IMO it's that final point that makes the difference - the fact it was a ROM. If your system has BASIC built-in, you have the version of BASIC that was built int

IMO it's that final point that makes the difference - the fact it was a ROM. If your system has BASIC built-in, you have the version of BASIC that was built into it. If your system has DOS built-in, you can run whatever version of BASIC suits you best, and as time goes by you can even upgrade to newer versions; maybe you can't upgrade DOS itself, but it's so basic that there's not really anything to upgrade (the only parts you might want to are things like drivers, and those are tied to your hardware anyway). Time and again systems that move more into "userspace" have won out over systems that implement complex functionality in "system space".