Did You Think Apple’s HyperCard Was Dead? Almost.
If you’re new to Macs you’re not likely to remember HyperCard and stacks. That’s the domain of longtime Mac users.
Today’s newer Mac users can indulge their fantasy for the past by using SuperCard, what HyperCard would have been were it not for dying.
A little history is probably in order. 21 years or so ago Apple’s Bill Atkinson created a hypermedia system, years before the World Wide Web, which is a modern equivalent of HyperCard.
That so-called hypermedia system.... (excerpted).
8 Reader Comments
Richard Tryon said:
Since 1984 I have been expanding the Hypercard calendar and adding cards to the Name/Address stack.Now I am told that to switch to Intel and Macbook I need to convert calendar and name/address with notes cards to Supercard and its converter. But that doesn’t really work.
What does it take to make my stacks transparent to a new application that needs no fielding of name cards but can find any card by any key word on it?
macster said:
Dude, you gotta give up the ghost. HyperCard is dead. Long live HyperCard.
It’s not that SuperCard is not cool and an able replacement for HyperCard. It is. But no one needs HyperCard these days.
It died. We’re sorry. We loved HyperCard, too. Let it go…
Philip Planchenault said:
Back in the early days with the first Mac’s (1984) I was one of the many “sales” people working for free for Apple, promoting Mac to anyone who would care to listen. I developed several HyperCard applications for personal fun or even for running small businesses’ administration.
Due to several reasons I had to step away from the Mac world around 1998, but recently came back (now a proud owner of MacBook Pro 15”).
I find iWeb a nice application, but everytime I want to do something non-trivial on my web pages I am craving for the HyperCard of the past ...
I just bumped into this article today, and am curious to know if SuperCard would also allow to publish stacks on the web, thereby offering me an effective way to improve the design of my web site ? If that were the case, I would gladly pay the 179 USD ...
Gene Keyes said:
For the past six years, and 24/7 (well, 15/7), I’ve been using a stack called URLfriend 1.0 which I designed. It can open any URL in any browser and enable copious notes about any website. So far I have over 3,350 cards in a stack of less than 2 Mb.
Apple’s hara-kiri of HyperCard was a horrible blunder.
—Gene Keyes
HyperFrank said:
It was a dark and stormy night. My wife went to bed alone again as I pushed and pulled my mouse through hours of exhilarating exploration. My heart sometimes raced, sometimes fell as thrill or disappointment rocked my new world. She would never be able to understand… or would she? I spent several hours on the project to win her over, sat her down early one Sunday morning, asking her to click that one HyperCard button. My Mac Plus eagerly jumped to the task, effortlessly executing examples of spreadsheet tumbles, word processor vaults, evil alien disintegration. When the scripts had run their course, she sat for a moment, dumbfounded. “Nice,” she finally said.
HyperCard and I had scored.
TS said:
Hypercard is the reason I bought a Mac in the first place. It is/was amazing. We’re still using stacks/programs at the company that I made in the 90’s. Running them on antique macs! I was just re-customizing one of them this past week.
Tim said:
Anyone interested in Hypercard or Supercard should also look at Revolution. It uses a very similar scripting language and card metaphor and runs on Macs, Windows and several Unix systems. See http://www.Runrev.com.
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Steven Thomas said:
I have a Mac G5 PowerBook running 0SX 10.4 I still have Classic and with it run my old HyperCard program with which I upload my website. My website works fine but if I get a new computer, HyperCard is dead and so is my website. Can SuperCard easily translate my HyperCard system?? (which I don’t understand, by the way, I just use it: click a few buttons, import stuff from my FileMaker database and—boom—website is ready. Help!!!!