A more reasonable interpretation is that he is referring to the concept of the software and the most current successors of it, regardless if it is a direct descendent, or another company's who built their code from the ground up, but still utilizes all the fundamental principles originally first introduced in MacPaint.

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Fair enough if that's what he meant, but it's not what he said. :

I actually still use HyperCard sometimes too. ;D It's the only thing I can program in, and heck, it does nearly everything I need anyway. I actually wouldn't have objected if Knuth had said it was the best programme ever, since there's not much else that does what it does.