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

My first meeting Bill was unforgettable with Atkinson. It was November 1983 and Report for Rolling StoneOf course, I got access to the Macintosh computer setup team scheduled for early next year. Everyone says “wait until you are familiar with Bill and Andy,” by referring to Atkinson and Andy Hertzfeld, two main writers of the Mac program. This is what I wrote about the match in my book, Pretty big:

I first met Bill Atkinson. The tall man, a tall man, which flames his hair, a pancho villa mustache and blue eyes, had an inefficiency intensity in one of the shifts such as Bruce Dern without an irrational Vietnamese veti. Like everyone in the room, wore jeans and shirts. “Do you want to see an error?” Asked me. He pulled me into cubes and pointed to Macintosh. Filling the screen was an incredibly detailed drawing of an insect. It was beautiful, in a research laboratory at an expensive workstation, but not on the individual computer. Atkinson laughed in jokes, then he was very serious, he spoke with a dear whisper who gave his words a respected weight. “The barrier between words and pictures was broken,” he said. “So far the world of art was a holy club. Like beautiful Chinese. Now for daily use.”

Atkinson was right. The contributions to Macintosh, who were brought to me in the Apple office known as Bandley 3. A few years later, he wanted to make a giant contribution with a program called HyperCard, which performed the web in the world. It was all protected by energy and Joie de Vivre and inspired them to change the world through the code. He died on June 5, 2025 after a long illness. Was 74 years old.

Atkinson did not plan to be a pioneer in the individual billing field. As a postgraduate, he studied computer science and neuroobiology at the University of Washington. In 1977, when I met with an Apple II, he fell in love and went to work for the company that built a year later. It was a worker number 51. In 1979, he is among the small group that was conducted by Steve Jobs Herox’s Perc to the Perc Research Laboratory and exploded with the graphic computer interface. The consumer in Apple’s Lisa project was to translate this futuristic technology. During this period, in today’s computers, many conventions that continue on today’s computers. Atkinson also created a technology that set up the foundation for effectively draw the items on the screen. One of these objects was the “round flatness” of the round corners, which will become part of the computing experience of everyone. Atkinson had resisted the idea He works to walk around the block and see other objects with all road signs and rounded corners.

The other Apple project inspired by the PARC technology, when inspired by Macintosh, it is a boomed from Atkinson who already affects the product. Hertzfeld, who is responsible for the Mac interface, once described me Lisa’s features: “Bill Atkinson, I took and did not do anything else.” Said. Atkinson, who became neutralized on the high price label of Lisa, hugs the idea of ​​a more affordable version, and Macpaint began to write a program that allows users to create art on the map screen.

After the start of Mac, the team began to open. Atkinson had the name of an apple companion that freedom to him to carry out his passion projects. It began to work on something called a magic slate and can be managed by a high resolution that draws under a pound and slide on a stylus and touch screen. Basically, he designed the iPad for 25 years. However, technology was not ready to create anything in a mini-development and a strong price (Atkinson hoped it would be as cheap as you could lose six.) “I wanted a magic slate.”