My first meeting He was unforgettable with Bill Atkinson. It was November 1983 and Reporting for Rolling StoneI gained access to the Macintosh computer team, which is to be launched at the beginning of the following year. Everyone told me: “Drive until you meet Bill and Andy,” referring to Atkinson and Andy Hertzfeld, two key Mac software writers. Here’s what I wrote about the meeting in my book, Incredibly great:
First I met Bill Atkinson. A lofty guy with unruly hair, a mustache of Villa Pancho and burning blue eyes, he had the disturbing intensity of Bruce Dern in one of his turn as an undeniable veterinarian from Vietnam. Like everyone else in the room, he wore jeans and a T -shirt. “Do you want to see a mistake?” He asked me. He pulled me into the cabin and pointed to his Macintosh. The screen filling was an extremely detailed insect drawing. It was lovely, something that can be seen at an steep workstation in a research laboratory, but not on a personal computer. Atkinson laughed at his joke, and then very solemn, talking in an intense close Whisper, who gave his words respect. “The barrier between words and photos is broken,” he said. “Not only the world of art was a holy club. Like good China. Now it is for everyday use.
Atkinson was right. His contribution to Macintosh was a crucial for this breakthrough, which whispered to me in the Apple office, known as Bandley 3 that day. A few years later, he himself put another gigantic contribution to the program called Hypercard, which saved the global network. Through all this, he kept his energy and Joie de Vivre and became an inspiration for everyone who would change the world through the code. On June 5, 2025, he died after a long illness. He was 74 years old.
Atkinson did not plan to become a pioneer in the field of personal computers. As a PhD student, he studied computer science and neurobiology at the University of Washington. But when he met Apple II in 1977, he fell in love and started working for the company that built it a year later. He was an employee number 51. In 1979 he was one of the small group that Steve Jobs led to the Xerox Parc research laboratory and was blown up by the graphic computer interface that he saw there. His task was to translate this futuristic technology to the consumer, working on the Lisa Apple project. During this process, he invented many conventions that still persist on today’s computers, such as menu stripes. Atkinson also created Quickdraw, a breakthrough technology to effectively draw objects on the screen. One of these items was a “rect-recct” box with rounded corners that would become part of all calculations. Atkinson He resisted this idea Until Jobs forced him to walk around the block and see all traffic signs and other objects with rounded corners.
When Jobs took over the second Apple project inspired by Parc, Macintosh technology, was poached by Atkinson, whose work already had an impact on this product. Hertzfeld, who was responsible for the MAC interface, once explained to me that the fox features he intended for Mac: “Bill Atkinson would be achieved, I took and nothing more.” He said. Atkinson, who was disappointed at the high price of Lisa, adopted the idea of a more affordable price and began to write Macpaint, a program that would allow users to create art on the MAC bit.
After starting the Mac, the team began to develop. Atkinson had the title of Apple Fellow, which gave him the freedom to implement passion projects. He started working on what Magic Slate called the high-resolution screen, which weighed under the pound and can be controlled by style and moves on the touch screen. He basically designed the iPad 25 years earlier. But the technology was not ready to create something so miniaturized and powerful at an inexpensive price (Atkinson would be so much that it became six years and was not ready that she would not be six years senior and not be this year and not this year and not to be.