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I remember messing w/ SuperCard when it first came out. (if I remember correctly, it was like Hypercard, but with support for color).

Based on the wikipedia page on it, they added MacOS X support in 2002, and it now runs natively on Intel macs.

There's also a note that there's a windows runtime for it. (but not an editor).

Of course, the basic version is $179, and the one w/ extra stuff is $279 ... but if you have any HyperCard materials lying about (box, manual, install disk, etc.), they'll knock it down to $129/$199.

And it looks like you can grab the beta or 30 day demo to try it out.

The only thing that I can't figure out is how you get people the player -- do you have to distribute it w/ your stack, or is there somewhere people can download it from once and be done w/ it?

I remember messing w/ SuperCard when it first came out. (if I remember correctly, it was like Hypercard, but with support for color).

Based on the wikipedia page on it, they added MacOS X support in 2002, and it now runs natively on Intel macs.

There's also a note that there's a windows runtime for it. (but not an editor).

Of course, the basic version is $179, and the one w/ extra stuff is $279 ... but if you have any HyperCard materials lying about (box, manual, install disk, etc.), they'll knock it down to $129/$199.

And it looks like you can grab the beta or 30 day demo to try it out.

The only thing that I can't figure out is how you get people the player -- do you have to distribute it w/ your stack, or is there somewhere people can download it from once and be done w/ it?

There is a version of "HyperCard" for modern Macs, and it's been around a LONG time now (at least before the 90s).

It's called SuperCard. (Official Site (it's hard to Google)).

It can convert existing HyperCard stacks to SuperCard ones in a few minutes and has extensive support. Yes, it runs on OS X and Intel Macs, too.

It's actually a bit better than HyperCard was back in the days - it supported color without extensions and other things, too. Of course, it costs money, but it's been available a long time.

So Allegiant SuperCard which was HyperCard on steroids, and there was even a Windows runtime environment. It was still available long after HyperCards demise, actually Google in its wisdom tells me right now there’s a Lion Version: http://www.supercard.us/ strange that they haven’t taken over the software world in storm

I developed a neuroanatomy teaching tool in Supercard, which was an excellent Hypercard clone that was in a number of ways more powerful. The project was successful, using a teaching strategy that was innovative for it's time (although pretty much standard today). It was popular with students and it was used for years by at least a couple of medical schools that I know of. I loved working with Supercard, and I recommend it to anybody with fond memories of Hypercard. However, the fact that Supercard did not take over the world (although it is still available), suggests to me that there is not overwhelming demand for a programming tool of this sort.

Reasons why Steve Jobs might not have been strongly impelled to resurrect Hypercard:
1) Hypercard's heyday was before high-speed internet became so ubiquitous. A great deal of what could be done with Hypercard can be done with standard web design tools to produce web applications that are more portable across operating systems, more versatile, and easier to maintain.
2) Most of the presentation features of Hypercard are now better handled by dedicated presentation software such as PowerPoint and Keynote.
3) Steve Jobs preferred polished software that fully took advantage of the capabilities of the Mac platform. Hypercard was a non-native software environment that was really perfectly suited to little more than "flash card" projects. Using an interpreted language, it was rather slow. Steve may well have preferred to channel developers into a fully-fledged Mac native application development environment, and to devote Apple's efforts toward optimizing those tools rather than maintaining a parallel development system with more limited capabilities.

Supercard is still around... http://www.supercard.us/

What's changed is access to the tools to start experimenting with coding. When you sat down at a command-line terminal like on a C64, you often had to learn a few commands in BASIC just to load a game or see your files. And if you used a Commodore 64 in a computer lab, it usually wasn't long before some kid would show off by printing repeating rainbows on the screen or something, subjecting the entire class to the power of a couple of lines of code with a loop. Now, there is no equivalent. Kids are not simply subjected to some programming in the course of using computers that might tweak their interest, they would have to decide they were interested on their own (or with pushing from someone else,) and then it's not obvious how or where to get started. On a Commodore 64, when you turn it on it starts up in a BASIC development environment, and the computer's manual came with a programming guide for the language. That's a little different in ease of getting into programming than a new Mac or Windows computer.

On the other hand, spending three years trying to get BASIC to run on either a Mac or a PC sounds bizarre. For one, why's it have to be BASIC? If I had a kid I wanted to teach programming on a Mac, I'd use Applescript, which comes with it, and will allow him to easily do some cool things interfacing with other programs and the operating system, as well as giving him an easy path out of a sandbox and into real development via Applescript Studio. Or run Hypercard under Classic, which in my opinion is still the best introduction to programming ever, because you can make things that are highly functional really fast, yet Hyperscript is a full-featured programming language you can really sink your teeth into if you want to get more advanced. If you're dead set on an archaic linearly interpreted language, LOGO's even easier to learn than BASIC.

And if you're set on BASIC, how on earth is it taking you three years and you're not finding it? Here's the results of my 10 seconds of searching for Mac:
Chimunk BASIC
METAL
CocoaBasic
Omikron BASIC
FutureBASIC
TWM (a GUI Builder for Future Basic)
bOSL

Or just emulate whatever BASIC environment you thought was good for learning:
Power64
Frodo
Power20
Sweet16

For LOGO:
XLogo
jLogo
ACSLogo
StarLogo

For Applescript, open Script Editor, which should already be on your Mac.

Hypercard isn't officially available, so horque a warez copy (come on, it's abandonware, how bad are you gonna feel?), or use a competitor:
Supercard
HyperNext Studio

IIRC, there were a number of IDEs that mimicked or emulated HyperCard's model of programming, most notably Revolution and SuperCard, but the sticker price and the extra complexity built into them for writing "modern" software kept them out of Joe Average's reach. I would definitely support any project that wanted to put programming back into the hands of the "masses." I believe that programming is an essential skill to learn and a great way to teach people that computers are not mystery boxes that break if you push the wrong button, but tools you can use to design tools to get jobs done. And something like HyperCard or Visual Basic, designed for the "average user" in mind, might be just the thing.

'm not sure [Hypercard] it's still made, or if there is a reasonable facsimile for Windows.

Hypercard itself has been discontinued, but not after most Hypercard users had switched to Supercard anyhow I guess.

I'd recommend SuperCard. When Apple abandoned HyperCard, they left a big void. SuperCard is OS X native and has excellent HC compatibility. Of course, it's far from a HC clone, as it it has all the things you'd expect from a development environment these days.

SC allows you to build standalone applications playing movies with QuickTime, displaying graphics with alpha channels, running shell commands and AppleScripts, etc...

I also personally use Runtime Revolution, and it's also good, and cross-platform. However, for Mac-only development, SuperCard definitely has my vote. It uses true Aqua GUI controls, and behaves like you expect Mac apps to do.

Here's a few Mac apps I develop with SuperCard: http://www.lightheadsw.com/

Yes, this is way late, but I hope you are tracking this via your personal comments page...

Off the top of my head are SuperCard and Runtime Revolution. Also, if you only care about the Mac, AppleScript Studio, while not as elegant as the above, uses a programming language decended from HyperTalk, and it's a free part of Xcode.

There is also SuperCard. It's OS X native (assuming you don't make your poor mom use Windows!) and is largely HyperCard compatible, well it's more of a superset. It's like $179.

Hi-
SuperCard is basically an updated version of HyperCard, for OS X. It can even load all of your old stacks...
--Quentin

If you purchased a copy of Hypercard (like I did), you can have Supercard at $ 129 instead of $ 179.

In case somebody is interested.

1. Runtime Revolution
2. SuperCard
3. PythonCard

There may be others...

Supercard

It looks quite native for OSX and has a trial version you can download. If you miss Hypercard you may like it.

You might want to try SuperCard; you can even import your old HyperCard stacks in and they will probably work. (Mine mostly worked when I tried it; I did have to make some small changes but not too much.) SuperTalk is pretty much HyperTalk with some additions (and a couple of things removed), and color works much better in SuperCard than the hack they did to include color in HyperCard.

What about SuperCard?
I don't know how good the OS X version is, but eight years ago, you could seamlessly import most HyperCard stacks into SuperCard...

SuperCard!

HyperCard was the first environment where I built real tools and applications for my own use, back when I was around 12 or so. Before then, I had done things in Symantec C++, BASIC on VAX, and a little C, but nothing that was actually an application or tool (e.g. Hello World!). Anyone who used HyperCard has got to admit it was an amazing development environment. I actually got a personal finance shareware application (named BalanceBook) on the Shareware Of The Month Club CD and wrote a trade route tool for Federation in HyperCard. I started putting together a Final Fantasy like game in HyperCard too, but I never got around to finishing up the sprites.

Another entry into programming is creating web pages, by tweaking them with JavaScript, and eventually CGI scripts. Really anything that allows tweaking is good, such as tweaking Mozilla or the computer desktop. Programming is about tweaking the world.

Once they feel ready to transition to a full programming language (Java, C++, etc.), there are ways to ramp up to that too. JavaScript is a great way to learn object-oriented concepts. Learning game programming really motivates kids and they learn about 3D graphics too (Nehe and GameTutorials). For building real desktop applications, NetBeans and the free JBuilder edition let you visually design java user interfaces, but something like Thinlets simplifies java development greatly (and introduces you to XML, see also other XUL-based development tools). Of course there are thousands of resources out there for learning java, see Sun's New to Java center.

Lastly, I think kids should keep a blog or a journal somewhere. If you have webspace, set them up a MovableType blog and let them tweak everything they want (adding commenting, shoutboxes, javascript goodies, etc.).

You can still get Hypercard clones, supercard, revolution... I wish Apple would buy one of the and rerelease. Hypercard was a major feature of Apple and they should bring it back. The development tools are terrific for programmers but they need something lighter.