- The Apple Network Server (ANS) ran a customized version of IBM AIX called Harpoon, which included a native AppleTalk stack and support for Apple Events.
- The concept of 'symbiotic applications' allowed classic Mac OS clients to offload heavy computations (like generating fractals or parsing JSON APIs) to the ANS server via the PPC Toolbox and AppleTalk.
- The author built a Hacker News client where the ANS server fetches and parses the API, then sends text data to a 68K Mac (Color Classic) for display, enabling the Mac to handle modern web tasks without TLS 1.3 or significant CPU load.
- The history covers the AIM alliance, PowerPC transition, and the eventual cancellation of the ANS line in 1997 after Apple acquired NeXT, despite its technical capabilities.