out our first competing ISP, (TheMACisp) in June. May 16, 2001 Better Deals, Better Wheels enlarge-> Early 2002 brought us a windfall in network service breaks which we immediately pass along to our loyal users who number in the thousands. $14.95/mo. is the new standard rate for 56K dialup and enhanced features and services like Webmail, Newsgroups, Personal Webspace and multiple email boxes are added to our dialup offering. We added an online account maintenance interface so that customers can update and manage their account information. June 8, 2002 We Changed Our Name... enlarge-> As a final accommodation to Apple Computer Company we stopped marketing under the Appleisp name and now market (with their blessings) under TheMACisp. (We don't really see the difference but it makes them happy). A massive re-write and upgrade of our site has happened focusing on support and hosting issues, adding many new features like domain registration, WebDAV support, spam filtering and some color (colour for you non-American English speakers) in the site for the first time in nearly two years. March 1, 2003 The Original Nine Dollar Dialup Deal enlarge-> The funny thing is that we never had a nine dollar dialup deal before, I imagine you could rationalize that calling it "Original" would be true although it leaves one with a slightly different impression... anyway, The big red logo looks nice. We have added more goodies (don't try to click Goodies, you'll be disappointed) like remotedrive, google search, personal mail account management and additional support topics and tutorials. Business is on the up and services continue to expand. May 1, 2003 High Speed Dialup for FREE!!! enlarge-> 2004 gives TheMACisp a new network architecture providing over 7,000 dialup numbers in 49 states with the exception of our friends to the north, Alaska. This in itself would be good news (except for those folks in Alaska) but we have more good news, namely, SlipStream High Speed Web Accelerators for everyone, free of charge! Slipstream for the MAC is available for download from this site and can be used on any new or existing TheMACisp dialup account. February 15, 2004