Owning a Mac was a very self-selective thing back in the day, and at the time the “bicycle for the mind” ethos was a deep part of Apple’s marketing. HyperCard fit that perfectly. So, if you had the money and inclination to buy a Mac, you were also buying into a philosophy and a promise. That meant that regular people, not professional developers, were engaged and interested in making the most of their (expensive) machines. HyperCard was simple to use, and the return on investment in learning how to build with it was immediately clear.
Imagine you’re a botanist with the spare money to buy a Mac. You could spend a few hours with HyperCard and put together a beautiful plant database, full of pictures and hyperlinks. I love those kinds of stories from the HyperCard era, and it’s a vision of the power of computing that still resonates today, and is a big reason why stories on HyperCard are perennially popular.
In today’s smartphone era we have millions of pre-made apps ready to consume and use. It’s amazing in many ways, but if you think Xcode, or JavaScript and HTML are the natural successors to HyperCard than you don’t really understand what was so magical about HyperCard.
Imagine you’re a botanist with the spare money to buy a Mac. You could spend a few hours with HyperCard and put together a beautiful plant database, full of pictures and hyperlinks. I love those kinds of stories from the HyperCard era, and it’s a vision of the power of computing that still resonates today, and is a big reason why stories on HyperCard are perennially popular.
In today’s smartphone era we have millions of pre-made apps ready to consume and use. It’s amazing in many ways, but if you think Xcode, or JavaScript and HTML are the natural successors to HyperCard than you don’t really understand what was so magical about HyperCard.