The Internet has come a long way since the early 90s. For instance, the Apple homepage here? That was no fan page. That was Apple's actual homepage in the early Internet days, a far cry from the crisp and clean Apple.com of today. Listen, kids, things were more fast and loose back in the days when pages took three minutes to load and "good web design" was virtually non-existent.

This first Apple site reportedly dates from around 1993 or 1994. Kevin Fox found it upon some deep digging, after finding a history of the Apple.com page compiled from Archive.org by Charlie Hoehn. Fox had it on hand from an old, old screenshot (probably taken when the Print Screen button ~meant something~), and has since tried to trace it backwards.

The screenshot had to be resurrected from a .pict file, a borderline obsolete file format that could be revived by GraphicConverter, granting us this snapshot of the early Internet. As Fox points out, this page would have been built as one image with image map tags (in which you put in coordinates on an image to indicate where to hyperlink a part of that image.)

Sadly, you can no longer navigate a version of Apple.com that's old enough to order a drink. But Gizmodo, the Telegraph, and Mental Floss have all previously compiled websites left over from the early Internet. Dig into the production notes of Space Jam, check in on the Dole / Kemp 1996 presidential campaign, or find out whatever happened with that O.J. Simpson trial.

Source: Kottke

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