Apple Sales and Marketing Resource Library January 1999 CD Pack
Published: Tuesday, 18th December 2018
I tweeted about this a few weeks ago as I was so delighted to get my hands on another one of these amazing packs that I couldn’t wait for my site rebuild to get finished before I made a noise about it. But the site is done so here’s an article making some noise!
Way back when in the ’90s, Apple issued various CD packages to different interested parties. Many of you might be familiar with the Develop CD series of software and tools that were issued to developers but Apple also had the foresight to put together marketing information packs to distribute to their (pre Apple Store) sales channels. This article isn’t intended to be a grand history of that program, as I don’t know enough about it (yet), but it started out known as ARPLE (Apple Reference, Performance, & Learning Expert) at some point in the early 90s before being less-enigmatically renamed to the Apple Sales and Marketing Resource Library sometime around 1998.
So that’s what we’ve got here; a quasi-internal Apple digital publication, not intended for public consumption. And it’s a real feast of data, with 3 CDs full of goodies. The most interesting disc, in my opinion, is CD 1 as that contains a wide array of marketing support materials; brochures, data sheets, presentations, ad layouts (with prices zeroed out so that retailers can type their own in!), and professional photographs.
Yeah, that’s right, *professional photographs*, commissioned by Apple to pimp their Spring 1999 line-up.
Some of these images are really high-resolution, too, with pin-sharp detail when zoomed right in.
Now, nearly two decades later when iMac G3s are the absolute height of retro curiosity, these photographs are a great find for us collectors and Macintosh enthusiasts and can and will be used as a valuable resource to create fan-art to celebrate the Mac’s history with. Did it ever even cross Apple’s minds that they were creating the most amazing time capsules when they produced these?
I have uploaded ISO images of these CDs to the Internet Archive so please do take the time to download and explore them. There’s some great stuff on them. I shall continue to keep my eyes peeled for more of these and will grab them whenever I see them available. Rest assured, I will image and share them with you. 🙂
Make sure to follow me on Twitter so you’ll be the first to know about cool finds like this!
thanks for saving these! sadly, I’m unable to mount the ISOs in Mojave but great to see them preserved