I said it in another comment, but just wanted to reinforce this. The things people -- professionals and amateurs alike -- did with Hypercard were amazing.
I think Hypercard faltered because of the confluence of a number of things, primarily:
(a) Apple's years in the "desert" and Jobs' return, losing focus and then regaining it in a laser-like cut-all-that-is-not-essential reinvention, and
(b) the advent of the web; cgi; php; mysql, etc. -- soon devoting effort to a Hypercard stack would be isolating oneself on a small and shrinking (relatively speaking) island
Someone needs to leak one of the early development versions of Hypercard 3, which was supposed to be some kind of heavy integration into the newest version of Quicktime
I think Hypercard faltered because of the confluence of a number of things, primarily:
(a) Apple's years in the "desert" and Jobs' return, losing focus and then regaining it in a laser-like cut-all-that-is-not-essential reinvention, and
(b) the advent of the web; cgi; php; mysql, etc. -- soon devoting effort to a Hypercard stack would be isolating oneself on a small and shrinking (relatively speaking) island