SuperCard Personal Edition Offers Inexpensive Authoring & Scripting

IncWell DMG and Solutions Etcetera have released SuperCard Personal Edition, a version of the well-regarded multimedia authoring and scripting environment aimed at individual users and folks working with Apple’s all-but-officially abandoned HyperCard. SuperCard features full-color authoring capabilities that are well suited to demos, project prototypes, presentations, utilities, multimedia software, and more, using a structure similar to HyperCard’s card-and-stack metaphor. SuperCard Personal Edition differs from the full version of SuperCard in that it doesn’t have SuperCard’s capability to encrypt scripts from prying eyes, enable users to build commercial applications, or include a royalty-free license to distribute SuperCard applications (although other folks can still run projects created with the Personal Edition using the free SuperCard Player). Nonetheless, SuperCard Personal Edition includes all of SuperCard’s other capabilities (including voice recognition, sophisticated QuickTime authoring, and the capability to directly convert many HyperCard stacks to SuperCard projects), and price is attractive: through a special promotion with MacNN, SuperCard Personal Edition is available for $49.95. The full version of SuperCard costs $150.

For more background on SuperCard, see Matt Neuburg’s review of SuperCard 3.0 in TidBITS 369, and TidBITS technical editor Geoff Duncan’s review of SuperCard 3.5.2 for Macworld’s May 1999 issue. SuperCard’s current version is 3.6. For details of HyperCard’s current status, see "Alas, HyperCard!" and "The Business Case for HyperCard" in TidBITS 453 and 454. HyperCard’s situation remains essentially unchanged, but its now over a year and a half more moribund than when those articles were published.