What will happen to the world’s least costly multimedia authoring system?

HyperCard is far from dead, but rumors that it will no longer be bundled with the Macintosh may be true — at least, sort of, according to industry insiders.

Claris Corp., Apple’s software arm that took over marketing of the product from Apple a year and a half ago, emphatically denied reports that it plans to stop its HyperCard development efforts and only release maintenance versions. The rumors were prompted in part by the recent departures of several key HyperCard team members: Mike Holm, HyperCard product line marketing manager who had been working on the product since its introduction in 1987; Bill Duvall, director of HyperCard development; and Tom Hammer, manager of stackware and testing.

HyperCard product manager Bob Gregg said that the new version is “well along in development.” Developers are saying they expect HyperCard 2.5 to be shipped in May with, among other things, color painting tools, some performance improvements and the ability to play QuickTime movies.

THEY’VE GOT A LOT OF NERVE

But Claris’s continued endorsement has not swayed some Apple executives, who want the end-user version of HyperCard “out of the box,” arguing that it was too complicated a piece of software to bundle with every Macintosh.

This is a remarkably obtuse statement coming from a company that spends countless millions hyping the Macintosh as a powerful tool for individual productivity, and from the company that started the personal computer revolution in part by shipping the Applesoft Basic programming language with the Apple II in the mid-1970s.

When HyperCard was shipped in 1987, many industry watchers drew an approving parallel between the two products, calling HyperCard “Basic for the ’90s,” because both allowed regular people, not just members of the computer priesthood, to create their own software that actually worked.

Some history for the uninitiated. HyperCard was designed by former Apple Fellow Bill Atkinson, a member of the original Mac team (who’s now at General Magic building personal communication devices), to be a powerful user interface builder, development environment and database for “the rest of us.”

HyperCard allows users to move through data quickly and it is easily extended to control devices such as videodisc players and CD-ROM drives. HyperCard was first to allow easy incorporation of multiple data types, including animation and sound, into programs and presentations. It boasted an easy-to-read, powerful scripting language called HyperTalk that made it simple to control and manipulate chunks of data. And it was specifically designed so that non-programmers could quickly model and build their own interfaces and working applications.

These and other features led to its standing as the de facto authoring tool for most early multimedia projects.

Some companies–most notably, The Voyager Company — still use HyperCard because it is shipped with the Macintosh, providing them with an instant and inexpensive software platform for their products. The simplicity of the interface, as well as its ubiquity, endeared HyperCard to the nation’s teachers, who to date are still the largest body of HyperCard developers.

FOR SOME, A PLAYER ISN’T ENOUGH

The conflict is just another in a long line of corporate disagreements and rejections of HyperCard since before it was announced in 1987. Despite early enthusiasm, HyperCard was never exactly dear to the hearts of certain Apple executives, who before it was released attempted on countless occasions to insist — completely in vain — that Apple either charge for the product or increase its capabilities beyond that of a base-level Macintosh. (These suggestions were roundly rejected by Atkinson.)

From the start, third-party software developers complained that giving away powerful software for free soured the market for people trying to sell it, and that HyperCard itself broke most of the Macintosh’s much ballyhooed user interface conventions. In 1990, Claris — which took over the development and marketing of HyperCard from Apple –decided it was too costly to continue shipping the fully functioning version of HyperCard in the box with the Macintosh.

Out in the cold. “In the box” proponents argue that HyperCard was the basis for the information products industry and that Apple would be leaving HyperCard developers out in the cold if they stopped bundling it with the Mac.

According to one HyperCard developer, Apple executives reached a tentative compromise early this month: although the end-user version of HyperCard will no longer be bundled with the Mac, Claris will develop a HyperCard player that Apple will include on disk along with the Mac system software.

“If that’s the way it’s going to be, I and other members of the HyperCard development community will be disappointed,” said Danny Goodman, author of several HyperCard books and coordinator of a letter-writing campaign in January to get Claris to market and promote HyperCard. “HyperCard in one form or another has to be given away to users. I’d much rather see the player, though, than nothing at all.”

Goodman, who says more than 100 HyperCard supporters wrote to Claris, would like to see HyperCard returned to Apple and developed along with Macintosh system software. While some end-user version of HyperCard would continue to be bundled free with Macintoshes, the developer version and other HyperCard tools could be sold through APDA, Apple’s developers association.

“If HyperCard is in fact a strategic advantage for Apple and the Mac, then it’s future should be in the hands of Apple. It needs to evolve with the operating system,” Goodman said, admitting that his plan may be “an impractical ideal from a business standpoint.”

At the very least, though, Goodman hopes to see a little more enthusiasm for the product from both Claris and Apple. “What I think the HyperCard community is asking for is that there be some overt commitment to HyperCard and to put some excitement back into HyperCard as it once had. (HyperCard author) Bill Atkinson was the big promoter at first, but there’s no one fulfilling that role now. There’s no champion at a high level.”

Connie Guglielmo, Denise Caruso