Bill Atkinson, an engineer who played a key role in the development of Macintosh and other Apple Landmark products, died of pancreatic cancer.
After Atkinson’s family announced his visit to FacebookSteven Levy from Wired provided An overview of the many achievements of Atkinson As Apple number 51. In addition to the Macintosh, the Apple projects he has created or helped include the Lisa computer, Quickdraw, The Magic Slate (a precursor of the iPad) and Hypercard (a precursor of the World Wide Web).
Atkinson, who was 74 years old, finally became passionate about nature photography and, when he was diagnosed with cancer last year, wrote on Facebook that he had already “led an incredible and wonderful life”.
In A post on xApple CEO Tim Cook describes Atkinson as “a real visionary whose creativity, heart and revolutionary work on Mac will inspire us forever”. And John Gruber of daring Fireball wrote This “without hyperbole”, Atkinson “may have been the best computer programmer who has ever experienced”.
