I suspect it might have been a timing/market positioning thing. By 1984, "boots to BASIC" was reserved for low-end kit: C64, Atari XL, and increasingly Apple I

I suspect it might have been a timing/market positioning thing. By 1984, "boots to BASIC" was reserved for low-end kit: C64, Atari XL, and increasingly Apple II. The IBM PC and clones were rapidly defining what a high-end personal computer was, and for them, the BASIC was an useless appendix (Casette BASIC on IBM kit) or a bullet point at the back of the pack-in software list (BASICA/GWBASIC)-- it might be there, but commercial boxed software was the primary selling point.