Bill Atkinson, an influential computer programmer whose graphics software was key to making the Macintosh easy to use and fun, has died of pancreatic cancer at his home in Portola Valley in the San Francisco Bay Area. He was 74.
He programmed QuickDraw, a groundbreaking technology to draw objects on a screen, which formed a foundational software layer in both the Lisa and Macintosh computers.
Atkinson was recruited to Apple by the late Jef Raskin (he started the team that created the Macintosh computer) through the University of Washington, where he was studying neurobiology and writing programs to render 3D imagery. Apple co-founder Steve Jobs reeled him in as employee number 51.
“’Come to Apple and help to invent the future.’ (Jobs said). I was working at Apple two weeks later,” Atkinson said in 2013.
He is credited with inventing many of the elements that continue to persist on modern computers, like the menu bar. He will also be remembered for the “double-click” gesture, which allows users to open files, folders and applications.
Among his other notable creations was MacPaint, the programme that would allow users to create art on the Mac’s bit-mapped screen. It became a standard for computer illustration software for years to come. There were innovative tools like the spray-paint effect and the “lasso” to select and move images. The software paved the way for professional-quality computer illustration tools, including Adobe’s Illustrator and Aldus’s SuperPaint and FreeHand.
Following MacPaint, he came up with the HyperCard software in 1987, a forerunner of the World Wide Web. “Inspired by a mind-expanding LSD journey in 1985, I designed the HyperCard authoring system that enabled non-programmers to make their own interactive media,” Atkinson wrote years ago.
In 1985, Jobs had to leave Apple after a power struggle with the company’s board and its then CEO, John Sculley. He wanted Atkinson to join him at NeXT, but the programmer stayed on to finish HyperCard, which was published in 1987, six years before Mosaic, the first popular Web browser.
Apple CEO Tim Cook posted on X: “He was a true visionary whose creativity, heart, and groundbreaking work on the Mac will forever inspire us.”