Bill Atkinson, an engineer who performed a key function within the growth of the Macintosh and different landmark Apple merchandise, has died of pancreatic most cancers.
After Atkinson’s household introduced his passing on Facebook, Wired’s Steven Levy supplied an summary of Atkinson’s many accomplishments as Apple worker quantity 51 . In addition to the Macintosh, the Apple initiatives he both created or contributed to incorporate the Lisa pc, QuickDraw, the Magic Slate (a precursor of the iPad), and HyperCard (a precursor to the World Wide Web).
Atkinson, who was 74, finally grew to become obsessed with nature images and, when he was recognized with most cancers final yr, wrote on Facebook that he had “already led a tremendous and fantastic life.”
In a put up on X, Apple CEO Tim Cook described Atkinson as “a real visionary whose creativity, coronary heart, and groundbreaking work on the Mac will ceaselessly encourage us.” And Daring Fireball’s John Gruber wrote that “with no hyperbole,” Atkinson “might nicely have been the most effective pc programmer who ever lived.”
