There is also the popular conspiracy theory that Apple was somehow opposed to allowing users to program the Mac.
They created a Mac native Basic at launch, and only Microsoft's anticompetitive arm twisting kept if from being released.
They created a Mac native Basic at launch, and only Microsoft's anticompetitive arm twisting kept if from being released.
Wow, that almost makes me want to cry.
I discovered personal computers when the computer basically felt like a programming language.
I might be wrong, but if a friendly language installed on every computer out of the box had held, the evolution of “people’s” languages might have been a huge thing to this day.
Further up this very thread is a link from a first party source that refutes that entirely.
And, we have no idea what Donn's BASIC was actually like ... it probably wasn't "Visual Basic", or even a platform. Just better than Microsoft's halfazz port of their micro basic. (which did have some quickdraw commands.)
We literally know exactly what it was like. Dartmouth was already using a late beta of the software for a Basic class when Microsoft forced Apple to cancel the release of the final version.
Although the Folklore article says there were two books describing Donn's BASIC, I believe there were at least three: Introduction to Macintosh BASIC, Using Macintosh BASIC, and The Macintosh BASIC Handbook. All three are available at vintageapple.org [2].