Latest news with #MacPaint
The Verge
18 hours ago
- The Verge
Posted Jun 8, 2025 at 4:31 PM EDT 0 Comments
Legendary Apple engineer Bill Atkinson has died at 74. Atkinson's family announced that he passed away last Thursday due to pancreatic cancer. Employee number 51 at Apple, Atkinson worked on the Macintosh, MacPaint, and HyperCard. Wired and Daring Fireball have even more details on his life and career, and Apple CEO Tim Cook writes, 'He was a true visionary whose creativity, heart, and groundbreaking work on the Mac will forever inspire us.' In this video about Apple's influential pre-Macintosh 'OK' computer, you can hear Bill Atkinson talk about the Lisa, and how, in his words, it 'contributed toward the idea that computers were for everyone.'
Engadget
19 hours ago
- Engadget
Influential Apple engineer Bill Atkinson dies at 74
A renowned Apple engineer who was instrumental in developing modern-day computing has died. Bill Atkinson, who was part of Apple's original Macintosh development team, died of pancreatic cancer at 74, according to a Facebook post made by his family on June 5. His contributions to Apple and the Macintosh personal computer are still widely used today, including fundamental UI elements like the menu bar, double-clicking and the selection lasso. However, Atkinson's work goes much deeper than that, since he's partly responsible for the foundational design language that influenced Apple's early days. His legacy includes creating MacPaint, an application that showed the world what a graphics-based system looks like at a time when text-based systems were the norm, and developing QuickDraw, a graphics toolbox that the Macintosh and Lisa computers use. To make computers more user-friendly, Atkinson also designed HyperCard, an Apple application that introduced hypertext to everyday users and not just programmers. Tim Cook paid tribute to Atkinson, posting on X, that he was a 'true visionary whose creativity, heart, and groundbreaking work on the Mac will forever inspire us.' Beyond Apple, Atkinson was one of three co-founders for General Magic, a software and electronics company that supplied products to Motorola and Sony in the 90s. Later, he worked with Numenta in 2007, which was a startup focused on artificial intelligence. Atkinson was also a seasoned nature photographer, publishing a book called Within the Stone that highlights polished and cut rocks with close-up shots. Atkinson is survived by his wife, two daughters, stepson, stepdaughter, two brothers, four sisters, and dog, Poppy.
