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| Company type | Subsidiary |
|---|---|
| Industry | Multimedia software |
| Founded | 1991 |
| Defunct | 1996 |
| Headquarters | Mountain View, California , United States |
| Products |
|
| Parent | Apple Computer and IBM |
Kaleida Labs, Inc., formed in 1991 to produce the multimedia cross-platform Kaleida Media Player and the object oriented scripting language ScriptX that was used to program its behavior. The system was aimed at the production of interactive CD ROM titles, an area of major effort in the early 1990s. When the system was delivered in 1994, it had relatively high system requirements and memory footprint, and lacked a native PowerPC version on the Mac platform. Around the same time, rapid changes in the market, especially the expansion of the World Wide Web and the Java programming language, pushed the interactive CD market into a niche role. The Kaleida platform failed to gain significant traction and the company was closed in 1996.
Kaleida was one of three joint ventures of the 1990s between Apple and IBM, including the Taligent operating system and the AIM alliance with Motorola for the PowerPC platform. ScriptX was one of several similar software platforms that started at Apple in that timeframe. The SK8 system was also aimed at the multimedia market, although it evolved from what was originally a major upgrade to HyperCard. The Dylan programming language was a more full-featured platform, aimed at general programming not just multimedia. Development of all of these software projects ended at approximately the same time.