My first assembly with Invoice Atkinson was unforgettable. It was November 1983, and reporting for Rolling Stone, I had gained entry to the workforce constructing the Macintosh laptop, scheduled to launch early the subsequent 12 months. Everybody stored telling me, “Wait until you meet Invoice and Andy,” referring to Atkinson and Andy Hertzfeld, two key writers of the Mac’s software program. Right here’s what I wrote concerning the encounter in my e book, Insanely Great:
I met Invoice Atkinson first. A tall fellow with unruly hair, a Pancho Villa moustache, and blazing blue eyes, he had the unnerving depth of Bruce Dern in certainly one of his turns as an unhinged Vietnam vet. Like everybody else within the room, he wore denims and a T-shirt. “Do you need to see a bug?” he requested me. He pulled me into his cubicle and pointed to his Macintosh. Filling the display screen was an extremely detailed drawing of an insect. It was stunning, one thing you would possibly see on an costly workstation in a analysis lab, however not on a private laptop. Atkinson laughed at his joke, then received very critical, speaking in an intense near-whisper that gave his phrases a reverential weight. “The barrier between phrases and photos is damaged,” he stated. “Till now the world of artwork has been a sacred membership. Like fantastic china. Now it’s for every day use.”
Atkinson was proper. His contributions to the Macintosh had been vital to that breakthrough he’d whispered to me on the Apple workplace referred to as Bandley 3 that day. A couple of years later, he would singlehandedly make one other big contribution with a program referred to as Hypercard, which presaged the World Huge Internet. By way of all of it, he retained his power and joie de vivre, and have become an inspiration for all who would change the world by means of code. On June 5, 2025, he died after a protracted sickness. He was 74.
Atkinson hadn’t deliberate on changing into a pioneer in private computing. As a graduate scholar, he studied laptop science and neurobiology on the College of Washington. However when he encountered an Apple II in 1977, he fell in love, and went to work for the corporate that constructed it a 12 months later. He was worker quantity 51. In 1979, he was among the many small group that Steve Jobs led to the Xerox PARC analysis lab and was blown away by the graphic laptop interface he noticed there. It turned his job to translate that futuristic expertise to the patron, engaged on Apple’s Lisa undertaking. Within the course of, he invented most of the conventions that also persist on right now’s computer systems, like menu bars. Atkinson additionally created QuickDraw, a groundbreaking expertise to effectively draw objects on a display screen. A type of objects was the “Spherical-Rect”—a field with rounded corners that might change into a part of everybody’s computing expertise. Atkinson had resisted the idea till Jobs made him stroll across the block and see all of the visitors indicators and different objects with rounded corners.
When Jobs took over the opposite Apple undertaking impressed by PARC expertise, the Macintosh, he poached Atkinson, whose work had already influenced that product. Hertzfeld, who was answerable for the Mac interface, as soon as defined to me the Lisa options he’d appropriated for the Mac: “Something Invoice Atkinson did, I took, and nothing else.” he stated. Atkinson, who had change into disenchanted on the Lisa’s excessive price ticket, embraced the thought of a extra reasonably priced model, and started writing MacPaint, this system that might empower customers to create artwork on the Mac’s bit-mapped display screen.
After the Mac launched, the workforce started to unravel. Atkinson had the title of Apple Fellow, which gave him the liberty to pursue ardour tasks. He started work on one thing he referred to as Magic Slate—a tool with a high-resolution display screen that weighed beneath a pound and may very well be managed by a stylus and swipes on a contact display screen. Mainly, he was designing the iPad 25 years early. However the expertise wasn’t able to create one thing so miniaturized and highly effective at an reasonably priced value (Atkinson hoped it could be so cheap you could possibly afford to lose six in a 12 months and never be bothered.) “I needed Magic Slate so unhealthy I might style it,” he as soon as advised me.
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