Bill Atkinson, the Apple Computer designer who created the software that enabled the transformative visual approach pioneered by the company’s Lisa and Macintosh computers, making the machines accessible to millions of users without specialized skills, died on Thursday night at his home in Portola Valley, Calif., in the San Francisco Bay Area. He was 74.
In a Facebook post, his family said the cause was pancreatic cancer.
It was Mr. Atkinson who programmed QuickDraw, a foundational software layer used for both the Lisa and Macintosh computers; composed of a library of small programs, it made it possible to display shapes, text and images on the screen efficiently.
The QuickDraw programs were embedded in the computers’ hardware, providing a distinctive graphical user interface that presented a simulated “desktop,” displaying icons of folders, files and application programs.
Mr. Atkinson is credited with inventing many of the key aspects of graphical computing, such as “pull down” menus and the “double-click” gesture, which allows users to open files, folders and applications by clicking a mouse button twice in succession.
Before the Macintosh was introduced in January 1984, most personal computers were text-oriented; graphics were not yet an integrated function of the machines. And computer mice pointing devices were not widely available; software programs were instead controlled by typing arcane commands.
The QuickDraw library had originally been designed for Apple’s Lisa computer, which was introduced in January 1983. Intended for business users, the Lisa predated many of the Macintosh’s easy-to-use features, but priced at $10,000 (almost $33,000 in today’s money), it was a commercial failure.
A year later, however, QuickDraw paved the way for the Macintosh graphical interface. It was based on an approach to computing that had been pioneered during the 1970s at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center by a group led by the computer scientist Alan Kay. Mr. Kay was trying to create a computer system that he described as a “Dynabook,” a portable educational computer that would become a guiding light for Silicon Valley computer designers for decades.
Xerox kept the project secret, but Dynabook nevertheless ultimately informed the design of both the Lisa and the Macintosh. In an unusual agreement, Xerox gave Apple’s co-founder, Steve Jobs, and a small group of Apple engineers, including Mr. Atkinson, a private demonstration of Mr. Kay’s project in 1979.
The group, however, was not permitted to examine the software code. As a result, the Apple engineers had to make assumptions about the Xerox technology, leading them to make fundamental technical advances and design new capabilities.
In “Insanely Great,” a book about the development of the Macintosh, Steven Levy wrote of Mr. Atkinson, “He had set out to reinvent the wheel; actually he wound up inventing it.”
Mr. Atkinson’s programming feats were renowned in Silicon Valley.
“Looking at his code was like looking at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel,” recalled Steve Perlman, who as a young Apple hardware engineer took advantage of Mr. Atkinson’s software to design the first color Macintosh. “His code was remarkable. It is what made the Macintosh possible.”
In an early Apple commercial for the Macintosh, Mr. Atkinson described himself “as a cross between an artist and an inventor.”
He was also the author of two of the most significant early programs written for the Macintosh. One, MacPaint, was a digital drawing program that came with the original Macintosh; it made it possible for a user to create and manipulate images on the screen, controlling everything down to the level of the individual display pixel.
Ordinary users without specialized skills could now create drawings, illustrations and designs directly on a computer screen. The program introduced the concept of a “tool palette,” a set of clickable icons to select simulated paint brushes pens, and pencils.
MacPaint had a significant impact in helping to transform computers from business and hobbyist systems into consumer products that could be marketed as tools to enable individual creativity.
After the introduction of the Macintosh, while under the influence of a modest dose of LSD, Mr. Atkinson conceived of a program that would weave text, images and video seamlessly in a simple-to-use database. That experience would lead to Apple’s HyperCard software, a forerunner of the World Wide Web.
The program, first conceived independently by the computer pioneers Ted Nelson and Douglas C. Engelbart, was intended to allow non-programmers to easily compile information that would be interconnected by digital links known as hypertext.
After a visit with Mr. Engelbart while he was designing his system, Mr. Atkinson added command-key shortcuts to offer users more computing power after they learned to use pull-down menus.
In 1985, while sitting on a park bench near his home in Los Gatos, Calif., Mr. Atkinson peered up at the stars in the night sky and then looked at the streetlights that surrounded him. He decided that the various lights were like pools of knowledge separated by great 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 magazine published in the 1980s and ’90s. “Sort of a trickle-up theory of information leading to knowledge leading to wisdom.”
William Dana Atkinson was born on March 17, 1951, in Los Gatos, the third of seven children of John Atkinson, an anesthesiologist, and Ethel Dana Atkinson, an obstetrician.
At age 10, after Bill was given a subscription to Arizona Highways magazine, he began cutting out nature photographs and placing them on his bedroom wall. That led to a lifetime passion for nature photography and eventually a second career as a commercial and artistic photographer. A 2004 book, “Within the Stone,” presented his close-up photographs of stones that had been cut and polished.
Mr. Atkinson was studying for a Ph.D. in neurobiology at the University of Washington when Mr. Jobs persuaded him to become the 51st employee at Apple. He decided to leave school after Mr. Jobs told 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.”
During the early 1980s, when Mr. Jobs was leading a small group of young software and hardware designers to create the Macintosh computer, he and Mr. Atkinson were virtually inseparable. But when Mr. Jobs was forced out of Apple in 1985, leading him to create a new computer company called Next, Mr. Atkinson declined to leave with him, citing his commitment to the HyperCard project.
Mr. Jobs did not take rejection easily, and their relationship chilled for a number of years.
Mr. Atkinson worked on HyperCard as a contractor and stipulated that the product initially be distributed with the Macintosh at no extra cost.
In the late 1980s, the computer industry was awash with interest in building lighter, more portable machines. In 1989, Mr. Atkinson, along with Andy Hertzfeld, another former Macintosh developer, and Marc Porat, a Stanford-educated economist who had recently joined Apple, persuaded Apple’s chief executive at the time, John Sculley, to help fund a startup that they named General Magic. The company developed a hand-held computer in competition with the Newton, an internal Apple project.
Both projects would eventually fail commercially, but they are widely viewed as the forerunners of Apple’s wildly successful iPhone and iPad products, introduced after Mr. Jobs returned to Apple.
Mr. Atkinson left General Magic in 1996 and worked independently on a number of projects, including one for Numenta, an early artificial intelligence company.
He was married three times. He is survived by his wife, Cai Atkinson, two daughters, a stepson, a stepdaughter, two brothers and four sisters.
Mr. Atkinson almost did not survive to see the introduction of the Macintosh. On his way to work one morning, he was in a crash in which the top of his sports car was sheered off. He was taken unconscious to a hospital. A police officer at the scene said Mr. Atkinson had been lucky not to have been decapitated.
Mr. Jobs raced to the hospital, where he found Mr. Atkinson alert. “Is everything OK?” he asked, according to an account by Mr. Hertzfeld. “We were pretty worried about you.”
Even in a hospital bed, though, Mr. Atkinson’s mind was on software, specifically a key aspect in the design of the QuickDraw system.
“Don’t worry, Steve,” he replied, “I still remember how to do regions.”
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