I'm perfectly familiar with Microsoft being an application vendor for Apple's platforms, long before that was Macintosh:) What threw me off with the notion of them employing a systems programmer for a non-MS OS.
>>yjftsj+(OP)
It makes more sense when you consider that 'systems programmer' doesn't mean 'writes operating systems' (especially back then) and the line between application and systems programming was quite blurry (double especially back then).