HyperCard was developed by Bill Atkinson. Work began in 1985, either after Jobs left or shortly before his departure. It was released in 1987 at the MacWorld Expo.
Atkinson wanted the software to be given away for free with Mac OS, and got Apple to agree in exchange for ownership of the code. But after it was spun-off to Claris, they changed their minds and started charging money for it (giving away only a player for free). This ticked off quite a lot of the Mac community.
Jobs returned to Apple in 1997 and halted HyperCard development in 1998. The reasons why will vary depending on who is telling the story, but according to an interview with Atkinson (cited by the Wikipedia link, below), it was because Atkinson didn’t follow him to NeXT, and because the software “had Sculley’s stink all over it”.
In other words, I think you should give all of the HyperCard credit to Atkinson, not to Jobs and not to Apple.
One of the first things Jobs did very early in his reappearance at Apple was to create FileMaker software that made it very, very easy to plan and build relational databases and applications that would eventually end up running on both Macs and Windows. And it continues to be the backbone of Apple’s Claris spinoff.
And there’s FileMaker WebDirect, “available in FileMaker Cloud and FileMaker Server, is innovative web technology that instantly runs FileMaker apps directly in a web browser - no web programming required.”
FileMaker began life as an MS-DOS database package called Nutshell (by Nashoba Systems) in the early 80’s, and was distributed with PCs made by Leading Edge.
It was ported to the Mac, with a GUI interface in 1985, and the result was sold as FileMaker. It was renamed FileMaker Plus in 1986, to align with the newly-released Macintosh Plus computer.
Claris (a subsidiary of Apple) purchased FileMaker shortly after version 4 was released. It was renamed to FileMaker II to align with the naming convention used by other Claris products. In 1990, it was re-released as FileMaker Pro, with a Windows release in 1992.
In 1995, FileMaker ended up as the only really successful Claris product. In 1998, the other Claris products were moved back in-house to Apple, and Claris was renamed to FileMaker, Inc. The company was renamed back to Claris International in 2020.
At no point in this history is there any mention of Jobs. I don’t think he had much of anything to do with it, aside possibly from choosing to not kill it.
Founded back in 1986, Claris offered popular Apple software classics like MacPaint, MacWrite, and FileMaker. As its other products began to fall to the wayside, Steve Jobs announced in 1998 that the Apple-owned company was rebranding itself as simply “FileMaker Inc.” to emphasize its main product of the same name.
The Claris rebrand is not only an homage to our roots, but Claris – a name meaning clarity, illumination – best represents our technology today and in the future.
You’re believing marketing press releases as if they are historical documents.
In 1998, FileMaker was a 13 year old product. It was developed independently from Apple and was acquired at a time when Steve wasn’t at Apple.
The fact that Apple rebranded Claris has more do with the fact that the Claris brand wasn’t being used on any other products. Just a marketing stunt that had nothing at all to do with the development or success of the product.
In the late 1990s I participated in the Australian Open Access User Group. DOS-based Open Access was a complete office suite with SQL relational database with network control , high level programming language, spreadsheet with charts, word processor, contacts list and intra-office email. Not bad for a product released soon after DOS PCs were born.
Thankfully it has nothing to do with Microsoft Access.
We held regular user-group meetings in Sydney. At one meeting we invited the distributors of Claris Works (I think it was called that at the time) to demonstrate their product. Our group was very disappointed that it lacked the many features we had enjoyed with Open Access.
Believe it or not I still use Open Access for some business management tasks (I wrote a complex “app” in 1988j - it runs well under Sonoma using DOSBox.
I also use Filemaker for many client projects - it has certainly improved over the years (compared with Claris in the 1990s) but still lacks the brilliant SQL programming language of Open Access.
Bill Atkinson also developed QuickDraw and MacPaint. He is also a talented photographer. He developed the very popular app called Photocard for the iPhone/iPad from which you could order a postcard and have it printed and posted, anywhere in the world (!), for a small fee. I ordered two large cards of his mineral photos just before he removed the app as he no longer had the energy and capacity to print. That was sad but I also managed to buy a copy of his wonderful photography of rocks and minerals book used from eBay. This is a lovely film about Hypercard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejdgTVj7ZG8