WEBVTT 00:00.000 --> 00:08.000 HyperCard, what is it? It's not hyper, it's not even a card, it's not quite system software, it's not quite application software. 00:08.000 --> 00:13.500 There must be at least one guy who knows what HyperCard is, Danny Goodman, he just wrote a 700 page book about it. 00:13.500 --> 00:17.500 And there's one other guy who knows what HyperCard is, he developed it, Bill Atkinson. 00:17.500 --> 00:45.500 They'll both be on our show. Today we unravel the mystery of HyperCard on this edition of the Computer Chronicles. 00:45.500 --> 00:55.500 The Computer Chronicles is made possible in part by McGraw-Hill, publishers of Byte Magazine, and Bix, the Byte Information Exchange. 00:55.500 --> 01:10.500 In print and online, Byte and Bix serve computer professionals worldwide with detailed information on new hardware, software, and technologies. 01:10.500 --> 01:19.500 Welcome to the Computer Chronicles, I'm Stuart Shafay and this is Gary Kildall. Gary, I haven't totally lost my mind here and reverted to my childhood and playing with this Erector Set. 01:19.500 --> 01:27.500 What I'm trying to do is understand HyperCard, because the guy who developed HyperCard says it's like an Erector Set to help me build applications on my Macintosh. 01:27.500 --> 01:32.500 People are having trouble understanding this concept of HyperCard. What's the background, what's the derivation of it? 01:32.500 --> 01:37.500 Well, HyperCard is based upon hypertext, it's a concept that was introduced by Ted Nelson and Doug Engelbart in the 60s. 01:37.500 --> 01:41.500 The basic idea is this, if we're trying to do research on a complicated, or not even complicated, just any kind of a subject, 01:41.500 --> 01:49.500 the subject matter really exists in all sorts of different places. It can be books, magazines, videos, tape recordings, CompuServe. 01:49.500 --> 01:55.500 And if we can somehow link all this stuff electronically, so that we click on Beethoven and then we all of a sudden can jump from one to the next, 01:55.500 --> 02:01.500 collect up the information that we want, put it into the document, listen to the music, do some word processing and so forth, 02:01.500 --> 02:06.500 that's what hypertext is all about, or hypermedia, and this is supposed to be the foundation for HyperCard. 02:06.500 --> 02:12.500 Well, we're going to find out about HyperCard today. We're going to meet the two guys who developed it at Apple, Bill Atkinson and Dan Winkler, 02:12.500 --> 02:16.500 and we're going to see several applications already being developed using HyperCard. 02:16.500 --> 02:24.500 We begin by going to San Jose, California, to meet a man who's using HyperCard to develop something called the Complete Car Cost Guide. 02:25.500 --> 02:29.500 Shopping for a new car can be a bewildering experience. 02:29.500 --> 02:37.500 Making the wrong choice among look-alike models at breathtaking prices can turn a simple purchase into a lifelong mistake. 02:37.500 --> 02:44.500 But Peter Levy thinks he can take some of the risk out of car buying with the help of a Macintosh and a HyperCard. 02:44.500 --> 02:50.500 Peter has written a program to construct a model car according to specific choices entered by the buyer. 02:50.500 --> 02:57.500 The HyperCard version of the Complete Car Cost Guide was spawned by the original book of the same name. 02:57.500 --> 03:05.500 The guide uses HyperCard visual cues to prompt even a first-time user to enter the kind of information that affects the cost of ownership, 03:05.500 --> 03:12.500 like optional equipment, yearly mileage, and geographical location. 03:12.500 --> 03:20.500 The screen presents notebook pages that flip and turn, and commands are entered by either placing the cursor over a menu bar, 03:20.500 --> 03:27.500 a HyperCard button, or by simply pointing and clicking on the appropriate part of the vehicle. 03:27.500 --> 03:32.500 The Complete Car Cost Guide doesn't promise to turn a shopping chore into a happy experience, 03:32.500 --> 03:40.500 but the HyperCard stacks make it easy to personalize several choices and then compare them side by side. 03:40.500 --> 03:48.500 Two vehicles may cost the same, but differ sharply in the long term because of depreciation and operating costs. 03:48.500 --> 03:53.500 But in spite of individual differences, owning any vehicle is expensive. 03:53.500 --> 04:01.500 The opening screen contains a reminder that the first four years of ownership will cost more than the original price of the car. 04:01.500 --> 04:13.500 ♪♪♪ 04:13.500 --> 04:19.500 Joining us in the studio now is Bill Atkinson. Bill is an Apple Fellow, the creator of HyperCard, also the creator of QuickDraw and MacPaint. 04:19.500 --> 04:24.500 Next to Bill is Dan Winkler. Dan is the senior engineer at Apple working on the HyperCard project. Eric? 04:24.500 --> 04:31.500 Stuart, a HyperCard sounds like a hardware board you'd put into your computer system, but this particular HyperCard comes on four floppy disks. 04:31.500 --> 04:34.500 Would you tell us what HyperCard's all about, Bill? 04:34.500 --> 04:41.500 Well, really simply put, HyperCard is a software erector set. It lets non-programmers put together interactive information. 04:41.500 --> 04:44.500 Show us how you actually do this, Bill. 04:44.500 --> 04:50.500 You use cards that contain graphics and text and buttons. 04:50.500 --> 04:55.500 Here I've got a stack of cards and I can press on this button and it will take me to another card. 04:55.500 --> 04:58.500 Okay, and that button's particular function is get to the next card. 04:58.500 --> 05:00.500 Right. You can have lots of buttons to do different things. 05:00.500 --> 05:06.500 Buttons can do things like dialing the phone and taking you to cards and lots of different things. 05:06.500 --> 05:07.500 Whatever you tell it to do. 05:07.500 --> 05:08.500 Yeah. 05:08.500 --> 05:09.500 Okay. 05:09.500 --> 05:15.500 The cards are grouped together into stacks that you put on a floppy disk and can share with somebody else. 05:15.500 --> 05:20.500 And you can organize it so that any card can jump to any other card. 05:20.500 --> 05:23.500 Is this where you get that notion of hypertext built into the HyperCard system? 05:23.500 --> 05:31.500 Yeah, it's kind of the freedom to organize the information according to how things are associated with each other, 05:31.500 --> 05:33.500 not just according to the next card in the list. 05:33.500 --> 05:36.500 Right, right, okay. 05:36.500 --> 05:39.500 The buttons, as I said, can do lots of things. 05:39.500 --> 05:42.500 Here's one that makes a noise and sounds. 05:42.500 --> 05:45.500 And you can have lots of different kinds of cards. 05:45.500 --> 05:52.500 The standard 3 by 5 card is a little weak metaphor, but you can include things like an expense report 05:52.500 --> 05:55.500 or maybe an appointment book, things like that. 05:55.500 --> 05:58.500 Lots of different kinds of things can be on cards. 05:58.500 --> 06:00.500 Even little interactions. 06:00.500 --> 06:02.500 Here's a little keyboard that you could click on. 06:02.500 --> 06:08.500 And it makes sounds and moves the note accordingly. 06:08.500 --> 06:10.500 So you can do things within a card itself. 06:10.500 --> 06:11.500 A card is just not some information. 06:11.500 --> 06:12.500 Right. 06:12.500 --> 06:16.500 What's really important is that cards contain both information and interaction. 06:16.500 --> 06:17.500 Right. 06:17.500 --> 06:20.500 That's sort of what's new here. 06:20.500 --> 06:24.500 One particular card that we use a lot is the home card, 06:24.500 --> 06:32.500 which serves as sort of a home base of leading out to all the other stacks of cards that I use frequently. 06:32.500 --> 06:38.500 For example, if I touch here on the home card, I can go to my address list. 06:38.500 --> 06:40.500 Here I've got cards that have names and addresses of people. 06:40.500 --> 06:42.500 Can you make up your own stacks of cards then also? 06:42.500 --> 06:43.500 Right. 06:43.500 --> 06:49.500 HyperCard comes with a set of stacks that you can use as they are, but also make your own. 06:49.500 --> 06:53.500 Some people start by making small changes to the stacks, 06:53.500 --> 06:55.500 and then they'll actually make their own fresh ones. 06:55.500 --> 06:58.500 And people have already developed quite a few stacks using HyperCard, haven't they? 06:58.500 --> 06:59.500 Right. 06:59.500 --> 07:02.500 There are several hundred on the public networks. 07:02.500 --> 07:03.500 Okay. 07:03.500 --> 07:04.500 What other things can you do here, Bill? 07:04.500 --> 07:09.500 So I might say, find Jim and quickly get to a card containing that. 07:09.500 --> 07:10.500 Okay. 07:10.500 --> 07:11.500 Wait. 07:11.500 --> 07:12.500 Now that's a real new element you just introduced. 07:12.500 --> 07:17.500 You can actually just write a natural language phrase in here and ask HyperCard to do something for you. 07:17.500 --> 07:18.500 To find Jim. 07:18.500 --> 07:20.500 It'll find it. 07:20.500 --> 07:28.500 I could go to a calendar and see a yearly calendar here or touch on a particular day and go out to a weekly for that. 07:28.500 --> 07:30.500 It opens up the whole thing. 07:30.500 --> 07:32.500 Yeah, and these are different stacks of information. 07:32.500 --> 07:38.500 Here I've got a stack that has my to-do list in it, and I could select something there 07:38.500 --> 07:43.500 and then touch on the address icon, and that button will take me to the address stack 07:43.500 --> 07:46.500 and look up what I had just selected there. 07:46.500 --> 07:49.500 So I can have the information in these stacks tied together in ways that make sense. 07:49.500 --> 07:50.500 Exactly. 07:50.500 --> 07:52.500 It's the following hypertext link in that case, right? 07:52.500 --> 07:54.500 Right, only that was actually computed. 07:54.500 --> 07:56.500 It not only went there but then did a search once it got there. 07:56.500 --> 07:57.500 I see. 07:57.500 --> 07:58.500 Right. 07:58.500 --> 08:00.500 I could have other stacks. 08:00.500 --> 08:02.500 Here, let's go back to the home. 08:02.500 --> 08:05.500 Here's a stack that contains more graphical information. 08:05.500 --> 08:11.500 Here I might say, find a horse and get to a card that has a horse. 08:11.500 --> 08:16.500 Or I could branch around to other cards that had horses just by clicking on them. 08:16.500 --> 08:17.500 There's nothing real magic here. 08:17.500 --> 08:21.500 Okay, so you went find horse, it pulled up all the horse cards, and you now have a horse card stack? 08:21.500 --> 08:22.500 Is that it? 08:22.500 --> 08:23.500 No. 08:22.500 --> 08:23.500 No. 08:23.500 --> 08:26.500 It's just shown me the next card that had the word horse in it. 08:26.500 --> 08:27.500 Okay, that's what I meant. 08:27.500 --> 08:31.500 I could say, show me, here's a button on this wheel. 08:31.500 --> 08:35.500 So if I touch on that, see, it's going to other wheels. 08:35.500 --> 08:41.500 So these buttons or links can be used to express thematic threads running through information. 08:41.500 --> 08:44.500 Here, touch on a hat to get the things that have hats. 08:44.500 --> 08:49.500 And this way you can organize information in multiple ways. 08:49.500 --> 08:54.500 You can also scan through images rather quickly to just see, show me what's there, 08:54.500 --> 08:55.500 even if you don't know what you're looking for. 08:55.500 --> 09:00.500 Dan, you were involved in the HyperTalk part of HyperCard, which is, I guess, the highest level here. 09:00.500 --> 09:02.500 Could you explain that a little bit? 09:02.500 --> 09:05.500 HyperTalk is the language that tells the buttons what to do. 09:05.500 --> 09:08.500 When you look inside a button, you can see its script, which is its brains. 09:08.500 --> 09:13.500 This message box here, where we've been typing commands like find, can do a lot more. 09:13.500 --> 09:16.500 It can do calculations there. 09:16.500 --> 09:18.500 It knows about the value of pi. 09:18.500 --> 09:20.500 It knows all the math functions. 09:20.500 --> 09:23.500 It knows what the date is or what the long date is. 09:23.500 --> 09:25.500 Oops. 09:25.500 --> 09:26.500 The long. 09:26.500 --> 09:29.500 Nobody saw the title. 09:29.500 --> 09:35.500 Or you can give it little commands like go to next card, like that, and it will. 09:35.500 --> 09:42.500 And if you look inside one of these little buttons, you'll see that its brains actually say go to next card. 09:42.500 --> 09:44.500 That's how that button knows how to do it. 09:44.500 --> 09:46.500 So this is script for that button. 09:46.500 --> 09:49.500 This is how a customer or user would actually program the buttons themselves. 09:49.500 --> 09:50.500 That's right. 09:50.500 --> 09:51.500 Let's make a new button. 09:51.500 --> 09:54.500 For example, let's go back to the first card here. 09:54.500 --> 09:57.500 Supposing we wanted this i to tie in some other place. 09:57.500 --> 10:08.500 You could take the button tool, stretch out a button here, and say link that to, say, find an i, and say link it to this card. 10:08.500 --> 10:14.500 That's all it takes to make a new link between that i and that button so that you can go there. 10:14.500 --> 10:20.500 To do that much doesn't require any knowledge of scripting, but once you learn about scripting, you can progress to modifying buttons like that. 10:20.500 --> 10:21.500 For example. 10:21.500 --> 10:25.500 If we look inside this button, we'll see that what link to really did was it wrote a little script for us. 10:25.500 --> 10:27.500 Okay, which is your little program telling the button what to do. 10:27.500 --> 10:28.500 Right. 10:28.500 --> 10:30.500 And now you can go in by hand and modify that. 10:30.500 --> 10:32.500 For example, we could add a visual effect. 10:32.500 --> 10:35.500 We could say visual effect dissolve, for example. 10:35.500 --> 10:39.500 Now that very same button, when you touch on it, will dissolve to that i. 10:39.500 --> 10:44.500 Or you could go a step farther and say, well, I want a sound effect in there, too. 10:44.500 --> 10:47.500 So you could say, well, play me a sound like this. 10:47.500 --> 10:48.500 Like boing. 10:48.500 --> 10:50.500 And maybe make it visual effect dissolve slowly. 10:50.500 --> 10:52.500 I want a slow dissolve. 10:52.500 --> 10:55.500 And now when you touch there, it plays a sound and dissolves slowly. 10:55.500 --> 10:56.500 Right. 10:56.500 --> 11:03.500 So the scripting language lets you customize buttons and make new buttons that weren't already there. 11:03.500 --> 11:04.500 Okay. 11:04.500 --> 11:07.500 This is really a multidimensional erector set that will go on forever. 11:07.500 --> 11:08.500 Right. 11:08.500 --> 11:11.500 It comes with boxes of parts already. 11:11.500 --> 11:16.500 There's lots of art ideas that you can cut and paste if you're slow with the painting tools. 11:16.500 --> 11:18.500 You can copy and paste any of these things. 11:18.500 --> 11:22.500 It comes complete with libraries of buttons and stacks. 11:22.500 --> 11:29.500 For example, if you were going to make a new stack, you might go through a list of templates here and say, I like that one. 11:29.500 --> 11:34.500 A new stack, say we're going to make a stack for incoming messages. 11:34.500 --> 11:36.500 We choose new stack from the file menu. 11:36.500 --> 11:41.500 We name it messages. 11:41.500 --> 11:42.500 That's all it takes to make a new stack. 11:42.500 --> 11:43.500 We've got our own stack. 11:43.500 --> 11:51.500 Now we can type into it call Ted Kaler. 11:51.500 --> 11:55.500 And maybe his number was 3561234 or something like that. 11:55.500 --> 11:57.500 Bill, Dan, we could spend all day here with this toy. 11:57.500 --> 11:58.500 This really looks great. 11:58.500 --> 11:59.500 We're going to have to move along. 11:59.500 --> 12:05.500 We're going to be back in just a minute with another guy who probably knows more about HyperCard than anybody except for these two guys, and that's Danny Goodman. 12:05.500 --> 12:20.500 So stay with us. 12:20.500 --> 12:25.500 Joining us in the studio now is Danny Goodman, author of the Complete HyperCard Handbook called The Bible of HyperCard. 12:25.500 --> 12:28.500 I'm back with us, of course, Bill Atkinson, the developer of HyperCard. 12:28.500 --> 12:32.500 Danny, I'd be interested, what was your first reaction, the first time you looked at HyperCard? 12:32.500 --> 12:41.500 I've been covering the computer industry for several years, and the only three things that ever made me tingle when I saw something new, and HyperCard was definitely one of them. 12:41.500 --> 12:44.500 And it's like my brain expanded because I saw so much opportunity. 12:44.500 --> 12:46.500 You've got to tell me what the other two were, by the way. 12:46.500 --> 12:51.500 Well, they happened to be the Macintosh and output from the first, from Prototype LaserWriter. 12:51.500 --> 12:53.500 Now, you're not a programmer, right? 12:53.500 --> 12:54.500 No, I'm a writer. 12:54.500 --> 12:58.500 But you've already developed some things using HyperCard, and Focal Point is one of them. 12:58.500 --> 13:01.500 And tell us what that is and why you developed it. 13:01.500 --> 13:04.500 Focal Point is stackware, and it's published by Activision. 13:04.500 --> 13:08.500 And it's a collection of stacks that help you manage the things in your business. 13:08.500 --> 13:12.500 I actually wrote it for myself to manage the things in my business, things I don't like to have to worry about. 13:12.500 --> 13:13.500 I don't like to retype. 13:13.500 --> 13:15.500 I don't like to remember things. 13:15.500 --> 13:22.500 So it comes up to something like a daily appointment book, and you can navigate by day, week, month, or year just by clicking there on the arrows. 13:22.500 --> 13:28.500 There is an intelligent to-do list that lets you list items that you need to do. 13:28.500 --> 13:38.500 You can also type in, like, priorities like that and let HyperCard sort them for me so they're in my order. 13:38.500 --> 13:41.500 And when I check off an item as being done, that's fine. 13:41.500 --> 13:46.500 I don't know, Gary or Stuart, I don't always finish everything every day that's on my list. 13:46.500 --> 13:54.500 And when that happens, I just click on this carryover button down here, and all unchecked items get carried over automatically to tomorrow. 13:54.500 --> 13:58.500 And there are other – there's a telephone management system here. 13:58.500 --> 14:08.500 There is a document launcher, which lets you create little mini-finders or group documents from within here the way you like to group them, the way that makes sense to you. 14:08.500 --> 14:12.500 And you go straight out to the application and then come back afterwards. 14:12.500 --> 14:19.500 For more client and vendor, that kind of management, we have a number of buttons on the right side. 14:19.500 --> 14:24.500 And you can look at your client records and also then also on your projects. 14:24.500 --> 14:33.500 And to enter information about your clients, I give you a little pop-up list, and you just click, and the name gets put in there automatically, no retyping. 14:33.500 --> 14:37.500 And the one application here that ties everything together is the deadlines. 14:37.500 --> 14:47.500 And it goes into all your cards, pulls out all your little milestones and follow-ups, organizes them, sorts them chronologically, and gives you at a glance where you stand, what's late, what's today, what's coming up. 14:47.500 --> 14:49.500 You could really use one of those. 14:49.500 --> 14:50.500 Now, let's turn it around, Bill. 14:50.500 --> 14:55.500 How did you react when you saw how a non-programmer, Danny, was actually able to use HyperCard? 14:55.500 --> 15:01.500 Well, it was very rewarding to me to see somebody really building stuff with this. 15:01.500 --> 15:07.500 The software erector set approach was actually working for people putting together interactive information. 15:07.500 --> 15:10.500 Now, Apple is handling HyperCard in a kind of unusual way. 15:10.500 --> 15:12.500 I mean, how do you get HyperCard? 15:12.500 --> 15:15.500 If you buy a Macintosh, it comes free with it. 15:15.500 --> 15:20.500 If you have a Macintosh already, you can buy it for $49. 15:20.500 --> 15:23.500 So you're really trying to get people out there like Danny. 15:23.500 --> 15:31.500 We want it to be there for everybody who makes stacks to be able to share them, and everybody should have the program to be able to access those stacks. 15:31.500 --> 15:40.500 Where do you think this is going to go in terms of, you know, at first it looks like the Mac came out as a sort of a successor to the Apple II and got into games and drawings and things like that. 15:40.500 --> 15:42.500 It's sort of become a business computer now. 15:42.500 --> 15:46.500 Do you see that the HyperCard also is going to be a very powerful business tool? 15:46.500 --> 15:49.500 What sort of applications do you see? 15:49.500 --> 16:02.500 I think what it's going to do is to open up the software architecture of the Mac and let the nature of information on a computer go from text and graphics to text and graphics and interaction. 16:02.500 --> 16:07.500 Sort of the rest of the world is kind of catching up to the graphics part while we're moving on to the interaction part. 16:07.500 --> 16:12.500 And so the programmers are actually going to be coming from some of the vertical markets and so forth themselves rather than being the traditional programmers? 16:12.500 --> 16:21.500 A whole new body of people that have creative ideas but aren't programmers will be able to express their ideas or their expertise in a certain subject area. 16:21.500 --> 16:23.500 We have another example of that right now. 16:23.500 --> 16:32.500 Matter of fact, the ability of HyperCard to organize not only text but sounds and pictures has led to one company taking its mail order catalog and turning that into stackware. 16:32.500 --> 16:35.500 Wendy Woods has a report from Sausalito. 16:35.500 --> 16:41.500 The Whole Earth catalog has been published here in Sausalito since 1969. 16:41.500 --> 16:45.500 It's basically a listing of useful and hard to find products. 16:45.500 --> 16:50.500 And some two and a half million copies of this catalog have been sold worldwide. 16:50.500 --> 16:54.500 But for the first time, people here are opting for a new publishing method. 16:54.500 --> 16:59.500 They're putting the entire catalog on Apple's HyperCard software. 16:59.500 --> 17:03.500 HyperCard, in fact, solved a problem with which they'd been struggling. 17:03.500 --> 17:10.500 How to make locating, tracking, even expanding upon information in the catalog fast and more efficient. 17:10.500 --> 17:16.500 Part of the problem was none of the software that we'd ever looked in terms of accessing a lot of information was ever very visual. 17:16.500 --> 17:20.500 And the Whole Earth catalog is, if nothing else, a very graphic medium. 17:20.500 --> 17:28.500 And HyperCard, because it dealt with graphics, was able to meet those requirements for one thing. 17:28.500 --> 17:31.500 The second was it was easy to build. None of us are hackers. 17:31.500 --> 17:33.500 We don't, we aren't programmers. 17:33.500 --> 17:38.500 And this was something that we could do without having to learn a new language. 17:38.500 --> 17:43.500 Text and pictures were captured with an optical scanner or a video camera. 17:43.500 --> 17:46.500 HyperCard also allowed sound effects to be added. 17:46.500 --> 17:49.500 And to hear them, all you do is click a mouse button. 17:49.500 --> 17:56.500 This is considered the largest HyperCard project ever undertaken. 17:56.500 --> 17:59.500 Its output the equivalent of more than 80 diskettes. 17:59.500 --> 18:05.500 This project is expected to reach final form as a CD-ROM or optical disk. 18:05.500 --> 18:09.500 In Sausalito, California, for the Computer Chronicles, I'm Wendy Woods. 18:09.500 --> 18:23.500 ♪♪ 18:23.500 --> 18:25.500 Joining us now in the studio is Robert Stein. 18:25.500 --> 18:29.500 He's with the Voyager Company in Los Angeles, and they're working with HyperCard and the LaserDisc, aren't you? 18:29.500 --> 18:34.500 Yeah, Stuart, as we were talking about earlier, the HyperCard concept really is based on hypertext and hypermedia. 18:34.500 --> 18:37.500 It involves text, graphics, sound, video, and so forth. 18:37.500 --> 18:42.500 And Robert's got a product here that he's working with that involves a full-size video disc. 18:42.500 --> 18:44.500 As most of the viewers know, this is a rather old technology. 18:44.500 --> 18:49.500 It involves about 30 minutes of rolling video or 54,000 still frames. 18:49.500 --> 18:51.500 Robert, can you tell us how you've used this? 18:51.500 --> 18:53.500 Sure. We've taken the National Gallery of Art video disc, 18:53.500 --> 18:58.500 which has on it photographs of the entire standing collection of the National Gallery of Art, 18:58.500 --> 19:00.500 everything that's on display there. 19:00.500 --> 19:03.500 And we've tried to make it possible for the user to look at these pictures in different ways. 19:03.500 --> 19:08.500 For example, you can press on a chronological, and you'll get an index that lets you press on 16th, for example, 19:08.500 --> 19:10.500 and see all the works from the 16th century. 19:10.500 --> 19:14.500 Or I can go in by nationality, in which case I can press on this, 19:14.500 --> 19:18.500 and it'll show me all the Russian works or French works or Belgian works. 19:18.500 --> 19:24.500 Or I can go in by style or period, in which case, let's say, Cubism gives me a definition of the Cubist style, 19:24.500 --> 19:28.500 and these are representative works that I can click on and go to see them. 19:28.500 --> 19:33.500 Or I also have a complete artist index, and I can press on this, and you can see... 19:33.500 --> 19:37.500 You can essentially create your own exhibits or rooms in the museum, is what you're doing. 19:37.500 --> 19:41.500 Exactly. Here I can press on Manet, and it'll take me to the gallery, 19:41.500 --> 19:45.500 and it will find the first Manet chronologically in the gallery for me. 19:45.500 --> 19:51.500 And it comes up on the screen, gives me information about this particular painting, 19:51.500 --> 19:53.500 and the painting is on the screen. 19:53.500 --> 19:56.500 Let's say I'm interested in Manet, I can ask for more of this artist, 19:56.500 --> 20:00.500 in which case, press on that button, and it will find me the next painting by Manet. 20:00.500 --> 20:06.500 Or let's say I'm interested in this style of Impressionist painters. 20:06.500 --> 20:13.500 I can ask for more Impressionist painters, it'll find Manet, do it again, it'll find Renoir for me. 20:13.500 --> 20:15.500 Sometimes a magnifying glass comes up on the screen, 20:15.500 --> 20:19.500 and this means that I have a detail on the video disc of this particular painting. 20:19.500 --> 20:22.500 And sometimes a motion picture projector comes up, 20:22.500 --> 20:26.500 and this tells me I have a motion picture sequence on the video disc about this particular painting. 20:26.500 --> 20:29.500 Renoir's little girl with a watering can is a scene from every... 20:29.500 --> 20:31.500 I can control that from here. 20:31.500 --> 20:34.500 ...everyday life. You see... 20:34.500 --> 20:39.500 And also this icon up here, it's our marginalia icon, lets me put a note in here. 20:39.500 --> 20:44.500 I can say, for example, reminds me of my daughter, Katie, 20:44.500 --> 20:48.500 and the note card will go away, and this will change from empty to full. 20:48.500 --> 20:51.500 And then a year from now, I don't have to remember the name of this painting or who did it. 20:51.500 --> 20:57.500 I can simply just ask it to find Katie, 20:57.500 --> 21:00.500 and with a little bit of luck, it'll go and find that painting for me. 21:00.500 --> 21:04.500 So I can really personalize a very large-scale database. 21:04.500 --> 21:09.500 This is our serendipity button, it takes me randomly somewhere in the gallery, you don't know quite where. 21:09.500 --> 21:13.500 The searching is very powerful, we have keywords for everything in here. 21:13.500 --> 21:18.500 So for example, I can ask for all Impressionist landscapes with boats, 21:18.500 --> 21:23.500 and the system will find it for me, and I can press again, it'll find another one, 21:23.500 --> 21:25.500 and then another. 21:25.500 --> 21:27.500 And let's suppose I find this to be an interesting subject, 21:27.500 --> 21:29.500 and I wonder how it was treated during a different period. 21:29.500 --> 21:36.500 So I'll change the word Impressionist to the word Romantic, 21:36.500 --> 21:39.500 and it will find Romantic landscapes with boats. 21:39.500 --> 21:42.500 And then using one of HyperCard's most important features, 21:42.500 --> 21:44.500 it'll remember the last 42 things that I've looked at, 21:44.500 --> 21:48.500 so I can press Retrace, and it'll go back and find the last picture, 21:48.500 --> 21:51.500 and the last picture, and I can retrace in both directions. 21:51.500 --> 21:54.500 So I always pretty much have everything available to me all the time. 21:54.500 --> 21:57.500 What do you think HyperCard means to interactive video? 21:57.500 --> 22:00.500 I've been waiting around for interactive video for a number of years. 22:00.500 --> 22:01.500 I've been in this business for seven years, 22:01.500 --> 22:05.500 and we've been concentrating on what they call Level 1 discs that don't have a computer, 22:05.500 --> 22:07.500 because we didn't think it was a computer powerful enough. 22:07.500 --> 22:12.500 I think that HyperCard and Macintosh together mean this is your wand of interactive video. 22:12.500 --> 22:15.500 Robert, thank you very much. That's an impressive use of HyperCard. 22:15.500 --> 22:17.500 That's it for HyperCard. We hope you enjoyed it. 22:17.500 --> 22:20.500 Hope you'll see us again next week on the Computer Chronicles. 22:20.500 --> 22:33.500 ♪♪ 22:33.500 --> 22:36.500 In the random access file this week, Comdex dominates the news. 22:36.500 --> 22:40.500 Here at the Las Vegas Convention Center, it was the 10th annual Fall Comdex, 22:40.500 --> 22:44.500 and the biggest one ever, 100,000 attendees, more than 1,700 exhibitors. 22:44.500 --> 22:49.500 On the hardware side, the major issue was still the battle over bus architecture between ESA and MCA, 22:49.500 --> 22:52.500 and there was no clear consensus as to who the winner would be. 22:52.500 --> 22:58.500 At a keynote session, Compaq's Rod Canyon said the main issue was compatibility with the installed base of PCs. 22:58.500 --> 23:03.500 But IBM's Terry Lautenbach said the old AT bus had simply run out of gas 23:03.500 --> 23:05.500 and could not support advanced applications. 23:05.500 --> 23:09.500 Analyst Tim Baharan said he thought microchannel architecture would prevail in the end, 23:09.500 --> 23:11.500 but only after a difficult struggle. 23:11.500 --> 23:15.500 Color printers were hot now that color has taken over the monitor business. 23:15.500 --> 23:20.500 With over half the CRTs in use being color displays, the next logical step is color printers. 23:20.500 --> 23:23.500 The increased use of desktop publishing and desktop presentations 23:23.500 --> 23:28.500 also appears to be driving a new interest in transferring the color on the screen to color print. 23:28.500 --> 23:31.500 Optical storage was warm, though not quite hot. 23:31.500 --> 23:35.500 Sony was demonstrating and taking orders for its new erasable optical disk drives. 23:35.500 --> 23:41.500 Microsoft was pushing their CD-ROM products, and Intel, which recently acquired digital video interactive technology, 23:41.500 --> 23:45.500 was showing prototypes of new DVI optical disk products. 23:45.500 --> 23:48.500 Apple returned to Comdex with a major push for the Macintosh II, 23:48.500 --> 23:54.500 and Commodore and Atari were here, very visible, each pushing graphics, music, animation, and desktop video. 23:54.500 --> 23:57.500 On the software side, the buzzword was groupware. 23:57.500 --> 23:59.500 Groupware is more than just network software. 23:59.500 --> 24:04.500 It's software which primarily supports groups and group work activities rather than individuals. 24:04.500 --> 24:07.500 Analyst Amy Wall, who chaired the Comdex session on groupware, 24:07.500 --> 24:13.500 said the hot topic is procedural processing software that can track the movement of paper through an organization. 24:13.500 --> 24:19.500 Other hot software topics were PIMs, personal information managers, with Lotus reporting good sales of Agenda. 24:19.500 --> 24:23.500 Many marketers' eyes at this Comdex were focused more on Europe than on the United States. 24:23.500 --> 24:28.500 In 1992, Europe was scheduled to unify and move to one common set of computer standards. 24:28.500 --> 24:32.500 That means a new unified Europe would represent a larger market than the United States. 24:32.500 --> 24:36.500 Indeed, the standards issue may be simpler there than here at home. 24:36.500 --> 24:38.500 IBM took some heat from analysts at Comdex. 24:38.500 --> 24:45.500 One characterized OS II as yesterday's software tomorrow, saying Unix can do everything OS II can and more. 24:45.500 --> 24:48.500 But the issue was at what price and ease of use. 24:48.500 --> 24:53.500 IBM itself put on quite a show, saying OS II and PS II were doing very well, thank you. 24:53.500 --> 24:57.500 And Businessland exec Enzo Teresi said IBM's MCA computers 24:57.500 --> 25:02.500 now make up more than 50 percent of its business in 286 and 386 machines. 25:02.500 --> 25:09.500 Byte magazine ran a survey on operating systems, asking Comdex attendees which operating system would dominate in the 1990s. 25:09.500 --> 25:11.500 The winner was Extended DOS. 25:11.500 --> 25:13.500 In second place was Standard DOS. 25:13.500 --> 25:18.500 OS II came in third, followed by Graphic Interface Unix, Standard Command Line Unix, 25:18.500 --> 25:21.500 and last among the Comdex voters was the Macintosh operating system. 25:21.500 --> 25:25.500 Finally, Zerco unveiled its new laptop car seat. 25:25.500 --> 25:30.500 It's a laptop platform that fits onto the passenger seat of your car, turning it into a computer workstation. 25:30.500 --> 25:33.500 Get stuck at a red light? Just turn around and start computing. 25:33.500 --> 25:36.500 That's it for this week's Chronicles. We'll see you next time. 25:36.500 --> 25:40.500 The Computer Chronicles is made possible in part by McGraw-Hill, 25:40.500 --> 25:46.500 publishers of Byte magazine, and Bix, the Byte Information Exchange. 25:46.500 --> 25:51.500 In print and online, Byte and Bix serve computer professionals worldwide 25:51.500 --> 25:56.500 with detailed information on new hardware, software, and technologies. 25:56.500 --> 26:02.500 For a transcript of this week's Computer Chronicles, send $4 to PTV Publications, 26:02.500 --> 26:08.500 Post Office Box 701, Kent, Ohio, 44240. 26:08.500 --> 26:23.500 Please indicate program date. 26:38.500 --> 26:43.500 © 2013 PTV Publications All rights reserved. 26:43.500 --> 27:08.500 PTVProductions.com