"What you were doing was effectively operating system programming" is a _major_ stretch.
The sorts of programming you were doing was barely higher-level than the sorts of programming involved with an OSDev-style "Hello, world!" kernel[0]. My remark is not a stretch at all. At most you had a few thin conveniences (like having some graphics-related features already available to you, since Woz had prioritized that when he designed the Apple II's BASIC interpreter); beyond that, it was direct access to everything from RAM to tapes (unless you were running Apple DOS, but that was not at all required for BASIC programming on an Apple II, and the Apple II didn't ship with it).
BASIC for all intents and purposes, was considered a high level language when I learned it.
From what I remember, BASIC kinda had a similar reputation as PHP does today (probably unfair) in that it wasn't generally taken very seriously as a programming language. You didn't use BASIC to make real programs on an Apple ][. For that, you'd do it in assembly or machine language. That bias is still stuck in my head even after 3 decades.