In a message dated 01-26-15, Alan Zisman said to Holger Granholm:   
      
   Hello Alan,   
      
   Sorry for the delayed reply. I'm now trying a norwegian "Stocke" stool   
   that I normally have used with my office machine. It's a stool that lets   
   your knees take most of the weight. I'll see how long it'll let me 'sit'   
      
   AZ> In the 1970s-era personal computers most computers came with some   
   AZ> version of other of Basic - Microsoft, for instance, got its start   
   AZ> selling Basic for various personal computers, .....   
      
   Yes, I was one of the early users too.   
      
   AZ> When IBM decided to produce its PC, they contacted Microsoft   
   AZ> for a version of Basic; while MS was talking with them, they   
   AZ> mentioned that they might be able provide an inexpensive operating   
   AZ> system - and went and purchased another Seattle company which had a   
   AZ> clone of the then-popular CP/M - and hence MS-DOS was 'born'.   
      
   My first 'computer' was the Sinclair ZX-81 with a built-in Basic   
   interpreter but the RAM could only be expanded with a 16 Mb plug-in   
   and that gave too limited capabilities for serious programming so I   
   started making programs in assembly. They were very much faster and   
   used less memory. The programs were loaded/saved to C-cassette tape.   
      
   AZ> original IBM-PC booted to BASIC if no operating system was found,   
   AZ> but buyers had the option of purchasing their choice of three   
   AZ> different OS's; Microsoft's (called PC-DOS when licensed to IBM) was   
   AZ> the cheapest and quickly became the most popular option - and an   
   AZ> empire was born.   
      
   I did try MSDOS but bought a CP/M computer quite fast. Now I had the   
   possibility to use Basic, Turbo Pascal, Turbo C and assembly. That   
   machine used floppy disks for storage and by manipulating the floppies   
   I could have the machine start directly to the wanted operating system.   
      
   AZ> But that's getting off the track - in that era, Apple was one of the   
   AZ> few popular personal computers that didn't license Microsoft Basic -   
   AZ> instead, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak wrote his own version of   
   AZ> Basic for the Apple II.   
      
   Yes and painted himself into a corner.   
      
   AZ> When the Mac was under development (1982-84), Microsoft contracted   
   AZ> to produce several programs for it - and got a good look at the Mac   
   AZ> prior to its launch. These included Mac versions of MS's Multiplan   
   AZ> spreadsheet and Microsoft Basic.   
      
   I did also use Multiplan installed on a machine (don't remember which)   
   and still have the original manual. I also started using WordStar as an   
   editor and still have the QEdit/2 for OS/2 and the Semware Editor,   
   ex. QEdit set up for the WS shorthands.   
      
   AZ> It was a bit odd having a character-line programming environment on   
   AZ> the Mac;   
      
   Well there are quite a lot of character mode programs that run very well   
   under the buil-in OS2-DOS operating system.   
      
   AZ> (I used a later but similar version - Microsoft's QuickBasic - to   
   AZ> write a BBS Simulator program used in my school district to let   
   AZ> students pretend to be online on the district's EdNet BBS...   
      
   I did also in a weak moment buy the QuickBasic but after learning to   
   know it had to give way to the programming languages I knew.   
      
   AZ> So Basic was available on Apple II and Mac computers from the start   
   AZ> - other 'hobbyist' programming languages such as Pascal were also   
   AZ> available.   
      
   That information was not very well available or knewn.   
      
   AZ> And beginning in 1987, Apple released Hypercard - arguably   
   AZ> 'programming for the rest of us' - it was seen as revolutionary at   
   AZ> the time: graphical, object-oriented, with what seemed like a   
   AZ> natural language programming language.   
      
   Too late!   
      
   Well, this stool apparently does work for me. This reply certainly   
   exceeded the 3-5 minutes possible on my main stool at this machin   
      
   Sorry for possible spelling errors, some noticed when writing and   
   possibly some unnoticed.   
      
   Have a nice day,   
      
   Holger   
      
      
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