I got my first "real" computer in 1984, though I had owned a Timex-Sinclair ZX81 prior to that. I had already learned programming, and was quite interested in i

I got my first "real" computer in 1984, though I had owned a Timex-Sinclair ZX81 prior to that. I had already learned programming, and was quite interested in it. I chose MS-DOS. but had already tried a Mac, and had seen a demo of the Apple Lisa. The lack of Mac programming tools "for the rest of us" was noticeable, and contributed to an impression that Apple was indifferent or even hostile to small scale developers. The Mac was referred to as a "closed box." This in turn led to people preferring MS-DOS for small scale development of both software and hardware, even if we could never hope to match the quality of Apple's GUI. I don't think this ever changed, through upheavals of both the Apple and Microsoft worlds. I used a Mac from 1993 to 1997, and wrote a couple of magazine articles on Mac hardware interfacing. I did all of my development in HyperCard except for creating a couple of "code resources" in C to access hardware functions. Being a Mac hardware hacker was a pretty lonely place. Today, I won't touch any development tool that isn't platform independent, so the issue has been largely mooted for me.