I met and interviewed veteran Mac programmer Bill Atkinson a few times before his death earlier this year from pancreatic cancer at age 74.
Bill was a bit prickly, tbh, and didn’t suffer fools (such as journalists like me) gladly.
As one of the leading architects of the first Macintosh user interface — easily one of the most impactful UIs ever devised — he is rightly called a software “god.” In fact, that’s underselling his contributions.
Bill was also responsible for a ton of pioneering software, including QuickDraw, MacPaint, MultiFinder and HyperCard, an easy-to-use programming environment that made it possible for non-coders to make apps and games.
Hypercard was highly influential and phenomenally successful, but Bill later became wistful about what could have been. As I wrote for Wired.com in 2002:
Atkinson feels that if only he'd realized separate cards and stacks could be linked on different people's machines through the Net -- instead of cards and stacks on a particular machine -- he would have created the first Internet browser.
"I have realized over time that I missed the mark with HyperCard," he said from his studio in Menlo Park, California. "I grew up in a box-centric culture at Apple. If I'd grown up in a network-centric culture, like Sun, HyperCard might have been the first Web browser. My blind spot at Apple prevented me from making HyperCard the first Web browser."
We lost three other Apple giants in 2025, including the company’s first CEO, Michael Scott, and ad-man Steve Hayden, the brains behind the most famous ad of all time. Read about them here.
Also in today’s newsletter:
Fifteen years ago, I covered a talk Bill Atkinson gave at Macworld, and I’m stunned at how he predicted today’s AI assistants to a T!
I know I’m almost completely alone in praising many of the EU’s mandates regarding Apple’s affairs. However, I think changes like this are genuinely good for consumers, which is the whole point of the EU’s “meddling.” Do you agree? Take today’s poll below.
Talking of impactful software: Today’s the day in history that Apple patented the iPhone’s iconic “slide to unlock” gesture, the origin of which is a surprisingly fascinating story.
Don’t miss the top X post below, which takes an interesting dive into the mad paper engineering Apple puts into its boxes. The whole thread is highly recommended.
The next episode of The CultCast podcast, which we will release later today, will be the last. In the interests of consolidating all our content under the same Cult of Mac branding, we’re retiring the CultCast podcast and moving to a new feed — which you can find here. The show will remain much the same, with the same hosts and content, but we hope to evolve it next year to make the show more helpful and fun. We hope you subscribe (and/or watch it on YouTube).
— Leander Kahney, EIC.
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One more thing ...
I love what we're doing at Apple now — I think it's the best work that Apple's ever done. But I think all of us on the Mac team point to that as the high point of our careers. It's like The Beatles playing Shea Stadium. We were really working 14-to-18-hour days, seven days a week. For, like, two years, three years. That was our life. But we loved it, we were young, and we could do it.
Today’s pollw
Is easy earbud pairing EU "meddling" or good for consumers?
Results from yesterday’s poll: What's your fave new feature of iPhone 17?
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