SuperCard Personal Edition -- 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 can't encrypt scripts from prying eyes or enable users to build commercial applications, and it lacks a royalty-free license to distribute SuperCard applications (although other folks can still run projects using the free SuperCard Player). SuperCard Personal Edition includes all of SuperCard's other capabilities (including voice recognition, sophisticated QuickTime authoring, and the capability to convert many HyperCard stacks to SuperCard projects), and price is attractive: through a special promotion with MacNN, SuperCard Personal Edition is available for $50. The full version of SuperCard costs $150.

<http://www.solutionsetcetera.com/SCPE/>
<http://www.apple.com/hypercard/>
<http://www.macnn.com/>

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 TidBITS-454. HyperCard's situation remains essentially unchanged, but it's now over a year and a half more moribund than when those articles were published. [GD]

<http://db.tidbits.com/article/00716>
<http://macworld.zdnet.com/1999/05/reviews/ supercard.html>
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/05155>
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/05169>