AOL for Mac was America Online’s push to get into the Apple ecosystem back when dial-up was king and everyone’s inbox was full of forwarded jokes and chain emails. The first versions hit in the mid-90s, right around when AOL 3.0 was blowing up on Windows. Mac users got their own version with a similar setup—chat rooms, email, and that classic “You’ve got mail” voice. It wasn’t always smooth—early versions were buggy and lagged behind the Windows updates—but by AOL 5.0 for Mac (around 2000), things got tighter. Still, the whole experience was more about the vibe—waiting for that screechy modem to connect, jumping into a chat room, and burning hours browsing with that chunky AOL interface. It was clunky, slow, and kinda magical.