Bill Atkinson, the man behind the interface
He drew the tools before design became a profession, He imagined interactivity before the web exists. He wrote code before we talk about user experience. And yet the name of Bill Atkinson remains unknown to the general public. This engineer of genius, pillar of Apple in the 1980s, contributed significantly to modern visual computers. His work can be read in each drop-down menu, each drag and drop, each click.
In the shadow of Jobs, a master of form and bottom
Born in 1951, a graduate of the University of California in San Diego, Bill Atkinson joined Apple in 1978 at the invitation of Jef Raskininitiator of the Macintosh project. He arrives in a world dominated by the command line, the terminals and the raw text. Apple, with Steve Jobs, wants to make the computer accessible to everyone.
It is in this context that Bill Atkinson develops Quickdrawa revolutionary graphic library which allows the ancestor of the Mac, Lisa then the Macintosh to display visual elements with unprecedented speed. “I wrote Quickdraw so that the system is fluid, even on limited hardware,” he said. In machine language, line by line, it optimizes each graphic function. Macintosh can then draw windows, menus, icons, fonts, with precision and speed that even surprise Xerox Park engineers, however precursors of the graphical interface.
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Macpaint, Pixel’s poetry
In 1983, Atkinson featured a second project, Macpaint. This Bitmap drawing software, supplied with Macintosh in 1984, became the emblem of the new computer age. For the first time, a non-technical user can draw with their mouse, copy and paste patterns, use brushes, zoom, select, reverse… and all on a black and white screen 512 × 342 pixels!
Performance is as technical as artistic. It even develops a baptized function Fatbit To draw Pixel by Pixel with a magnifying glass, allowing surgical precision. Most of Macintosh’s commercial demonstrations in 1984 open with a MacPaint session. Steve Jobs will say: ” Macpaint Alone Sels the Mac. »»
Hypercard, the web before the web
But the creative peak of Atkinson was played three years later, in 1987, with Hypercardhybrid software mixing database, presentation and programming. The concept is based on digital “maps”, which can be stacked and connecting with interactive links. The user adds text, buttons, drawings, and can write scripts in an accessible language called Hypertalk.
Hypercard allows you to create guides, games, educational tools … without having to write a complex line of code. It will be one of the most downloaded applications on Macintosh for several years. Web pioneers, such as Tim Berners-Lee and the Miller brothers (creators of Myst), will recognize that it is inspired. However, Apple does not push Hypercard and Steve Jobs has already gone to found Next.
A silent departure, a spiritual turn
In 1990, frustrated by the direction that Apple took, Bill Atkinson decided to leave the Cupertino firm. He refuses to follow the logic of large structures, venture capital, industrial roadmaps. He devoted himself to the nature photographdevelops its own color and calibration publishing tools, and participates in several research circles on the awarenessthere neurotechnology and the meditation, in his house in California.
A hidden heritage, but omnipresent
His interest in technology has never been purely technical, he was looking for Create expression instruments. He laid down the foundations on which a major part of contemporary computer science is based. His approach to code as visual language continues to inspire generations of developers. Its software has democratized visual programming before time, with a simplicity that has never been equaled.
It embodies an era of computer science when innovation was measured with the elegance of a gesture, code, pixel.
