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THINK C was an extension of ANSI C for Mac OS developed originally as Think's Lightspeed C by THINK Technologies and later purchased and further developed by Symantec Corporation. It was essentially a subset of C++ and supported basic object oriented programming concepts such as single inheritance as well as extensions to the C standard that conformed more closely to the requirements of Mac OS programming. After version 6, the OOP facilities were expanded to a full C++ implementation, and the product was rebranded Symantec C++ for versions 7 and 8.

THINK C (and later, Symantec C++) featured a class library and framework for Mac programming called the THINK Class Library, which was used extensively for Macintosh application development.

The THINK C IDE was quite influential, though considered not as advanced as that belonging to THINK Pascal, its sister language product; it was considered the standard environment when MPW was considered an overpriced niche product. With the transition of the Mac from 68K to PowerPC, however, Symantec was widely seen as having dropped the ball, and competitor Metrowerks' product CodeWarrior took control of the marketplace.

Despite the decline in popularity of their IDE, Symantec was eventually chosen by Apple to provide next-generation C/C++ compilers for MPW in the form of Sc/Scpp for 68K alongside MrC/MrCpp for PowerPC (developed at Apple Computer using back-end technology from Lucid Inc.). These remained Apple's standard compilers until the arrival of Mac OS X replaced them with the NeXT-derived Project Builder and its followon Xcode. Symantec subsequently exited the developer tool business.

• http://www.mactech.com/articles/mactech/Vol.05/05.10/ThinkCTutor/

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