Why did HyperCard wither away? [was: Re: Why is Konfabulator 'Pretty?']

Bill bill at bluewatermaritime.com
Sat Dec 10 12:29:35 EST 2005


Thanks for that clear discourse. I think the true story behind the demise of
Hypercard is very interesting. I'd like to see it fleshed-out a little more
to a full story especially with some of the interesting facts such as the
fast indexing code story and other history. In fact such a story (the rise
and fall of a program no one could classify) has a lot of potential.


On 12/9/05 10:13 PM, "Bill Marriott" <wjm at wjm.org> wrote:

> Well, I had the good fortune to be at Claris during the HyperCard
> transition. I knew the development team and the product managers well. I
> don't think it was anything so deliberate/nefarious as you surmise.
> 
> - Claris didn't know how to make money on a program that had been given away
> for free. The demotion of the "free" HyperCard to a "player" and starting to
> charge for the full version ended up upsetting/alienating a lot of
> customers.
> 
> - In those days, there was free, unlimited, "red carpet" technical support.
> You could call in with just about any question and the support group would
> go to the ends of the earth to solve it for you. (This included writing
> scripts and debugging stacks.) With everyone from commercial developers to
> 11th graders calling in, HyperCard became one of the most expensive products
> to support, surpassing even FileMaker Pro.
> 
> - Key members of the Apple team that built HyperCard declined to move to
> Claris and the product just wasn't upgraded quickly enough or smartly
> enough. It took forever to get their act together under the reorganization
> chaos. Not enough features were added, and the ones that were often were not
> done in a way that pleased customers.
> 
> - No one knew how to position it within the Claris product line. FileMaker
> was also the chief moneymaker, and there was some question why someone would
> use FileMaker if HyperCard was able to do the same things (easy reports, for
> example). There was actually a lot of contention for a while whether to use
> HyperCard or FileMaker as the engine for the technical knowledgebase
> (FileMaker won).
> 
> - As a producer of software primarily targeted at consumers and small
> businesses, Claris didn't have the depth of experience to create a
> developer-oriented tool.
> 
> - The HyperCard team tended not to integrate well with the rest of the
> company. They didn't eat lunch at the same tables. :) I think this prevented
> a lot of discussion, crossover ideas, and innovative thinking from
> occurring.
> 
> - HyperCard was not making a profit; there were therefore no substantial
> funds for marketing it. Combined with all the other factors above, other
> companies (like SuperCard) stepped in and started to compete for the
> HyperCard audience. Market share of HyperCard fell dramatically.
> 
> After HyperCard went back to Apple there may have been some additional
> machinations that I'm not aware of. However,
> 
> 1) The Claris spinout was the beginning of the end for HyperCard as far as
> I'm concerned. It's not that Claris was a bad company (quite the opposite);
> it's just that insufficient strategic consideration was given to how it
> would grow there, and it probably should never have left Apple anyway.
> 
> 2) I never once at Claris heard the notion that HyperCard stacks reflected
> poorly on the image of the Macintosh. Quite the opposite.
> 
> 3) No one -- except a few crazies no one listened to -- saw the potential
> for HyperCard to impact the Web (and vice versa). "So close yet so far."
> (sigh.) HyperCard's paradigm was mired in floppy-disk distribution of
> stacks... a bandwidth-friendly, streaming, component-ized, multi-user,
> client-server world was simply not envisioned. By 1993/1994 the Web was
> clearly "the next big thing" and HyperCard missed the boat.
> 
> Bill
> 
> "Mark Swindell" <mswindel at santacruz.k12.ca.us>
> wrote in message 
> news:2e1610f5ac8c751d31ec1db2600dc2c7 at santacruz.k12.ca.us...
>> I think they were ok with HyperCard staying a fun toy for amateurs, but
>> they didn't want to blur the line by giving it full-blown professional UI
>> potential.  Then their platform would have been populated by half-baked
>> applications that worked poorly but which could have appeared superficially
>> to have been produced by professionals and would have helped define the Mac
>> "experience" as amateurish.  That would have been bad for business and
>> their reputation.
>> 
>> DTP programs used the computer to produce docs, for good or bad, but they
>> "weren't" the computer in the same way a Hypercard stack "became" the
>> computer while it was in use.  Same for web pages, later on.   They were
>> documents, not applications.
>> 
>> Mark
>> 
>> On Dec 9, 2005, at 3:03 PM, Bill Marriott wrote:
>> 
>>> You mean, like how they abandoned desktop publishing because of all the
>>> horrid newsletters that sprung into existence? And how the web never took
>>> off because of all the ugly sites? :)
>>> 
>>> Bill
>>> 
>>> "Mark Swindell"
>>> <mswindel at santacruz.k12.ca.us>
>>> wrote in message
>>> news:3e8f7badaa4353e28739d750b1cd8224 at santacruz.k12.ca.us...
>>>> HC's rep was so tarnished by all the unsightly crap put out there by
>>>> "the
>>>> rest of us"  that they didn't want it associated in any professional
>>>> context with their upscale brand identity.  Sure, there  were nuggets of
>>>> gold among the piles of HyperCard coal, but even they were covered in
>>>> black (and white) dust and hard to find.
>>>> -Mark
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> use-revolution mailing list
>> use-revolution at lists.runrev.com
>> Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your
>> subscription preferences:
>> http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
>> 
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> use-revolution mailing list
> use-revolution at lists.runrev.com
> Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription
> preferences:
> http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution

            |    |    |
           )_)  )_)  )_)
          )___))___))___)\
         )____)____)_____)\\
       _____|____|____|____\\\__
-------\                   /--------- http://www.bluewatermaritime.com
 ^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  ^^^^      ^^^^     ^^^    ^^
       ^^^^      ^^^

24 hour cell: (787) 378-6190
fax: (787) 809-8426

Blue Water Maritime
P.O. Box 91
Puerto Real, PR 00740






More information about the use-livecode mailing list