Invoice Atkinson, an Apple Pc designer who created the software program that enabled the transformative visible method pioneered by the corporate’s Lisa and Macintosh computer systems, making the machines accessible to thousands and thousands of customers with out specialised expertise, died Thursday evening at his residence in Portola Valley. He was 74.
In a Fb submit, his household mentioned the trigger was pancreatic most cancers.
Atkinson programmed QuickDraw, a foundational software program layer used for each the Lisa and Macintosh computer systems. Composed of a library of small applications, it made it attainable to show shapes, textual content and pictures on the display screen effectively.
The QuickDraw applications had been embedded within the computer systems’ {hardware}, offering a particular graphical consumer interface that introduced a simulated “desktop,” displaying icons of folders, recordsdata and software applications.
Atkinson is credited with inventing lots of the key points of graphical computing, akin to “pull-down” menus, and popularizing the “double-click” gesture, which permits customers to open recordsdata, folders and functions by clicking a mouse button twice in succession, an innovation invented by Tim Mott at Xerox’s Palo Alto Analysis Heart in California.
Earlier than the Macintosh was launched in January 1984, most private computer systems had been text-oriented; graphics weren’t but an built-in perform of the machines. And pc mice pointing gadgets weren’t extensively accessible; software program applications had been as an alternative managed by typing arcane instructions.
The QuickDraw library had initially been designed for Apple’s Lisa pc, which was launched in January 1983. Meant for enterprise customers, the Lisa predated lots of the Macintosh’s easy-to-use options, however priced at $10,000 (nearly $33,000 in in the present day’s cash), it was a business failure.
A yr later, nonetheless, QuickDraw paved the best way for the Macintosh graphical interface. It was primarily based on an method to computing that had been pioneered throughout the Nineteen Seventies on the Palo Alto facility by a gaggle led by pc scientist Alan Kay. Kay was attempting to create a pc system that he described as a Dynabook, a transportable academic pc that may turn into a guiding mild for Silicon Valley pc designers for many years.
Xerox saved the challenge secret, however Dynabook however finally knowledgeable the design of the Lisa and the Macintosh. In an uncommon settlement, Xerox gave Apple co-founder Steve Jobs and a small group of Apple engineers, together with Atkinson, a personal demonstration of Kay’s challenge in 1979.
Invoice Atkinson’s PhotoCard APP, showcases his two abilities by combining nice software program design and gorgeous imagery. Customers also can enter their very own images to ship by US Mail and by e mail.
As seen on Tuesday, Sept. 14, 2010. (Karen T. Borchers/Mercury Information)
Invoice Atkinson’s PhotoCard APP, showcases his two abilities by combining nice software program design and gorgeous imagery. Customers also can enter their very own images to ship by US Mail and by e mail.
As seen on Tuesday, Sept. 14, 2010. (Karen T. Borchers/Mercury Information)
Invoice Atkinson’s PhotoCard APP, showcases his two abilities by combining nice software program design and gorgeous imagery. Customers also can enter their very own images to ship by US Mail and by e mail.
As seen on Tuesday, Sept. 14, 2010. (Karen T. Borchers/Mercury Information)
Invoice Atkinson’s PhotoCard APP, showcases his two abilities by combining nice software program design and gorgeous imagery, as he holds considered one of his postcards with flowers on it. Customers also can enter their very own images to ship by US Mail and by e mail.
As seen on Tuesday, Sept. 14, 2010. (Karen T. Borchers/Mercury Information)
Invoice Atkinson’s PhotoCard APP, showcases his two abilities by combining nice software program design and gorgeous imagery. Customers also can enter their very own images to ship by US Mail and by e mail.
As seen on Tuesday, Sept. 14, 2010. (Karen T. Borchers/Mercury Information)
Invoice Atkinson’s PhotoCard APP, showcases his two abilities by combining nice software program design and gorgeous imagery. Customers also can enter their very own images to ship by US Mail and by e mail.
Invoice Atkinson developed MacPaint. When he left Apple he saved a duplicate of the supply code for MacPaint as a memento of his days making historical past. It sat in his Portola Valley storage for 14 years, till a collection of conversations led to him donating it to the Pc Historical past Museum, in Mountain View, as seen in entrance of the unique Macintosh machine on show on Tuesday , Sept. 14, 2010. (Karen T. Borchers/Mercury Information)
Invoice Atkinson developed MacPaint. When he left Apple he saved a duplicate of the supply code for MacPaint, proven right here, as a memento of his days making historical past. It sat in his Portola Valley storage for 14 years, till a collection of conversations led to him donating it to the Pc Historical past Museum, in Mountain View, as seen on Tuesday , Sept. 14, 2010. (Karen T. Borchers/Mercury Information)
Karen T. Borchers/Bay Space Information Group Archives
Invoice Atkinson, seen right here on the Pc Historical past Museum in Mountain View in 2010, has died on the age of 74. The legendary Apple designer created the software program that enabled the transformative visible method pioneered by the corporate’s Lisa and Macintosh computer systems, making the machines accessible to thousands and thousands of customers with out specialised expertise.
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Invoice Atkinson’s PhotoCard APP, showcases his two abilities by combining nice software program design and gorgeous imagery. Customers also can enter their very own images to ship by US Mail and by e mail.
As seen on Tuesday, Sept. 14, 2010. (Karen T. Borchers/Mercury Information)
Develop
The group, nonetheless, was not permitted to look at the software program code. Because of this, the Apple engineers needed to make assumptions in regards to the Xerox expertise, main them to make basic technical advances and design new capabilities.
In “Insanely Great,” a e-book in regards to the improvement of the Macintosh, Steven Levy wrote of Atkinson, “He had set out to reinvent the wheel; actually he wound up inventing it.”
Atkinson’s programming feats had been famend in Silicon Valley.
“Looking at his code was like looking at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel,” recalled Steve Perlman, who as a younger Apple {hardware} engineer took benefit of Atkinson’s software program to design the primary coloration Macintosh. “His code was remarkable. It is what made the Macintosh possible.”
In an early Apple business for the Macintosh, Atkinson described himself “as a cross between an artist and an inventor.”
He was additionally the creator of two of essentially the most vital early applications written for the Macintosh. Considered one of them, MacPaint, was a digital drawing program that got here with the unique Macintosh. It made it attainable for a consumer to create and manipulate photographs on the display screen, controlling every little thing right down to the extent of the person show pixel.
Unusual customers with out specialised expertise may now create drawings, illustrations and designs instantly on a pc display screen. This system launched the idea of a “tool palette,” a set of clickable icons to pick simulated paintbrushes, pens and pencils.
MacPaint had a big impression in serving to to remodel computer systems from enterprise and hobbyist methods into client merchandise that might be marketed as instruments to allow particular person creativity.
After the introduction of the Macintosh, whereas underneath the affect of a modest dose of LSD, Atkinson conceived of a program that may weave textual content, photographs and video seamlessly in a simple-to-use database. That have would result in Apple’s HyperCard software program, a forerunner of the World Broad Net.
This system, first conceived independently by pc pioneers Ted Nelson and Douglas C. Engelbart, was supposed to permit nonprogrammers to simply compile data that may be interconnected by digital hyperlinks often known as hypertext.
After a go to with Engelbart whereas he was designing his system, Atkinson added command-key shortcuts to supply customers extra computing energy after they discovered to make use of pull-down menus.
In 1985, whereas sitting on a park bench close to his residence in Los Gatos, California, Atkinson peered up on the stars within the evening sky after which regarded on the streetlights that surrounded him. He determined that the assorted lights had been like swimming pools of data separated by nice distances and remaining unconnected.
“I thought if we could encourage sharing of ideas between different areas of knowledge, perhaps more of the bigger picture would emerge, and eventually more wisdom might develop,” he wrote in Mondo 2000, a Silicon Valley journal revealed within the Eighties and ’90s. “Sort of a trickle-up theory of information leading to knowledge leading to wisdom.”
William Dana Atkinson was born March 17, 1951, in Ottumwa, Iowa, the third of seven youngsters of John Atkinson, an anesthesiologist, and Ethel Dana Atkinson, an obstetrician. He grew up in Los Gatos.
At age 10, after Invoice was given a subscription to Arizona Highways journal, he started reducing out nature images and putting them on his bed room wall. That led to a lifetime ardour for nature pictures and ultimately a second profession as a business and creative photographer. A 2004 e-book, “Within the Stone,” introduced his close-up images of stones that had been reduce and polished.
Atkinson was learning for a doctorate in neurobiology on the College of Washington when Jobs persuaded him to turn into the 51st worker at Apple. He determined to go away faculty after Jobs informed him, “Think how fun it is to surf on the front edge of a wave, and how not-fun to dog paddle on the tail edge of the same wave.”
Throughout the early Eighties, when Jobs was main a small group of younger software program and {hardware} designers to create the Macintosh pc, he and Atkinson had been nearly inseparable. However when Jobs was compelled out of Apple in 1985, main him to create a brand new pc firm known as Subsequent, Atkinson declined to go away with him, citing his dedication to the HyperCard challenge.
Jobs didn’t take rejection simply, and their relationship chilled for various years.
Atkinson labored on HyperCard as a contractor and stipulated that the product initially be distributed with the Macintosh at no additional value.
Within the late Eighties, the pc trade was awash with curiosity in constructing lighter, extra moveable machines. In 1989, Atkinson, together with Andy Hertzfeld, one other former Macintosh developer, and Marc Porat, a Stanford College-educated economist who had lately joined Apple, persuaded Apple’s CEO on the time, John Sculley, to assist fund a startup that they named Normal Magic. The corporate developed a handheld pc in competitors with the Newton, an inside Apple challenge.
Each initiatives would ultimately fail commercially, however they’re extensively seen because the forerunners of Apple’s wildly profitable iPhone and iPad merchandise, launched after Jobs returned to Apple.
Atkinson left Normal Magic in 1996 and labored independently on various initiatives, together with one for Numenta, an early synthetic intelligence firm.
He was married 3 times. He’s survived by his spouse, Jingwen Cai, two daughters, a stepson, a stepdaughter, two brothers and 4 sisters.
Atkinson nearly didn’t survive to see the introduction of the Macintosh. On his strategy to work one morning, he was in a crash wherein the highest of his sports activities automotive was sheared off. He was taken unconscious to a hospital. A police officer on the scene mentioned Atkinson had been fortunate to not have been decapitated.
Jobs raced to the hospital, the place he discovered Atkinson alert. “Is everything OK?” he requested, in accordance with an account by Hertzfeld. “We were pretty worried about you.”
Even in a hospital mattress, although, Atkinson’s thoughts was on software program, particularly a key side within the design of the QuickDraw system.
“Don’t worry, Steve,” he mentioned, “I still remember how to do regions.”
This text initially appeared in The New York Instances.
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