I had a Mac from around 1993 to 1997. I even wrote articles for minor league Mac journals.
My impression is that Microsoft was founded to bring programming to the people, and the Mac was founded to bring great software experience, which I appreciate. But Apple (represented in my mind by Steve Jobs) didn't want his platform to be flooded by crappy software. Even HyperCard never had his wholehearted support (I used it extensively, despite its odd and limited language), and I think Apple was glad to finally dump it.
If you had a reason to write crappy software, as I did, you ended up with Visual Basic. What I mean by "crappy" is software that solves a problem reliably, but can't be scaled. For instance, installation might require help from the author, and entering a bad value might make it crash, but a small handful of tolerant users can handle these issues.
The solution today, with open source, is that the people bring programming to the people.
My impression is that Microsoft was founded to bring programming to the people, and the Mac was founded to bring great software experience, which I appreciate. But Apple (represented in my mind by Steve Jobs) didn't want his platform to be flooded by crappy software. Even HyperCard never had his wholehearted support (I used it extensively, despite its odd and limited language), and I think Apple was glad to finally dump it.
If you had a reason to write crappy software, as I did, you ended up with Visual Basic. What I mean by "crappy" is software that solves a problem reliably, but can't be scaled. For instance, installation might require help from the author, and entering a bad value might make it crash, but a small handful of tolerant users can handle these issues.
The solution today, with open source, is that the people bring programming to the people.