I've seen a lot of big-hearted attempts to bring Hypercard back. I haven't seen a convincing (to me) analysis of why it sputtered out in the first place. Without that knowledge, I don't think any resuscitations can succeed.
I've had the chance to talk a bit with Bill Atkinson about this. I think there are a few things at play here.
First, HC was built before the popularization of the internet, and as such a distribution model for stacks didn't really exist. I can literally remember mailing stacks on floppy disks. So, people could make things, but not easily share them.
Second, there was a fundamental shift in which software became a commodity. I really think in the beginning it was about selling computers; it took a while for people to realize that software was not a 'value add' for the machine but a place to make much, much more money.
So when HC was conceived, it seemed natural to provide a tool to let people author their own software. As the business model changed, this idea lost out. Software should be something that people bought, not something people made
As I understand the history, a couple of things happened. First, HC got kicked around from one business entity to another, and was never wholeheartedly supported by Apple. It was kind of an orphan. There are legends that Bill Atkinson had to go ballistic in order to get it included with the Mac at all.
Second, HC reached its zenith (the final version was a real improvement over its predecessors) just as Apple went into somewhat of a dark age in between System 7 and OS X.
I loved my Mac but never felt that Apple was interested in encouraging indie or small-scale software development. I can't say that Windows was any better, but Windows had a built in lightweight API called MS-DOS.
Continuing my revisionist history, I think what happened next is simply that desirable computer system features proliferated more rapidly than any development tool could keep up with. And the diversity of interests in programming is what would stymie such a revival today.
blprnt|11 years ago
First, HC was built before the popularization of the internet, and as such a distribution model for stacks didn't really exist. I can literally remember mailing stacks on floppy disks. So, people could make things, but not easily share them.
Second, there was a fundamental shift in which software became a commodity. I really think in the beginning it was about selling computers; it took a while for people to realize that software was not a 'value add' for the machine but a place to make much, much more money.
So when HC was conceived, it seemed natural to provide a tool to let people author their own software. As the business model changed, this idea lost out. Software should be something that people bought, not something people made
analog31|11 years ago
Second, HC reached its zenith (the final version was a real improvement over its predecessors) just as Apple went into somewhat of a dark age in between System 7 and OS X.
I loved my Mac but never felt that Apple was interested in encouraging indie or small-scale software development. I can't say that Windows was any better, but Windows had a built in lightweight API called MS-DOS.
Continuing my revisionist history, I think what happened next is simply that desirable computer system features proliferated more rapidly than any development tool could keep up with. And the diversity of interests in programming is what would stymie such a revival today.