!Re: Nuke Redmond!

From: Eric Smith <eric_at_brouhaha.com>
Date: Fri Apr 7 18:08:05 2000

John wrote:
> I heard the same story when I did an internship at Apple in summer '89.
> The way I heard it, the Mac BASIC actually got as far as field test before
> Billy strong-armed Apple into suppressing it and leaving the BASIC market
> to M$.

There were definitely beta test copies of Macintosh BASIC floating around
in 1985. I wish I still had one. There was even at least one book about it,
possibly more. A search on Amazon turns up a lot of books with "Macintosh
BASIC" in the title, though some of them were probably about Microsoft BASIC
for the Macintosh, which was just a port of MBASIC.

        _Advanced Macintosh BASIC Programming_

        _Introduction to Macintosh BASIC_
        Scott Kamins

        _MacBASIC Programmer's Reference Manual_
        Scott Kamins

        _Macintosh BASIC_
        Lowell Carmony

        _Macintosh BAISC: A Beginner's Guide to Structured Programming_
        Robert Stat

        _Macintosh BASIC: An Overview for People Who Know a Little BASIC_
        Arthur Luehrmann

        _Macintosh BASIC for Business_
        Gary G. Bitter, Roger L. Goodberlet

        _Macintosh BASIC Handbook_
        Thomas Blackadar, Jonathan Kamin

        _Programming in Macintosh BASIC_
        James Heid

        _Programming Macintosh BASIC_
        John J. Dielsi, Elaine S. Grossman, John J. Tuccaiarone
        MacMillan

        _Using Macintosh BASIC_
        Richard Norling

(If anyone has an extra copy of any of these books, and they really are
about Macintosh BASIC and not Microsoft BASIC for the Macintosh, I'd be
interested in buying them.)

As wes discussed in January on a.f.c, Donn Denman wrote Macintosh BASIC,
and it was quite a nice environment. It was the only BASIC I'd ever
seen that allowed you to write multi-threaded BASIC programs.

Before that, Denman was known for Apple /// Business BASIC, also very nice
but not nearly as amazing as Macintosh BASIC.

Later he wrote MacroMaker, which rumor has it was put into System 7 partly
to make up for taking Macintosh BASIC away from him.

Though Microsoft ended up with the rights to Macintosh BASIC, they never
did anything with it. Some people have claimed that it inspired some
features of Visual BASIC, but I don't see much resemblance.
Received on Fri Apr 07 2000 - 18:08:05 BST