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Bill Atkinson, rest in peace

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  Bill Atkinson, rest in peace Retrograde <fungus@amongus.com.invalid> - 2025-06-08 03:21 +0000
    Re: Bill Atkinson, rest in peace Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-06-08 23:39 +0000
      Re: Bill Atkinson, rest in peace "Kerr-Mudd, John" <admin@127.0.0.1> - 2025-06-13 14:18 +0100
        Re: Bill Atkinson, rest in peace legalize+jeeves@mail.xmission.com (Richard) - 2025-06-13 15:33 +0000
          Re: Bill Atkinson, rest in peace "Kerr-Mudd, John" <admin@127.0.0.1> - 2025-06-14 13:17 +0100
            Re: Bill Atkinson, rest in peace legalize+jeeves@mail.xmission.com (Richard) - 2025-06-14 22:43 +0000
        Re: Bill Atkinson, rest in peace Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-06-13 23:48 +0000
          Re: Bill Atkinson, rest in peace "Kerr-Mudd, John" <admin@127.0.0.1> - 2025-06-14 13:19 +0100
            Re: Bill Atkinson, rest in peace "Kerr-Mudd, John" <admin@127.0.0.1> - 2025-06-14 13:28 +0100
              RoundRect - was: Re: Bill Atkinson, rest in peace "Kerr-Mudd, John" <admin@127.0.0.1> - 2025-06-30 18:31 +0100
                Re: RoundRect "Kerr-Mudd, John" <admin@127.0.0.1> - 2025-07-12 21:40 +0100
            Re: Bill Atkinson, rest in peace Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-06-14 23:13 +0000
          Re: Bill Atkinson, rest in peace John Ames <commodorejohn@gmail.com> - 2025-06-16 08:07 -0700
            Re: Bill Atkinson, rest in peace Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> - 2025-06-16 17:25 +0100
              Re: Bill Atkinson, rest in peace John Ames <commodorejohn@gmail.com> - 2025-06-16 10:09 -0700
            Re: Bill Atkinson, rest in peace Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-06-16 23:18 +0000
    Re: Bill Atkinson, rest in peace Jason H <jason_hindle@yahoo.com> - 2025-06-14 16:42 +0000
      Re: Bill Atkinson, rest in peace Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-06-14 23:19 +0000

#27501 — Bill Atkinson, rest in peace

From the «mortal genius» department:
Title: Bill Atkinson Dies From Cancer at 74
Author: John Gruber
Date: Sat, 07 Jun 2025 20:36:31 +0000
Link: https://www.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10238073579963378&id=1378467145&_rdr

From his family, on Atkinson’s Facebook page:

We regret to write that our beloved husband, father, and stepfather Bill
Atkinson passed away on the night of Thursday, June 5th, 2025, due to
pancreatic cancer. He was at home in Portola Valley in his bed, surrounded by
family. We will miss him greatly, and he will be missed by many of you, too.
He was a remarkable person, and the world will be forever different because
he lived in it. He was fascinated by consciousness, and as he has passed on
to a different level of consciousness, we wish him a journey as meaningful as
the one it has been to have him in our lives. He is survived by his wife, two
daughters, stepson, stepdaughter, two brothers, four sisters, and dog, Poppy.

One of the great heroes in not just Apple history, but computer history. If you
want to cheer yourself up, go to Andy Hertzfeld’s Folklore.org site and
(re-)read all the entries about Atkinson. Here’s just one, with Steve Jobs
inspiring Atkinson to invent the roundrect[1]. Here’s another (surely near and
dear to my friend Brent Simmons’s heart[2]) with this kicker of a closing line[3]
: “I’m not sure how the managers reacted to that, but I do know that after a
couple more weeks, they stopped asking Bill to fill out the form, and he gladly
complied.”

Some of his code and algorithms are among the most efficient and elegant ever
devised. The original Macintosh team was chock full of geniuses, but Atkinson
might have been the most essential to making the impossible possible under the
extraordinary technical limitations of that hardware. Atkinson’s genius
dithering algorithm[4] was my inspiration for the name of Dithering[5], my
podcast with Ben Thompson. I find that effect beautiful and love that it
continues to prove useful, like on the Playdate[6] and apps like BitCam[7].

In addition to his low-level contributions like QuickDraw, Atkinson was also
the creator of MacPaint[8] (which to this day stands as the model for bitmap
image editors — Photoshop, I would argue, was conceptually derived directly
from MacPaint) and HyperCard[9] (“inspired by a mind-expanding LSD journey in
1985[10]”), the influence of which cannot be overstated.

I say this with no hyperbole: Bill Atkinson may well have been the best
computer programmer who ever lived. Without question, he’s on the short list.
What a man, what a mind, what gifts to the world he left us.
★ [11]

Links:
[1]: https://folklore.org/Round_Rects_Are_Everywhere.html (link)
[2]: https://inessential.com/2002/06/25/deleting_code.html (link)
[3]: https://www.folklore.org/Negative_2000_Lines_Of_Code.html (link)
[4]: https://www.google.com/search?q=bill+atkinson+dithering+algorithm (link)
[5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atkinson_dithering (link)
[6]: https://play.date/ (link)
[7]: https://daringfireball.net/linked/2016/06/10/bitcam (link)
[8]: https://www.folklore.org/MacPaint_Evolution.html (link)
[9]: https://daringfireball.net/linked/2014/06/17/hypercard (link)
[10]: https://www.folklore.org/Joining_Apple_Computer.html (link)
[11]: https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/06/07/bill-atkinson-rip (link)

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#27516

On 08 Jun 2025 03:21:43 GMT, Retrograde wrote:

> I say this with no hyperbole: Bill Atkinson may well have been the best
> computer programmer who ever lived. Without question, he’s on the short
> list.

He was brilliant, but there were others of comparable brilliancy, I would 
say. Just within the Apple world: Steve Wozniak and Andy Hertzfeld come to 
mind. And it takes more than programmers: without Susan Kare, the 
Macintosh UI could have ended up looking like ... the Amiga.

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#27526

On Sun, 8 Jun 2025 23:39:35 -0000 (UTC)
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

> On 08 Jun 2025 03:21:43 GMT, Retrograde wrote:
> 
> > I say this with no hyperbole: Bill Atkinson may well have been the best
> > computer programmer who ever lived. Without question, he’s on the short
> > list.
> 
> He was brilliant, but there were others of comparable brilliancy, I would 
> say. Just within the Apple world: Steve Wozniak and Andy Hertzfeld come to 
> mind. And it takes more than programmers: without Susan Kare, the 
> Macintosh UI could have ended up looking like ... the Amiga.

I'm currently attempting to draw a roundrect using x86 asm. 
Ok, it's a hobby.


-- 
Bah, and indeed, Humbug

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#27527

[Please do not mail me a copy of your followup]

"Kerr-Mudd, John" <admin@127.0.0.1> spake the secret code
<20250613141833.038a305eca2288e871bdac0f@127.0.0.1> thusly:

>I'm currently attempting to draw a roundrect using x86 asm. 

You might find this interesting then: <https://blend2d.com/>
-- 
"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" free book <http://tinyurl.com/d3d-pipeline>
            The Terminals Wiki <http://terminals-wiki.org>
     The Computer Graphics Museum <http://computergraphicsmuseum.org>
  Legalize Adulthood! (my blog) <http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com>

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#27529

On Fri, 13 Jun 2025 15:33:58 -0000 (UTC)
legalize+jeeves@mail.xmission.com (Richard) wrote:

> [Please do not mail me a copy of your followup]
> 
> "Kerr-Mudd, John" <admin@127.0.0.1> spake the secret code
> <20250613141833.038a305eca2288e871bdac0f@127.0.0.1> thusly:
> 
> >I'm currently attempting to draw a roundrect using x86 asm. 
> 
> You might find this interesting then: <https://blend2d.com/>


Written in C/C++? no I'm focussed on x86 only.


-- 
Bah, and indeed Humbug.

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#27533

[Please do not mail me a copy of your followup]

"Kerr-Mudd, John" <admin@127.0.0.1> spake the secret code
<20250614131742.ced5e989c8c8102b0df5e148@127.0.0.1> thusly:

>On Fri, 13 Jun 2025 15:33:58 -0000 (UTC)
>legalize+jeeves@mail.xmission.com (Richard) wrote:
>
>> "Kerr-Mudd, John" <admin@127.0.0.1> spake the secret code
>> <20250613141833.038a305eca2288e871bdac0f@127.0.0.1> thusly:
>> 
>> >I'm currently attempting to draw a roundrect using x86 asm. 
>> 
>> You might find this interesting then: <https://blend2d.com/>
>
>Written in C/C++? no I'm focussed on x86 only.

I guess you didn't look closely enough.  It uses AsmJit to JIT emit
assembly language that implements a custom rendering engine.
-- 
"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" free book <http://tinyurl.com/d3d-pipeline>
            The Terminals Wiki <http://terminals-wiki.org>
     The Computer Graphics Museum <http://computergraphicsmuseum.org>
  Legalize Adulthood! (my blog) <http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com>

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#27528

On Fri, 13 Jun 2025 14:18:33 +0100, Kerr-Mudd, John wrote:

> I'm currently attempting to draw a roundrect using x86 asm. Ok, it's
> a hobby.

For some reason, the QuickDraw graphics engine never included Bézier
curves. If you have those, then it’s not hard to compute a fillet
(rounding curve) on the intersection of two lines (e.g. a corner of a
rectangle). And they don’t even have to be at right angles.

See the “Path Techniques” notebook here
<https://gitlab.com/ldo/qahirah_notebooks>.

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#27530

On Fri, 13 Jun 2025 23:48:04 -0000 (UTC)
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

> On Fri, 13 Jun 2025 14:18:33 +0100, Kerr-Mudd, John wrote:
> 
> > I'm currently attempting to draw a roundrect using x86 asm. Ok, it's
> > a hobby.
> 
> For some reason, the QuickDraw graphics engine never included Bézier
> curves. If you have those, then it’s not hard to compute a fillet
> (rounding curve) on the intersection of two lines (e.g. a corner of a
> rectangle). And they don’t even have to be at right angles.
> 
> See the “Path Techniques” notebook here
> <https://gitlab.com/ldo/qahirah_notebooks>.

I tried; I got a spinning circle; maybe it 'needs' javascript, or
something else I don't/won't use.

-- 
Bah, and indeed Humbug.

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#27531

On Sat, 14 Jun 2025 13:19:01 +0100
"Kerr-Mudd, John" <admin@127.0.0.1> wrote:

> On Fri, 13 Jun 2025 23:48:04 -0000 (UTC)
> Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
> 
> > On Fri, 13 Jun 2025 14:18:33 +0100, Kerr-Mudd, John wrote:
> > 
> > > I'm currently attempting to draw a roundrect using x86 asm. Ok, it's
> > > a hobby.
> > 
> > For some reason, the QuickDraw graphics engine never included Bézier
> > curves. If you have those, then it’s not hard to compute a fillet
> > (rounding curve) on the intersection of two lines (e.g. a corner of a
> > rectangle). And they don’t even have to be at right angles.
> > 
> > See the “Path Techniques” notebook here
> > <https://gitlab.com/ldo/qahirah_notebooks>.
> 
> I tried; I got a spinning circle; maybe it 'needs' javascript, or
> something else I don't/won't use.
> 

Anyhow looks like this
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midpoint_circle_algorithm

is what I need to implement.

> -- 
> Bah, and indeed Humbug.


-- 
Bah, and indeed Humbug.

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#27607 — RoundRect - was: Re: Bill Atkinson, rest in peace

On Sat, 14 Jun 2025 13:28:14 +0100
"Kerr-Mudd, John" <admin@127.0.0.1> wrote:

> On Sat, 14 Jun 2025 13:19:01 +0100
> "Kerr-Mudd, John" <admin@127.0.0.1> wrote:
> 
> > On Fri, 13 Jun 2025 23:48:04 -0000 (UTC)
> > Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
> > 
> > > On Fri, 13 Jun 2025 14:18:33 +0100, Kerr-Mudd, John wrote:
> > > 
> > > > I'm currently attempting to draw a roundrect using x86 asm. Ok, it's
> > > > a hobby.
> > > 
[]

Finally have something to demo after a lot of struggling with the stack!

Pure x86, uses Bios ints for vid and getkey to keep display before ending.


B013CD10B7A05307B00BBB3264BA8296B90C00E81800B00DBBE470BA4C90B905
00E80A00B400CD16B80300CD10C352505189D029D89950BE4001F7F689D591F7
E6965A29EA5F585729F929F989DF01F7268803AA81C73F01E2F659535189EF29
CF29CF87F901DF89D3268801AAE2FA595F01F75701CF88C6B204E816005F29CF
01EFE80E005F29F75701CF29EFE803005F29CF4A505351565531ED89CB89C8B1
04D2E831C9E816004101C889C629DE780389F04B39CB73ED5D5E595B58C35053
5152D0EA7302F7DBD0EA7302F7D9B84001F7E15A5701C701DF88F0AA5F5280FA
03740808D27404F7DBF7D987D931FD75DD5A595B58C3

-- 
Bah, and indeed Humbug.

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#27621 — Re: RoundRect

On Mon, 30 Jun 2025 18:31:58 +0100
"Kerr-Mudd, John" <admin@127.0.0.1> wrote:

> On Sat, 14 Jun 2025 13:28:14 +0100
> "Kerr-Mudd, John" <admin@127.0.0.1> wrote:
> 
> > On Sat, 14 Jun 2025 13:19:01 +0100
> > "Kerr-Mudd, John" <admin@127.0.0.1> wrote:
> > 
> > > On Fri, 13 Jun 2025 23:48:04 -0000 (UTC)
> > > Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
> > > 
> > > > On Fri, 13 Jun 2025 14:18:33 +0100, Kerr-Mudd, John wrote:
> > > > 
> > > > > I'm currently attempting to draw a roundrect using x86 asm. Ok, it's
> > > > > a hobby.
> > > > 
> []
> 
> Finally have something to demo after a lot of struggling with the stack!
> 
> Pure x86, uses Bios ints for vid and getkey to keep display before ending.
> 

Now with TLRow,TLCol,BRRow,BRCol,Colour passed in registers, plus a bit of
fat trimmed. 
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-- 
Bah, and indeed Humbug.

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#27534

On Sat, 14 Jun 2025 13:19:01 +0100, Kerr-Mudd, John wrote:

> On Fri, 13 Jun 2025 23:48:04 -0000 (UTC)
> Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
> 
>> See the “Path Techniques” notebook here
>> <https://gitlab.com/ldo/qahirah_notebooks>.
> 
> I tried; I got a spinning circle; maybe it 'needs' javascript, or
> something else I don't/won't use.

Those are Jupyter notebooks <https://jupyter.org/>. You need to run them 
from within a Jupyter installation.

If you really want to run them online, try accessing them through MyBinder
<https://mybinder.org/>.

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#27537

On Fri, 13 Jun 2025 23:48:04 -0000 (UTC)
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

> For some reason, the QuickDraw graphics engine never included Bézier
> curves. If you have those, then it’s not hard to compute a fillet
> (rounding curve) on the intersection of two lines (e.g. a corner of a
> rectangle).

I don't know why they weren't added later (assuming they weren't,) but
the reason RoundRects were a primitive unto themselves was performance.
Plotting Bézier curves in a generalized way requires *way* more math
than Atkinson's technique, which doesn't even require multiplication:

https://folklore.org/Round_Rects_Are_Everywhere.html?sort=date

On an 8 Mhz 68000, that makes quite a bit of difference.

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#27538

John Ames <commodorejohn@gmail.com> writes:
> Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
>> For some reason, the QuickDraw graphics engine never included Bézier
>> curves. If you have those, then it’s not hard to compute a fillet
>> (rounding curve) on the intersection of two lines (e.g. a corner of a
>> rectangle).
>
> I don't know why they weren't added later (assuming they weren't,) but
> the reason RoundRects were a primitive unto themselves was performance.
> Plotting Bézier curves in a generalized way requires *way* more math
> than Atkinson's technique, which doesn't even require multiplication:
>
> https://folklore.org/Round_Rects_Are_Everywhere.html?sort=date
>
> On an 8 Mhz 68000, that makes quite a bit of difference.

    That was a bit hard to do on the Macintosh, since the math for circles
    usually involved taking square roots, and the 68000 processor in the
    Lisa and Macintosh didn't support floating point operations. But Bill
    had come up with a clever way to do the circle calculation that only
    used addition and subtraction, not even multiplication or division,
    which the 68000 could do, but was kind of slow at.

AFAIK the algorithm goes back to Bresenham in the 1960s - although it’s
certainly possible Atkinson rediscovered it.

-- 
https://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/

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#27539

On Mon, 16 Jun 2025 17:25:48 +0100
Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:

> AFAIK the algorithm goes back to Bresenham in the 1960s - although
> it’s certainly possible Atkinson rediscovered it.

Might well be - I yield to those with more knowledge on that point.

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#27542

On Mon, 16 Jun 2025 08:07:36 -0700, John Ames wrote:

> I don't know why they weren't added later (assuming they weren't,) but
> the reason RoundRects were a primitive unto themselves was performance.

Au contraire. Atkinson was actually going to drop them from Macintosh 
QuickDraw (they were present in Lisa QuickDraw). There is an anecdote 
related somewhere on one of the Macintosh nostalgia sites where Steve Jobs 
took Bill out to the building grounds and walked him around a bit, showing 
him how often round rects occurred in nature and everyday surroundings, 
and therefore he *had* to include them as a drawing primitive.

(No, I have no idea what examples of real-life round rects he came up 
with.)

> Plotting Bézier curves in a generalized way requires *way* more math
> than Atkinson's technique, which doesn't even require multiplication:

Oh, come on. De Casteljau’s algorithm was already well known. Decomposing 
a Bézier into two sub-curves only requires additions and divisions by 2. 
As the pieces get smaller, they get closer to straight lines. Once each 
piece gets small enough, you draw it as a straight line; if it’s not small 
enough, you divide it and look at its sub-sub-pieces, and so on.

Computing the deviations from a straight-line approximation for a curve 
segment does require multiplications and divisions, but the 68000 did have 
hardware integer multiply and divide, after all.

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#27532

On 08/06/2025 04:21, Retrograde wrote:
>From the «mortal genius» department:
>Title: Bill Atkinson Dies From Cancer at 74
>Author: John Gruber
>Date: Sat, 07 Jun 2025 20:36:31 +0000
>Link: https://www.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10238073579963378&id=1378467145&_rdr
>
>From his family, on Atkinson’s Facebook page:
>
>We regret to write that our beloved husband, father, and stepfather Bill
>Atkinson passed away on the night of Thursday, June 5th, 2025, due to
>pancreatic cancer. He was at home in Portola Valley in his bed, surrounded by
>family. We will miss him greatly, and he will be missed by many of you, too.
>He was a remarkable person, and the world will be forever different because
>he lived in it. He was fascinated by consciousness, and as he has passed on
>to a different level of consciousness, we wish him a journey as meaningful as
>the one it has been to have him in our lives. He is survived by his wife, two
>daughters, stepson, stepdaughter, two brothers, four sisters, and dog, Poppy.
>
>One of the great heroes in not just Apple history, but computer history. If you
>want to cheer yourself up, go to Andy Hertzfeld’s Folklore.org site and
>(re-)read all the entries about Atkinson. Here’s just one, with Steve Jobs
>inspiring Atkinson to invent the roundrect[1]. Here’s another (surely near and
>dear to my friend Brent Simmons’s heart[2]) with this kicker of a closing line[3]
>: “I’m not sure how the managers reacted to that, but I do know that after a
>couple more weeks, they stopped asking Bill to fill out the form, and he gladly
>complied.”
>
>Some of his code and algorithms are among the most efficient and elegant ever
>devised. The original Macintosh team was chock full of geniuses, but Atkinson
>might have been the most essential to making the impossible possible under the
>extraordinary technical limitations of that hardware. Atkinson’s genius
>dithering algorithm[4] was my inspiration for the name of Dithering[5], my
>podcast with Ben Thompson. I find that effect beautiful and love that it
>continues to prove useful, like on the Playdate[6] and apps like BitCam[7].
>
>In addition to his low-level contributions like QuickDraw, Atkinson was also
>the creator of MacPaint[8] (which to this day stands as the model for bitmap
>image editors — Photoshop, I would argue, was conceptually derived directly
>from MacPaint) and HyperCard[9] (“inspired by a mind-expanding LSD journey in
>1985[10]”), the influence of which cannot be overstated.
>
>I say this with no hyperbole: Bill Atkinson may well have been the best
>computer programmer who ever lived. Without question, he’s on the short list.
>What a man, what a mind, what gifts to the world he left us.
>★ [11]
>
>Links:
>[1]: https://folklore.org/Round_Rects_Are_Everywhere.html (link)
>[2]: https://inessential.com/2002/06/25/deleting_code.html (link)
>[3]: https://www.folklore.org/Negative_2000_Lines_Of_Code.html (link)
>[4]: https://www.google.com/search?q=bill+atkinson+dithering+algorithm (link)
>[5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atkinson_dithering (link)
>[6]: https://play.date/ (link)
>[7]: https://daringfireball.net/linked/2016/06/10/bitcam (link)
>[8]: https://www.folklore.org/MacPaint_Evolution.html (link)
>[9]: https://daringfireball.net/linked/2014/06/17/hypercard (link)
>[10]: https://www.folklore.org/Joining_Apple_Computer.html (link)
>[11]: https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/06/07/bill-atkinson-rip (link)

Obituary in this week's Observer.

https://observer.co.uk/news/columnists/article/so-long-bill-atkinson-and-thanks-for-my-apple-epiphany

--
A PICKER OF UNCONSIDERED TRIFLES

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#27535

On Sat, 14 Jun 2025 16:42:48 -0000 (UTC), Jason H wrote:

> Obituary in this week's Observer.
>
> https://observer.co.uk/news/columnists/article/so-long-bill-atkinson-and-thanks-for-my-apple-epiphany

I recall a mention somewhere that the original name for MacPaint was
going to be “Machelangelo”. Then it was decided that that might be ...
just a little too cute.

MacPaint is an interesting example of a showcase app for the platform.
Apple made a point of publicizing its standard “User Interface
Guidelines” for developing apps, right from the beginning: yet, right
from the beginning, here was a high-profile app that flouted several
of them.

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