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Macintosh Architect Bill Atkinson Dies at 73 After Pioneering QuickDraw and HyperCard

HyperCard empowered non-programmers to build interactive applications, reshaping graphical computing with a scriptable interface.

Bill Atkinson developed MacPaint. When he left Apple he kept a copy of the source code for MacPaint as a memento of his days making history. It sat in his Portola Valley garage for 14 years, until a series of conversations led to him donating it to the Computer History Museum, in Mountain View, as seen in front of the original Macintosh machine on display on Tuesday , Sept. 14, 2010. (Karen T. Borchers/Mercury News)
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Overview

  • Bill Atkinson died on June 5, 2025, at age 73 after a battle with pancreatic cancer.
  • He developed QuickDraw and MacPaint to power the Macintosh’s graphical interface and demonstrate the potential of mouse-driven drawing.
  • Atkinson introduced GUI staples such as pull-down menus, the double-click gesture, the selection lasso and rounded-window design.
  • Released in 1987, HyperCard offered hypermedia stacks and the English-like HyperTalk scripting language to democratize application creation.
  • After leaving Apple in 1985, he co-founded General Magic to pursue tablet computing and later devoted himself to nature photography.