2mo ago

Bill Atkinson, a member of the Apple Lisa and Macintosh teams, created HyperCard, one of the first successful hypermedia systems, after a thought-provoking LSD trip. He died on June 5, 2025.

en.wikipedia.org

Bill Atkinson - Wikipedia

2mo ago

en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Bill_Atkinson

Wikipedia @lemmy.ml

Arthur Besse @lemmy.ml

2mo ago

Bill Atkinson, a member of the Apple Lisa and Macintosh teams, created HyperCard, one of the first successful hypermedia systems, after a thought-provoking LSD trip. He died on June 5, 2025.

en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Bill_Atkinson

10 comments

Rest in peace.
Hypermedia lead me down the rabbit hole. Did you know DARPA and MIT had a streetview like map of Aspen CO in 1978! There was an image taken in the cardinal directions every 10 feet down the middle of all the streets. You could click on houses and museums and see pictures of the inside or look at restaurant menus. They stored it all on laserdisc.
I remember opening HyperCard on our Mac a couple of times when I was a kid. I didn't know what I was doing and couldn't really figure out what it was for.
- HyperCard was basically the viewer/player for HyperCard stacks/files. HyperStudio was the program used to make them.
  It was sorta kind of akin to making basic 'web page' like card presentations, but before the actual internet was a public thing, with images, text, programmable buttons to jump between cards, special effects for card transitions, etc.
  I'm nostalgic for stuff like that, but I've never been able to find a pirated copy of HyperStudio to install into my old System 7.5.5 virtual machine ☹️
  I should admit that it's been years since I messed around with old Macintosh or looked into the old Mac retro sites, it's probably out there somewhere..
  
  Myst and Riven were built on HyperCard, also!
  
  HyperCard was basically the viewer/player for HyperCard stacks/files. HyperStudio was the program used to make them.
  This is incorrect. The HyperCard application could both create and play back HyperCard stacks. It could also export them as stand-alone applications which people could use without needing to run HyperCard.
  
  I should admit that it’s been years since I messed around with old Macintosh or looked into the old Mac retro sites, it’s probably out there somewhere…
  You can use HyperCard on an emulated Mac in a web browser at https://system7.app/ - it's in the Multimedia folder there :)
Man I got my start making games in HyperCard. I owed bill atkinson a lot for all the inspiration it provided me, even if it never ended with me finishing any of my pipe dream projects, I did learn to code And become an IT professional.
RIP Bill, you changed lives.
Atkinson's design was prescient. Hypercard kicked off end-users becoming app developers.
A modern version of it is still out there: https://livecode.com/
RIP

10 comments