Bill Atkinson, McCaintech Pioneer and Hypercard inventor, dies in 74

My first meeting With Bill Atkinson was unforgettable. November 1983, and Reporting Rolling StoneI managed to reach the team to build a Macintosh computer, which is scheduled to be launched early next year. Everyone kept telling me, “Wait until Bill and Andy”, referring to Atkinson and Andy Herzfield, are two major books of Mac. This is what I wrote about the meeting in my book, Great with madness:

I met Bill Atkinson first. A long colleague with wild hair, a drinker Villa Pancho, and a burning blue eyes, had a disturbing intensity from Bruce Dern in one of his courses as a Vietnam veterinarian. Like anyone else in the room, he was wearing jeans and a shirt. “Do you want to see a mistake?” He asked me. He pulled me into a cabin and pointed to Macintosh. Filling the screen was an incredibly detailed drawing of the insect. It was beautiful, something you might see on an expensive workstation in the research laboratory, but not on a personal computer. Atkinson laughed at his banter, then he became very serious, as he was speaking in a semi -intense place that gave his words out of weight. He said: “The barrier between words and pictures is broken.” “Until now, the art world has been a sacred club. Like beautiful China. Now for daily use.”

Atkinson was right. His contributions to Macintosh were decisive to this achievement that whispered to me in the Apple office known as Bandley 3 that day. A few years later, he would have made another giant contribution with a program called Hypercard, which has achieved the global web network. Through all of this, he kept his card and Joy de Vivar, and became an inspiration for all who will change the world through the code. On June 5, 2025, he died after a long illness. It was 74.

Atkinson did not plan to become a pioneer in personal computing. As a graduate student, he studied computer science and neuroscience at Washington University. But when Apple II faced in 1977, he fell in love, and went to work for the company he built a year later. He was an employee No. 51. In 1979, he was among the small group that Steve Jobs led to the Xerox PARC research laboratory and was detonated by the graphic computer interface he saw there. His job has become translating that future technology into the consumer, and working on the Apple Lisa project. In this process, he invented many agreements that are still ongoing on computers today, such as menu bars. Atkinson also invented Quickdraw, a leading technique for drawing on the screen efficiently. One of these things was the “circular tour”-a round-corner box that would become part of the computing experience for everyone. Atkinson Resist Even making jobs wandering in the mass and see all the signs of traffic and other things with circular corners.

When Jobs seized the other Apple project inspired by PARC and Macintosh technology, he stole Atkinson, whose work has already affected this product. Hertzfield, who was responsible for the Mac interface, once explained to me the features of Lisa that he had allocated for Mac: “Anything that Bill Atkinson did, took, and nothing else.” He said. Atkinson, who became forbidden to the high price of Lisa, converted to the idea of ​​a more affordable version, and began writing Macpaint, the program that enables users to create art on the Mac set that was set.

After the launch of Mac, the team began to collapse. Atkinson won the title of Apple colleague, who gave him the freedom to follow up emotional projects. Work began on something called Magic Slate- a high-resolution screen weighted under a pound and can be controlled by a pen and stroke on a touch screen. Basically, he was designing iPad 25 years ago. But the technology was not ready to create something very mini and strong at a reasonable price (Atkinson expressed that it was very inexpensive, you may be able to lose six a year and not disturb it).