From Newsgroup: comp.misc

Mike Spencer <mds@bogus.nodomain.nowhere> wrote or quoted:

Soon thereafter, Apple was ballyhooing the Mac so I borrowed a Mac for
a week, then went into the Apple Store and had a look:
Me: So, how do you program it?

IIRC at one point in time around 1981, the answer was:

You buy a Lisa. The "Lisa Workshop" is the development system
for the Mac.

(At that time, I was asked to write software on a Lisa, but my
offer exceeded the client's price point.)

(After a few years, Macintosh-native development system were
developed.)


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From Newsgroup: comp.misc

ram@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) wrote or quoted:

IIRC at one point in time around 1981, the answer was:
You buy a Lisa. The "Lisa Workshop" is the development system
for the Mac.

The Lisa might have been used internally at Apple in 1982 and
was released 1983.

(After a few years, Macintosh-native development system were
developed.)

The Macintosh was released in 1984-01, and around 1986, the
Lisa Workshop was replaced with the Macintosh Programmer's
Workshop which ran inside the Macintosh operating system.


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From Newsgroup: comp.misc

On 2/28/25 4:57 AM, Stefan Ram wrote:

ram@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) wrote or quoted:

IIRC at one point in time around 1981, the answer was:
You buy a Lisa. The "Lisa Workshop" is the development system
for the Mac.

The Lisa might have been used internally at Apple in 1982 and
was released 1983.

(After a few years, Macintosh-native development system were
developed.)

The Macintosh was released in 1984-01, and around 1986, the
Lisa Workshop was replaced with the Macintosh Programmer's
Workshop which ran inside the Macintosh operating system.

Some articles for further reading for those who are interested:

Macintosh Development in the Dark Ages https://macgui.com/news/article.php?t=518

Programming with Lisa Workshop
https://macgui.com/news/article.php?t=477

The Macintosh had some native languages in fall 1984.
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From Newsgroup: comp.misc

On 28/02/2025 10:57, Stefan Ram wrote:

ram@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) wrote or quoted:

IIRC at one point in time around 1981, the answer was:
You buy a Lisa. The "Lisa Workshop" is the development system
for the Mac.

The Lisa might have been used internally at Apple in 1982 and
was released 1983.

(After a few years, Macintosh-native development system were
developed.)

The Macintosh was released in 1984-01, and around 1986, the
Lisa Workshop was replaced with the Macintosh Programmer's
Workshop which ran inside the Macintosh operating system.

Ah Lisa and Apple Classcal.

I can remember when we had 2 Apple Lisas. The were slow (5MHz 68000 CPU)
and the hard disk was connected over a modified Centronics parallel
port. But wow it was fun.

Then a Mac arrived. We have 240V mains in the UK and the US has 110V. We
had Mac serial number 000005 in the UK and it came with a 110V
autotransformer almost as big as the Mac itself.

Mac development was done on the Lisa. Then sometime later a set of ROMS
were issued that turned a Lisa into a slow Mac. And we had MPW running
on it.

Who remembers the comment in the memory map for the Mac, "6 bytes for
our friends from Seattle"?

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From Newsgroup: comp.misc


ram@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) writes:

Mike Spencer <mds@bogus.nodomain.nowhere> wrote or quoted:

Soon thereafter, Apple was ballyhooing the Mac so I borrowed a Mac for
a week, then went into the Apple Store and had a look:
Me: So, how do you program it?

IIRC at one point in time around 1981, the answer was:

You buy a Lisa. The "Lisa Workshop" is the development system
for the Mac.

Yeah. Details have faded from my recall after decades but....

Some time (months? years? I forget.) after I was stonewalled at the (Bridgewater, NS) Apple store, I went into the new Apple store (in
Lunenburg, NS, possibly the same proprietors, possibly others) to see
what all the hype about the Lisa was. Price was way more than basic
Mac, more than Intel/M$, not an inducement, especially so as an Apple
vendor had already alienated me.

As I've remarked before, in retrospect, really happy I settled for an
obsolete Osborne I and learned fundamenals rather than struggling with
Intel ideosyncrasies and obligatory GUI interface.

As an aside: I accumulated a flock of discarded Osbornes. My wife
wrote her master's thesis on one of them and I supported one of her
uni friends to whom I had given another. The thesis was all-ASCII;
IIRC, we paid someone to format it in a then-modern word processor and
print copies for submission, binding etc.
--
Mike Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada
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From Newsgroup: comp.misc

Stefan Ram <ram@zedat.fu-berlin.de> wrote:

Mike Spencer <mds@bogus.nodomain.nowhere> wrote or quoted:

Soon thereafter, Apple was ballyhooing the Mac so I borrowed a Mac for
a week, then went into the Apple Store and had a look:
Me: So, how do you program it?

IIRC at one point in time around 1981, the answer was:

You buy a Lisa. The "Lisa Workshop" is the development system
for the Mac.

My friend David Jacobs was so enthused about the Mac and how wonderful it
was going to be when it came out, because it would be a Lisa at a reasonable price for anyone.

But when it actually arrived, it wasn't anything like a Lisa, and it was designed to be an appliance. He and I didn't want an appliance. I'm not speaking out against appliances because there is certainly a need for them.

And.... one of the answers to "how do you program it?" is "you use Hypercard." Likely the salesman didn't really know much about it, but that's typical
of salesmen. One month they are selling furniture, the next they are
selling IBM mainframes, the month afterward they are selling wholesale groceries. That's the sales business.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."
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From Newsgroup: comp.misc

On Fri, 28 Feb 2025 16:07:07 -0500 (EST), Scott Dorsey wrote:

And.... one of the answers to "how do you program it?" is "you use Hypercard."

From its inception in 1984, Macintosh programming developed a
reputation for being notoriously difficult and arcane. Users loved the
ease of use of the apps, but creating those apps took a lot of work.

HyperCard did change all that, in quite a massive way. Suddenly the
idea of “end-user programming” became feasible. If you wanted to
learn, you got yourself a copy of Danny Goodman’s “The Complete
HyperCard Handbook”.

I embraced HyperCard too. My contribution was to write collections of
code called XCMDs and XFCNs. These added new statements and functions
to the HyperTalk language, to give access to system capabilities not
already available to HyperCard programmers.

Look at how many of these extensions there were: <https://archive.org/search?query=subject%3A%22hypercard_xcmd-xfcn%22>.
Can you spot one or two of mine in there?
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From Newsgroup: comp.misc

On 28 Feb 2025 09:49:01 GMT, Stefan Ram wrote:

Mike Spencer <mds@bogus.nodomain.nowhere> wrote or quoted:

Me: So, how do you program it?

IIRC at one point in time around 1981, the answer was:
You buy a Lisa.

The original 128K Mac was simply too resource-starved to self-host any
useful development environment.

Except ... Forth. I think there was a Forth-based product called “Neon” that actually let you write programs on a 128K Mac, to run on a 128K Mac.

The more expensive 512K Mac (not that the 128K Mac was cheap) opened a few more opportunities for self-hosted development. “What will we do with all that memory?” people asked. Andy Herzfeld answered: “Why not multitask more than one program at once? Behold, I give you ... Switcher!”

Then the Mac Plus in 1986 launched a whole new era. Suddenly the Macintosh wasn’t a toy any more.
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From Newsgroup: comp.misc

On Fri, 28 Feb 2025 14:48:45 +0000, mm0fmf wrote:

And we had MPW running on it.

Most Mac programmers couldn’t seem to handle MPW. I thought it was wonderful.
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From Newsgroup: comp.misc

On 28 Feb 2025 09:49:01 GMT, Stefan Ram wrote:

IIRC at one point in time around 1981, the answer was: You buy a Lisa.

By the way, that would have been 1984, not 1981.
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From Newsgroup: comp.misc

On 2/28/25 3:46 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

On 28 Feb 2025 09:49:01 GMT, Stefan Ram wrote:

Mike Spencer <mds@bogus.nodomain.nowhere> wrote or quoted:

Me: So, how Hdo you program it?

IIRC at one point in time around 1981, the answer was:
You buy a Lisa.

The original 128K Mac was simply too resource-starved to self-host any
useful development environment.

That's not correct.

Except ... Forth. I think there was a Forth-based product called “Neon” that actually let you write programs on a 128K Mac, to run on a 128K Mac.

That's not correct.

Bill Duvall's 68000 Development System ran on a Mac 128K. So did his C compiler. So did several other C compilers.

So did the Mainstay MacASM compiler (which was the first native
assembler released for Mac 128K in 1984). So did Creative Solutions'
MacFORTH.

Here are some articles that you can read to learn more about software development on the Mac 128K:

https://macgui.com/news/showcat.php?id=8&tag=5

C On the Macintosh: Historical Overview https://macgui.com/news/article.php?t=537

MacASM Macro Assembler by Mainstay
https://macgui.com/news/article.php?t=458
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