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> GOODMAN: But we can expect to see additions?

> ATKINSON: Lots of improvements. This is not going to be abandoned like MacPaint was. Pretty much Apple put me on something else and gave the maintenance of MacPaint to someone else and then kept shuffling that from one person to another, and MacPaint never got maintained.

As far as I understand that’s almost exactly what would happen to HyperCard over the next few years as well.

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HyperCard did get a fairly substantial upgrade with HyperCard 2.0. Indeed, the second version of The Complete HyperCard Handbook included another interview with Bill Atkinson, discussing some of the changes made and the direction HyperCard was heading in.

The real trouble for HyperCard came when it was moved to the Claris subsidiary, who started charging for it [1]. No longer was the full version bundled with every Mac sold, which had helped HyperCard become ubiquitous until that point.

[1] https://www.zdnet.com/article/apples-lost-decade-hypercard-a...

Yup. It was abandoned almost exactly like MacPaint was. Real shame.

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