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I went on leave of absence from Apple in March 1984 (see Leave Of Absence), but I still was excited about writing software for Macintosh as an independent developer, and was full of ideas about different programs to write. But I wasn't happy about the fact that you still needed a Lisa to write software for the Mac; among other things, the recent linker problem had left a bad taste in my mouth regarding the Lisa development system. I had a Lisa at my house, but it really belonged to Apple, and I didn't want to have to buy one. I decided to try to cobble together an entirely Mac-based development system.

 

Bill Duvall was an old friend of Bob Belleville's from Xerox who we seeded with a Mac prototype in the spring of 1983 so he could port his development system to it, including an assembler and a C compiler, to be sold by his own tiny company named Consulair. His linker even generated Macintosh code resources, but there was no equivalent of RMaker for building the other resources required by a Mac application - you still had to do that on a Lisa. I decided to rewrite RMaker for the Mac, so I could finally abandon the Lisa. I used assembly language, since the assembler was much further along than Consulair C was at the time. In a week or so, I had a new RMaker that was integrated with the Consulair tools, so you finally could write a complete application with just a Macintosh.

 

In the summer of 1984, I got a call from Dan Cochran, who was the marketing person at Apple in charge of developer tools. He had heard about my new version of RMaker, and wanted to bundle it with the Consulair package. After a bit of negotiation, I sold it to Apple in exchange for a brand new LaserWriter prototype. I drove up to Bill Duvall's house in the Berkeley hills to help him incorporate RMaker into his system. When my reward arrived in October, I thought it was pretty cool to be the first on my block to have a LaserWriter, three months before it was officially announced.

Its major advantages from our point of view is that it is very fast at compiling and linking and that it places you at the correct position in your source file if the compiler detects an error. The result is that you can edit, compile, link, and run your program very rapidly, make small variations in the code and determine their effect, and generally have the opportunity to make more mistakes in a shorter period of time. If we learn from our mistakes, Lightspeed C is a useful tool for learning C on the Macintosh.

 

LightspeedC is different from the other available C compilers as it does not use a Unix-like setting [Yea! -Ed.] -nor does it use separate programs in the Macintosh window environment. Instead it creates its own enviornment (that follows the Macintosh User Interface) from which all editing, compiling, linking, and running take place. The integrated editor is roughly similar to the Edit application. Menus available from inside the editor allow you to run, compile, or just check the syntax. As soon as the compiler detects an error, you are returned to the editor with the cursor at the location the compiler found the error. In other words, you get one error at a time.

 

The link operation is extremely fast.

I went on leave of absence from Apple in March 1984 (see Leave Of Absence), but I still was excited about writing software for Macintosh as an independent developer, and was full of ideas about different programs to write. But I wasn't happy about the fact that you still needed a Lisa to write software for the Mac; among other things, the recent linker problem had left a bad taste in my mouth regarding the Lisa development system. I had a Lisa at my house, but it really belonged to Apple, and I didn't want to have to buy one. I decided to try to cobble together an entirely Mac-based development system.

Bill Duvall was an old friend of Bob Belleville's from Xerox who we seeded with a Mac prototype in the spring of 1983 so he could port his development system to it, including an assembler and a C compiler, to be sold by his own tiny company named Consulair. His linker even generated Macintosh code resources, but there was no equivalent of RMaker for building the other resources required by a Mac application - you still had to do that on a Lisa. I decided to rewrite RMaker for the Mac, so I could finally abandon the Lisa. I used assembly language, since the assembler was much further along than Consulair C was at the time. In a week or so, I had a new RMaker that was integrated with the Consulair tools, so you finally could write a complete application with just a Macintosh.

In the summer of 1984, I got a call from Dan Cochran, who was the marketing person at Apple in charge of developer tools. He had heard about my new version of RMaker, and wanted to bundle it with the Consulair package. After a bit of negotiation, I sold it to Apple in exchange for a brand new LaserWriter prototype. I drove up to Bill Duvall's house in the Berkeley hills to help him incorporate RMaker into his system. When my reward arrived in October, I thought it was pretty cool to be the first on my block to have a LaserWriter, three months before it was officially announced.

Its major advantages from our point of view is that it is very fast at compiling and linking and that it places you at the correct position in your source file if the compiler detects an error. The result is that you can edit, compile, link, and run your program very rapidly, make small variations in the code and determine their effect, and generally have the opportunity to make more mistakes in a shorter period of time. If we learn from our mistakes, Lightspeed C is a useful tool for learning C on the Macintosh.

LightspeedC is different from the other available C compilers as it does not use a Unix-like setting [Yea! -Ed.] -nor does it use separate programs in the Macintosh window environment. Instead it creates its own enviornment (that follows the Macintosh User Interface) from which all editing, compiling, linking, and running take place. The integrated editor is roughly similar to the Edit application. Menus available from inside the editor allow you to run, compile, or just check the syntax. As soon as the compiler detects an error, you are returned to the editor with the cursor at the location the compiler found the error. In other words, you get one error at a time.

The link operation is extremely fast.

The very first C compiler ever released for the Macintosh was Consulair Mac C, developed by Bill Duvall, who worked alongside Doug Englebart at Stanford on ARPAnet and later Xerox PARC on Smalltalk. Considering that Duvall also developed the Macintosh 68000 Development System (an assembler, known as MDS) for Apple, it is no real surprise that his C development system used the same editor and tools, being nearly drop-in compatible with MDS.

It is confirmed by multiple sources that Consulair Mac C was available in 1984, but I can't find an exact launch date. This review by Léo Laporte in Issue #3 of MacDeveloper magazine says that the author has "been using it full-time since November, '84", so it was at least commercially available by then. I'm not sure how long it took after the January 24, 1984, introduction of the original Mac for it to become available, though.

As you said, the most important languages on the Mac in its early days were Microsoft's BASIC, Pascal, and, of course, 68000 assembly. The Macintosh's System Software and ROMs were themselves programmed largely in assembly, with a bit of Pascal thrown in (mostly pieces that were ported directly from the Lisa). C was merely a niche language in 1984, and I doubt that Consulair Corp. sold very many copies early on.

As you said, the most important languages on the Mac in its early days were Microsoft's BASIC, Pascal, and, of course, 68000 assembly. The Macintosh's System Software and ROMs were themselves programmed largely in assembly, with a bit of Pascal thrown in (mostly for pieces that were ported directly from the Lisa). C was merely a niche language in 1984, and I doubt very many copies of these were sold, but that doesn't mean you didn't have choices!

The two earliest C compilers available for Macintosh were Hippo-C and Consulair Mac C.

Other early options included Manx Software's Aztec C (see also this site), Megamax C, and Softworks C (which Kevin Killion claims was "the very first C language compiler for the Mac", for which he wrote the front-end, but I cannot find independent verification for this claim). All of these compilers were available on other platforms, too, especially the Atari ST.

Hippo-C

As far as I can tell, the very first C compiler ever released for the Macintosh was Hippo-C, developed by Wendell Brown, the founder of Hippopotamus Software.

The Wikipedia article on Brown has the following picture, showing him with Steve Jobs, with the caption claiming that the picture was taken "at the launch of Brown's Hippo-C software for Macintosh, January 1984":

^{(Image courtesy of Carol Rukomii Holladay, via Wikipedia, licensed under CC by-SA.)}

Macintosh was introduced to the world on January 24, 1984, and even if Brown had held a separate launch event a few days later for his C compiler, I doubt he could have persuaded Steve Jobs to show up. Plus, Jobs is wearing a silver bow-tie in the picture, which looks like the same one he wore that fateful day at Apple's Annual Shareholders Meeting. This is pretty compelling evidence that Hippo-C was the first C compiler for the Mac, available at the computer's launch.

However, I can find vanishingly little information online about Hippo-C. I find a few editions of InfoWorld offering it for sale, one off-handed mention of it in a November 1984 MUG newsletter ("…how about your impressions of the various development environments…Is Hippo C any good, or what?"), but no reviews of it in Macintosh magazines. Most of what I can find discusses it in relation to the Atari ST, for which it was also available. The Atari ST and the Macintosh both used Motorola's 68000 microprocessor, so it makes sense that the same assemblers and compilers could be used for both, but I can't be entirely certain that Hippo-C ran natively on the Macintosh, as opposed to being a cross-compiler for the platform.

Most likely, it never really caught on, so that by the time programmers had gotten serious and the Mac presses were rolling, it had been displaced by...

Consulair Mac C

It is confirmed by multiple independent sources that Consulair Mac C was available in 1984, but I can't find an exact launch date. This review by Léo Laporte in Issue #3 of MacDeveloper magazine says that the author has "been using it full-time since November, '84", so it was at least commercially available by then. However, I'm not sure how long it was after the Mac's introduction that it became available. Whether or not it was available at the very beginning, this seems to have been the most popular C compiler for the Mac in the early days, and there is plenty of information available about it.

Consulair Mac C is also notable in that it is one of the few—perhaps the only—early C development systems for Macintosh that were not cross-platform. It was developed by Bill Duvall, who worked alongside Doug Englebart at Stanford on ARPAnet and later Xerox PARC on Smalltalk. Considering that Duvall also developed the Macintosh 68000 Development System (an assembler, known as MDS) for Apple, it is no real surprise that his C development system used the same editor and tools, being nearly drop-in compatible with MDS.

Thre's also a March 1991 interview with Bill Duvall, conducted by Michael Swaine, available on this site. It looks like this was originally published in Dr. Dobb's Journal. Although most of it is focused on Duvall's thoughts about HyperCard and later ventures, it does contain some interesting and relevant information about his C development system; in particular:

There's also a March 1991 interview with Bill Duvall, conducted by Michael Swaine and originally published in Dr. Dobb's Journal, available on this site. Although most of it is focused on Duvall's thoughts about HyperCard and later ventures, it does contain some interesting and relevant information about his C development system; in particular: