https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/30513/why-did-borland-ignore-the-macintosh-market Skip to main content Stack Exchange Network Stack Exchange network consists of 183 Q&A communities including Stack Overflow, the largest, most trusted online community for developers to learn, share their knowledge, and build their careers. Visit Stack Exchange [ ] Loading... 1. + Tour Start here for a quick overview of the site + Help Center Detailed answers to any questions you might have + Meta Discuss the workings and policies of this site + About Us Learn more about Stack Overflow the company, and our products 2. 3. current community + Retrocomputing help chat + Retrocomputing Meta your communities Sign up or log in to customize your list. more stack exchange communities company blog 4. 5. Log in 6. Sign up Retrocomputing 1. 1. Home 2. Questions 3. Tags 4. 5. Users 6. Jobs 7. Companies 8. Unanswered 2. Teams Now available on Stack Overflow for Teams! AI features where you work: search, IDE, and chat. Learn more Explore Teams 3. Teams 4. Ask questions, find answers and collaborate at work with Stack Overflow for Teams. Explore Teams Teams Q&A for work Connect and share knowledge within a single location that is structured and easy to search. Learn more about Teams Why did Borland ignore the Macintosh market? Ask Question Asked 4 days ago Modified today Viewed 15k times 29 During the 80s and 90s, Borland developed several amazing, cutting edge developer products. Their Turbo Pascal and Delphi, an Object Pascal development environment, were very popular on DOS and Windows. Slowly over time, however, Borland lost the fight against Microsoft, even though their products were technically superior to Microsoft's offerings. For reasons I cannot understand, however, Borland completely ignored the Macintosh market. It seems they preferred charging absurdly low prices just to stay afloat than to expand into the Macintosh market. It would have been the ideal market given Pascal was the lingua franca for Macintosh development for years. Oddly, enough, while Borland was slowly losing the market to Microsoft, other vendors prospered selling Pascal compilers exclusively for the Macintosh. Think Technologies did well and was eventually acquired by Symantec. Eventually, they exited the market, leaving Metrowerks, a small startup, to dominate the market. Eventually, Metrowerks was attractive enough to be acquired by Motorola in the early 2000s. * apple-macintosh * compilers * market Share Improve this question Follow edited Aug 12 at 23:35 Foon's user avatar Foon 1,09999 silver badges1010 bronze badges asked Aug 12 at 4:38 ATL_DEV's user avatar ATL_DEVATL_DEV 67211 gold badge66 silver badges1111 bronze badges 18 * 10 They didn't ignore the Mac: winworldpc.com/product/turbo-pascal/ 1x-mac - UncleBod Commented Aug 12 at 4:54 * 13 I am quite sure it is the same answer as for other companies that didn't cross develop: PC and Mac has only one thing in common: they are both computers. Everything else differs: How open the system is. How to use the underlying structure of windows. What CPU is used. Even the endianness differ on the CPUs. Today most (even free) dev packages handles this with ease, but in the end of the 80s, beginning of the 90s it was a different situation. - UncleBod Commented Aug 12 at 6:41 * 3 The page linked above probably sums it up: "under powered and closed Macintosh 128k architecture. While at the same time Apple had not been very supportive of third party development tools." - Alan B Commented Aug 12 at 8:07 * 3 I don't think anyone other than the likes of Phillippe Kahn could give a definitive answer to this. - Alan B Commented Aug 12 at 13:44 * 5 @JonCuster Well, yes and no. While GUI was an overhead compared to text mode, it wasn't as bad. Toolbox routines were usually reasonable well written. The biggest speed bump was RAM. 128 KiB total, including OS, OS data and screen was simply not much, often leaving less than what a CP/M system could offer. Non trivial Mac applications relied heavy on overlays - which made everything slower than slow ... and Mac user used to waiting for every operation :)) Also something TP wasn't really made for at the time. RAM was THE Mac issue. - Raffzahn Commented Aug 12 at 15:09 | Show 13 more comments 3 Answers 3 Sorted by: Reset to default [Highest score (default) ] 45 Why did Borland ignore the Macintosh market? It didn't. There was a short lived Turbo Pascal 1.0 (as UncleBod mentions). Even before Turbo Pascal, Borland ported Sidekick as well as their Reflex database for Mac. A blurb for SideKick, Reflex, and Turbo Pascal for the Mac (Taken from the back side of Turbo Pascal for the Macintosh) But yeah, development stopped by 1988 and it all comes down to size, size and size. Plus product type and to a lesser extent environment. Size, Size and Size Back in the 80s the computer market was unbelievably tiny compared to today, and within the professional segment (read: non-home/hobby), the Mac was at best third or fourth in size, trailing way behind MS-DOS, CP/M-86 and even CP/M-80 (*1). Best illustrated by the fact that Apple needed 4 years ('84-'87) to sell the first million units. The 'old' 8 Bit Apple II sold a good 3.5 Million during the same period (*2). During the same period IBM PC and compatible clones sold more than 15 Million (*3) units. This means Borland would have to invest a similar amount in development and marketing for a market only 6-7% the size. Doesn't sound great for a sales-oriented company. Product type Turbo Pascal, the main product of Borland in the mid 1980s (introduced Christmas 1983), was CP/M software. Meant to run on a rather frugal environment using a character-based frontend with terminal type control (in-band signalling). Getting that to DOS (*4) wasn't a big deal, as it didn't offer any notable improvement over CP /M (*5). Pascal did cover those basics quite well, great for cross development between CP/M (*1) and DOS (*6). Mac applications work completely different. No CLI, no text-based graphics or even cursor keys, plus Mac screen-handling being all about proportional text, something alien to character-based terminal programs. Any port requires a complete rewrite of the UI - which as we all know can easy reach 90% of all application code. This completely kills any dream of portability. Mac development was a different world done in separate departments, just ask Microsoft. It was no real goal for Borland to invest in developing GUI features into (Turbo) Pascal as there was no GUI for either of their markets (*7). It took until 1987 to include graphics (BGI) as a core part (*8,*9) and it wasn't until 1990 that Turbo Vision added (somewhat *10) serious support for GUI. Environment The different front end structure was already mentioned, but the (original) Mac was even more restricted due its hardware. With just 128 KiB, the memory situation was worse than on an 8-bit computer. At the same time, it couldn't do 80 characters per line - something every DOS program would expect. I would like to think that the often-cited 'shortcomings' are only about Turbo Pascal, not Sidekick or Reflex, as both were ported before Pascal and to the original 1984 Mac. 1985 brought the 512 KiB Mac, removing the biggest obstacle, for Borland to port Turbo Pascal. A good indication is also that the 1.0 Version required 256 KiB minimum RAM (*11). --------------------------------------------------------------------- During the 80s and 90s, Borland developed several amazing, cutting edge developer products. Not so much, as they were buying most. Their Turbo Pascal and Delphi, an Object Pascal development environment, Delphi might sound old today, but it only debuted in 1995, at a time when the Mac/PC quota was even worse than in 1987 and at the same time the total Apple numbers were still not high enough either. were very popular on DOS and Windows. You may want to add CP/M to that. It was the important kickstart for Borland to cover the vast existing base of CP/M - and support the move from CP/M to MS-DOS that happened exactly at the time when Turbo Pascal was introduced. Not to mention the great public success in Europe with systems like the CPC. Slowly over time, however, Borland lost the fight against Microsoft, even though their products were technically superior to Microsoft's offerings. Which might be debatable. They'd been a leader on the CP/M to DOS move, but missed the transition from DOS to Windows. Sure, Delphi was great, but it was way too late. When Win 3.x became a hit after 1990, Borland's main feature was still text-based. Windows support in version 6 and 7 was quite clumsy. So any early and not so early developer for Windows looking for a compiler had to use MS - possibly even MS-Pascal. By the time Delphi came in 1995, only a few professional developers hadn't switched to a more Windows enabled environment - which usually meant C. It seems they preferred charging absurdly low prices just to stay afloat than to expand into the Macintosh market. Low price was always the main argument to buy Borland. It undercut any other supplier by far. 50 USD was about a quarter of what any other compiler would cost. It was so low that people chose it who otherwise would not have bought anything. It would have been the ideal market given Pascal was the lingua franca for Macintosh development for years. Not least that the Mac itself was done in Pascal. Oddly, enough, while Borland was slowly losing the market to Microsoft, other vendors prospered selling Pascal compilers exclusively for the Macintosh. The same way as language developers flourished in other niche markets. --------------------------------------------------------------------- *1 - While CP/M systems might've no longer been top-selling in the mid 1980s, it's the installed base applications get programmed for. Same reason why there's still a good market for COBOL even today. New machines sell with new OSes, but all machines are served by later application development. So having a way to offer Software for CP/ M-80 customers and MS-DOS with little or no variation gives a great incentive to using TP. *2 - Not to mention the installed base, which adds >1M for Apple II and zero for the Mac. *3 - According to the same numbers, which to me look a bit US-specific. So while the PC:Mac ratio might be similar in other parts of the world, those areas may have had some variation. *4 - After all, DOS always was just a somewhat modernized CP/M clone. *5 - Better file handling system calls aren't really a point once file handling is wrapped (abstracted) by a HLL. *6 - In fact, I earned some change on side projects in 1984, programmed for PC users, but developed under CP/M-80 on my Apple II :)) *7 - Well, by 1987 it was MS-DOS only, as 3.0 was the last published for CP/M-80. *8 - There was a graphics toolbox added separate product with 3.0. *9 - 1987's Version 4 also marks the point when it first enabled production of EXE files, allowing more than 64 KiB of code - easy to forget how primitive TP was compared to 'real' compilers :) *10 - Turbo Vision was primarily text-based, but allowed transition to a GUI by working with menu, dialog and window abstraction instead of plain text. Kind of like IBM's SNA. *11 - Shortly before Borland introduced 1.0, Apple finally gave us the Mac Plus with all the goodies of the 512ke plus SCSI plus a base RAM of 1 MiB, expandable to 4 MiB, finally a size enabling serious work. INHO the point from which the Mac can rally be classified as a PC. In 1987 the Mac II series was introduced and Borland upgraded Pascal to 1.1, supporting its 68020 as well. Share Improve this answer Follow edited Aug 13 at 15:16 answered Aug 12 at 13:56 Raffzahn's user avatar RaffzahnRaffzahn 230k2222 gold badges663663 silver badges951951 bronze badges 16 * "So any early and not so early developer for Windows looking for a compiler had to use MS - often MS-Pascal" -- re the last part, I don't think MS Pascal ever supported Windows. Early developers for Windows used C... - Stephen Kitt Commented Aug 12 at 14:24 * @StephenKitt Not sure, my memory tells me there was a lot of Pascal in MSJ aroudn 1990, and I remember at least one application out management wanted to use that was written in Pascal (they requested us to write a validator for some identifiers that would be included by its supplier). Also having win 3.0 bindings for MS Pascal. I did, at the time, write Win 3.0 in assembly, so me is no autority about that :)) Others migh have had different experience. Also I remember a heavy push for C by MS in the early 1990s. - Raffzahn Commented Aug 12 at 15:02 * 1 It's ironic how Borland had a rough start with GUIs, but later outshined the competition with its Delphi platform. Even to this day, no other development platform comes close to matching its productivity. It's a crying shame it wasn't available on the Mac which had a fairly primitive GUI tools. Apple should have coaxed them into supporting the Macintosh. - ATL_DEV Commented Aug 12 at 16:41 * 1 @Raffzahn I stand corrected, the 1987 languages brochure does mention Windows support in MS Pascal. But since the compiler was discontinued in 1989 I don't think it would have been used by many developers on Windows 3.0. - Stephen Kitt Commented Aug 13 at 8:06 * 1 Another point that is perhaps obvious, but isn't explicitly mentioned here: in addition to the GUI for the IDE itself, nobody was going to write text-based programs for the Mac. So a compiler designed to develop Mac software would have to incorporate support for working with all the Toolbox routines in the Mac ROM, compiling to resource/data forks, etc. It would be a completely separate product from their PC offerings. - miken32 Commented Aug 13 at 20:39 | Show 11 more comments 25 I asked Phillippe Kahn when he visited Microsoft in the mid 1990s. He said the Mac market share was just too small for them to devote many resources to Mac software, and that they frequently reevaluated their position because tons of nerds like me made the same requests. Share Improve this answer Follow edited yesterday hippietrail's user avatar hippietrail 7,59122 gold badges2222 silver badges6969 bronze badges answered 2 days ago tomcam's user avatar tomcamtomcam 35111 silver badge33 bronze badges New contributor tomcam is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering. Check out our Code of Conduct. 12 * 1 Thanks! Kahn's decision wasn't a shrewd one. The Mac was certainly profitable enough for Adobe, Microsoft, and Metrowerks. Not surprising, Borland also abandoned their Ada compiler project which would have revolutionized software development as we know it. At the very least, they would have survived as a government vendor. - ATL_DEV Commented yesterday * 4 Easy for you to say. By the mid '90s they had spread themselves pretty thin (to me that was probably the main problem), and Apple was really struggling. It wasn't clear to all of us they would survive. - tomcam Commented yesterday * 1 @ATL_DEV Keep in mind that Microsoft was with the Mac from the start, as a preferred partner with no competition (Word for Mac outsold Word for DOS and Windows combined). Also Gates loved the Mac - after all, Windows was only pushed after Apple rejected the idea to do a PC version. Next, Jobs owned a major (20%?) slice of Adobe and apple was their launch customer for Postscript - they couldn't really refuse. And last, Metrowerks only entered the Mac Market in the mid 1990s, again with a good push by Apple. So neither of those three, being that special, make a great example for other companies. - Raffzahn Commented 12 hours ago * 1 The market for developer applications - i.e., compilers and tools - is now, was then, always has been miniscule relative to the market for "typical user" applications. Sufficient market in the one area doesn't translate into sufficient for the other. MetroWerks did get traction and was great (Raffzahn reminds that that was with Apple's help, and later than Borland's start). But at the time Borland - also a small company - was arguably right to stay focused on the PC market. - davidbak Commented 8 hours ago * 1 @ATL_DEV - and that in a nutshell was the problem with developer tools back then. Two related problems: Problem #1 was that companies employing developers hated hated hated spending any money whatsoever on developer tools. So problem #2 was that in order to get traction for their platform Microsoft and Apple had to have all the developer tools and SDKs their platform needed. Both initially charged money for it. Apple more than Microsoft. It was a real blocker for potential Apple devs. Microsoft saw the light first and made their tools free (the command line versions of the tools). - davidbak Commented 4 hours ago | Show 7 more comments 1 Well I set up and run Ashton*Tates European Macintosh software, Translation and QA Department. Who you ask? Well late 80's they were bigger than Microsoft or as big. Dbase Anyone? They had put together a SpreadSheet FullImpact, Word Processor FullWrite, and a graphics package. In a company marketing meeting I suggested we put them all in the same box and sell them as a business solution (before office was a thing). Everyone laughed! but I laughed last ;-) While I was there they hit hard times as DBase4 was failing and competitors where taking their market share. We were having weekly jokes about the Borland flag being raised at the front of the building... Well Borland did take over and The Mac software range was no more or my job... Share Improve this answer Follow answered 12 hours ago Anthony Lambert's user avatar Anthony LambertAnthony Lambert 2111 bronze badge New contributor Anthony Lambert is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering. Check out our Code of Conduct. 3 * Interesting story, but I'm not so sure how it would answer the question. - Raffzahn Commented 12 hours ago * It sort of points to the problems selling popular PC software in the Mac world. Except as pointed out, Ashton-Tate ended up with problems everywhere. - manassehkatz-Moving 2 Codidact Commented 5 hours ago * 1 Your bundling idea was way ahead of its time. They chose not to listen. - ATL_DEV Commented 5 hours ago Add a comment | You must log in to answer this question. Highly active question. Earn 10 reputation (not counting the association bonus) in order to answer this question. The reputation requirement helps protect this question from spam and non-answer activity. Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged * apple-macintosh * compilers * market . * The Overflow Blog * Scaling systems to manage all the metadata ABOUT the data * Navigating cities of code with Norris Numbers * Featured on Meta * We've made changes to our Terms of Service & Privacy Policy - July 2024 * Bringing clarity to status tag usage on meta sites Linked 29 Over its lifetime, how many Apple II computers were sold? Related 18 Did the Macintosh Classic series use DMA to display video? 9 Selling computers via dealers and the mass market 68 Did Apple not originally allow anyone to develop software for the Macintosh? 4 When did the Macintosh start using four (or more) layer PCB's? 28 How did the early Macintosh computers update the display? 10 Why did the Apple IIc perform badly in the market? 11 Did the original Shadowgate for the Macintosh (1987) not have "take" or "leave" command? 27 How did the "Programmer's Switch" work on early Macintosh Computers? 15 How did the classic Macintosh come to use Eurocard connectors? 21 Why did nobody ever succeed in "clean room" cloning the Apple Macintosh? Hot Network Questions * What does "hypothecate" mean? * How to cite a book if only its chapters have DOIs? * Power line crossing data lines via the ground plane * Who became an oligarch after the collapse of the USSR * What is this houseplant with a red fleshy stem and thick waxy leaves? * Output of a Diffractometer * Would donations count as revenue from a free software? * Why would Space Colonies even want to secede? * How do *Trinitarians* explain why Jesus didn't mention the Holy Spirit in Matthew 24:36 regarding his return? * DIN Rail Logic Gate * Word to classify what powers a god is associated with? * Has the application of a law ever being appealed anywhere due to the lawmakers not knowing what they were voting/ruling? * Advice needed: Team needs developers, but company isn't posting jobs * Do "Whenever X becomes the target of a spell" abilities get triggered by counterspell? * Relation between specific heats for a magnetic system * Three 7-letter words, 21 unique letters, excludes either HM or QS * Isn't an appeal to emotions in fact necessary to validate our ethical decisions? * Why HIMEM was implemented as a DOS driver and not a TSR * How predictable are the voting records of members of the US legislative branch? * A short story where a space pilot has a device that sends the ship back in time just before losing a space battle. He is duplicated by accident * Is the Ted-Ed Leprechaun's Magic Bag Unique? * Did the Space Shuttle weigh itself before deorbit? * How is lost ammonia replaced aboard the ISS? * Why is this white line between the two vertical boxes? more hot questions Question feed Subscribe to RSS Question feed To subscribe to this RSS feed, copy and paste this URL into your RSS reader. [https://retrocomputi] * Retrocomputing * Tour * Help * Chat * Contact * Feedback Company * Stack Overflow * Teams * Advertising * Collectives * Talent * About * Press * Legal * Privacy Policy * Terms of Service * Cookie Settings * Cookie Policy Stack Exchange Network * Technology * Culture & recreation * Life & arts * Science * Professional * Business * API * Data * Blog * Facebook * Twitter * LinkedIn * Instagram Site design / logo (c) 2024 Stack Exchange Inc; user contributions licensed under CC BY-SA. rev 2024.8.15.14019