OT: Priorities (was: Re: Stack with the same name loop)

[Paul McClernan]

On Mon, Oct 25, 2021 at 11:18 AM Bob Sneidar via use-livecode
<use-livecode at lists.runrev.com> wrote:
>
> Or the lesson may be that when a product is not commercially produced, there is no incentive to keep it updated and improve it. The lesson may be that a free mainstream product is an eventually doomed product.
>
> Bob S

Hypercard was commercially produced and updated in the 1990s. 1998 was
the last update (2.4.1), at the time Apple was planning to integrate
HC 3.0 on a system level as part of QuickTime 3. HC was still usable
via "Classic" mode in Mac OSX and available for purchase from Apple
for $49 until 2004. By 2004 there were a handful of clones available
all of which had more modern features than HyperCard, including
SuperCard (which is still available, but is apparently chained to
Apple's now defunct Carbon API) and MetaCard. Coincidentally (or not?)
I've gathered that was around the same time that RunRev came to be and
acquired the MetaCard engine(s). If you consider, which I do,
AppleScript as a HyperCard cousin of sorts, then HC is still, at least
residually, ingrained into current versions of macOS. Coupled with
XCode's interface builder and AppleScript Objective C (ASObjC), or
not, you can build native mac apps with it. As we are here, people
still fairly frequently bring up HyperCard, a software package
introduced 34 years ago, was available for 17 years, and spurred a
bunch of clones! Pretty darn good for a doomed, free (and then cheap),
mainstream product, IMO.