Macintosh Basic, or MacBASIC, was both a comprehensive

programming language A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Most programming languages are text-based formal languages, but they may also be graphical. They are a kind of computer language. The description of a programming ...

and a fully interactive development environment designed by

Apple Computer Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Apple is the largest technology company by revenue (totaling in 2021) and, as of June 2022, is the world's biggest company b ...

for the original Macintosh computer. It was developed by original Macintosh team member Donn Denman, with help from fellow Apple programmers Marianne Hsiung, Larry Kenyon, and Bryan Stearns, as part of the original Macintosh development effort starting in late 1981.

Andy Hertzfeld Andrew Jay Hertzfeld (born April 6, 1953) is an American software engineer and innovator who was a member of the original Apple Macintosh development team during the 1980s. After buying an Apple II in January 1978, he went to work for Apple ...

said, "A BASIC interpreter would be important, to allow users to write their own programs. We decided we should write it ourselves, instead of relying on a third party, because it was important for the BASIC programs to be able to take advantage of the Macintosh UI, and we didn't trust a third party to 'get it' enough to do it right." MacBASIC was released as

beta software A software release life cycle is the sum of the stages of development and maturity for a piece of computer software ranging from its initial development to its eventual release, and including updated versions of the released version to help impro ...

in 1985, and was adopted for use in places such as the

Dartmouth College Dartmouth College (; ) is a private research university in Hanover, New Hampshire. Established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, it is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. Although founded to educate Native A ...

computer science department, for use in an introductory programming course. In November 1985, Apple abruptly ended the project as part of a deal with

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...

to extend the license for

BASIC BASIC (Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) is a family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages designed for ease of use. The original version was created by John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz at Dartmouth College ...

on the

Apple II The Apple II (stylized as ) is an 8-bit home computer and one of the world's first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products. It was designed primarily by Steve Wozniak; Jerry Manock developed the design of Apple II's foam-m ...

. Although Apple retracted MacBASIC, unlicensed copies of the software and manual still circulated, but because MacBASIC was no longer supported by Apple and was not designed to be 32-bit-clean, interest eventually died out. Benchmarks published in the April 1984 issue of ''

BYTE The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable unit ...

'' magazine suggested that MacBASIC had better performance as compared to Microsoft's

MS BASIC for Macintosh MS BASIC for Macintosh was a dialect of Microsoft BASIC for Macintosh. It was one of the first Microsoft BASIC variants to have optional line numbering, predating QuickBASIC. It was provided in two versions, one with standard Floating point, binary ...

. The language included modern looping control structures, user-defined functions, graphics, and access to the

Macintosh Toolbox The Macintosh Toolbox implements many of the high-level features of the Classic Mac OS, including a set of application programming interfaces for software development on the platform. The Toolbox consists of a number of "managers," software compone ...

. The development environment supported multiple programs running simultaneously with

symbolic debugging A debug symbol is a special kind of Symbol (programming), symbol that attaches additional information to the symbol table of an object file, such as a shared library or an executable. This information allows a symbolic debugger to gain access to i ...

including breakpoints and single-step execution.

References

{{BASIC BASIC programming language Classic Mac OS-only software made by Apple Inc. Discontinued BASICs Classic Mac OS programming tools 1985 software