Bill Atkinson, Macintosh Pioneer and Inventor of Hypercard, Dies at 74

My first meeting Bill Atkinson was unforgettable. It was in November 1983, and Reporting for Rolling StoneI got access to the Macintos Computer Creating team, scheduled to launch early next year. Referring to Mac’s software’s two original authors Atkinson and Andy Hartzfeld, everyone kept telling me, “Wait until you meet Bill and Andy”. Here’s what I wrote about in the face of my book, Great to Insane:

I first met Bill Atkinson. A tall colleague of shameless hair, a five -fifth villa, mustache and burning blue eyes, he got the irrational intensity of his turn as an involuntary Vietnam veterinarian in the Bruce Dorn. Like everyone else in the room, he wore jeans and a T-shirt. “Do you want to see a bug?” He asked me. He pulled me into his cube and pointed to his Macintos. The screen was incredibly drawing an insect that filled the screen. It was beautiful, something you would see in a research lab at an expensive workstation but not on a personal computer. Atkinson laughed at his jokes, then became very serious, talking to a sharp-Whipper that he weights in his words. “The barrier between words and pictures is broken,” he said. “The world of art has become a sacred club now. Like the fine China. Now it’s for everyday use.”

Atkinson was okay. His contributions to McIntos criticized the breakthrough that he used to whisper to me at the Apple office known as Bandley 3 that day. A few years later, he made a single huge contribution to a program called Hypercard, which pressed the World Wide Web. Through all this, he kept his strength and Joey de Vivray and became inspired for all those who change the world through the code. On June 5, 2025, he died after a long illness. He is 74 years.

Atkinson did not plan to be pioneer in private computing. As a graduate student, he studied computer science and neurobology at the University of Washington. But when he faced an Apple II in 1977, he fell in love and went to work for the company made a year later. He was employees number 7. In 1979, he was among the small group that Steve Jobs took the Jerx Park Research Lab and was blown away by the graphic computer interface he saw there. Working on Apple’s Lisa project, it became his job to translate this future technology to the consumer. In the process, he invented many of the Conventions still continued on today’s computers like menu bars. Atkinson Quikdro also created a groundbreaking technology to draw objects efficiently on a screen. One of these objects is the “round-rect”-a box with a gallowing corners that will become part of everyone’s computing experience. Atkinson The concept was resisted Until Jobs wander around the block and see all traffic marks and other objects with round corners.

When Jobs Park took the other Apple project, inspired by McIntos, he gave Atkinson, whose work already affected the product. Heartzfeld, who was in charge of the Mac interface, once explained Lisa’s features for Mac: “Bill Atkinson did everything I did, and nothing else.” He Atkinson, who was separated in a high price tag of Lisa, adopted the idea of ​​a more affordable version and began to write McPoint, which would strengthen the users to create art on Mac’s bit-map screen.

After Mac turned on, the team began to unveil. Atkinson’s Apple Fellow was the title, which gave him the freedom to follow emotional projects. He began to work on something that he called the magic slate-a high-resolution screened device that could be controlled by a pound weight and a stylus and can be controlled by swipes on a touch screen. Basically, he was designing the iPad 25 years ago. However, the technology was not ready to create something so small and powerful at affordable prices (Atkinson hoped it would be so expensive that you could lose six in a year and would not be upset.) “I wanted a magic slate so bad that I could taste it,” he once told me.