Why did Apple ditch a BASIC interpreter for the Macintosh?
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MacintoshGuy
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Why did Apple ditch a BASIC interpreter for the Macintosh?
It would make more sense to include a BASIC interpreter with the Macintosh back in 1984, as almost every other computer (Even the IBM PC) had a BASIC Interpreter in ROM. BASIC was still really popular as a learning tool even in '84.
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adespoton
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Re: Why did Apple ditch a BASIC interpreter for the Macintos
It had me scratching my head at the time.
In 1983/4, you needed to have the Pascal environment loaded onto a Lisa in order to do Mac development. It wasn't until 1986 that Apple released MPW and had an official development environment on the platform with which to write software. HyperCard, which was vastly superior to both BASIC and Visual BASIC didn't come out until 1987.
In the meantime, Apple had the MDS system for the Mac that enabled the foolhardy to write assembler and convert it into applications, and there was the venerable Aztec C that picked up the slack at the beginning, and ZBasic (later FutureBASIC) quickly came along to provide BASIC support, not long after followed by Microsoft BASIC.
So... all that said: I think it was the idea that the Mac was supposed to be a toaster: you didn't have to write all sorts of arcane code to get things done, you just pointed and clicked, and the pre-packaged software did the work for you. All the pre-packaged software was provided by trained developers.
It took Apple until around 1986/1987 to realize that this severely limited functionality. Their first solution was MacroMaker which came out in 1986, but it just allowed for recording and playback of UI events. Better than nothing, but not a scriptable language you could use to get new work done.
The bigger question I have is why Apple killed HyperCard. They shoved bits of it into AppleScript, and dumped the rest into the QuickTime Multimedia Scripting Environment, and then totally ignored Quicktime Scripting and produced no IDE to work with it. It had a lot of potential, but all that really existed were a set of cryptic reference documents, and Apple never really provided even developers with an easy way to compile the scripts and leverage the environment, despite it running on every version of QuickTime for Mac and Windows from QuickTime 1 through 7.
Eventually Apple released AppleScript Studio, and then switched to Automator, with the AppleScript engine available, as well as bundling in Python, Perl and Ruby.
In 1983/4, you needed to have the Pascal environment loaded onto a Lisa in order to do Mac development. It wasn't until 1986 that Apple released MPW and had an official development environment on the platform with which to write software. HyperCard, which was vastly superior to both BASIC and Visual BASIC didn't come out until 1987.
In the meantime, Apple had the MDS system for the Mac that enabled the foolhardy to write assembler and convert it into applications, and there was the venerable Aztec C that picked up the slack at the beginning, and ZBasic (later FutureBASIC) quickly came along to provide BASIC support, not long after followed by Microsoft BASIC.
So... all that said: I think it was the idea that the Mac was supposed to be a toaster: you didn't have to write all sorts of arcane code to get things done, you just pointed and clicked, and the pre-packaged software did the work for you. All the pre-packaged software was provided by trained developers.
It took Apple until around 1986/1987 to realize that this severely limited functionality. Their first solution was MacroMaker which came out in 1986, but it just allowed for recording and playback of UI events. Better than nothing, but not a scriptable language you could use to get new work done.
The bigger question I have is why Apple killed HyperCard. They shoved bits of it into AppleScript, and dumped the rest into the QuickTime Multimedia Scripting Environment, and then totally ignored Quicktime Scripting and produced no IDE to work with it. It had a lot of potential, but all that really existed were a set of cryptic reference documents, and Apple never really provided even developers with an easy way to compile the scripts and leverage the environment, despite it running on every version of QuickTime for Mac and Windows from QuickTime 1 through 7.
Eventually Apple released AppleScript Studio, and then switched to Automator, with the AppleScript engine available, as well as bundling in Python, Perl and Ruby.
Re: Why did Apple ditch a BASIC interpreter for the Macintos
The Apple II BASIC was licensed from Microsoft. When it came to the Macintosh, some interesting shenanigans ensued.
https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?s ... cBasic.txt
https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?s ... cBasic.txt
as a condition for agreeing to renew Applesoft, [Bill Gates] demanded that Apple abandon MacBasic, buying it from Apple for the price of $1, and then burying it. He also used the renewal of Applesoft, which would be obsolete in just a year or two as the Mac displaced the Apple II, to get a perpetual license to the Macintosh user interface, in what probably was the single worst deal in Apple's history, executed by John Sculley in November 1985.