Bill Atkinson

William Dana Atkinson (March 17, 1951 – June 5, 2025) was an American computer engineer, computer programmer, and photographer. Atkinson worked at Apple Computer from 1978 to 1990. Some of Atkinson's noteworthy contributions to the field of computing include Macintosh QuickDraw and Lisa LisaGraf (Atkinson independently discovered the midpoint circle algorithm for fast drawing of circles by using the sum of consecutive odd numbers), marching ants, the menu bar, the selection lasso, MacPaint (FatBits), HyperCard, Atkinson dithering, and the PhotoCard application program.

Atkinson was born in Ottumwa, Iowa, on March 17, 1951. He grew up in Los Gatos, California, the third child of seven born to anesthesiologist John Atkinson and obstetrician Ethel Dana Atkinson. He had two brothers and four sisters. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of California, San Diego, where Jef Raskin, who would go on to develop the Apple Macintosh, was one of his professors. Atkinson continued his studies as a graduate student in neurochemistry at the University of Washington.

Raskin invited Atkinson to visit him at Apple Computer; Steve Jobs persuaded him to join the company immediately as employee No. 51, and Atkinson never finished his PhD. Atkinson was the principal designer and developer of the graphical user interface (GUI) of the Apple Lisa and, later, one of the first thirty members of the original Apple Macintosh development team, and was the creator of the MacPaint application. He also designed and implemented QuickDraw, the fundamental toolbox that the Lisa and Macintosh used for graphics. QuickDraw's performance was essential for the success of the Macintosh GUI. He also was one of the main designers of the Lisa and Macintosh user interfaces. Atkinson also conceived, designed and implemented HyperCard, an early and influential hypermedia system. HyperCard put the power of computer programming and database design into the hands of non-programmers. In 1994, Atkinson received the EFF Pioneer Award for his contributions.

In 1990, Atkinson and two others co-founded Apple spin-off General Magic. Byte magazine wrote:

In 2007, Atkinson began working as an outside developer with Numenta, a startup working on computer intelligence. On his work there Atkinson said, "what Numenta is doing is more fundamentally important to society than the personal computer and the rise of the Internet."

Most recently, Atkinson worked as a nature photographer, focusing on close-up photographs of stones that had been cut and polished. His 2004 book Within the Stone features a collection of his close-up photographs. The detailed images he created were made possible by the accuracy and creative control of the digital printing process that he helped create. He developed a mobile app called PhotoCard that would allow users to take digital images and make postcards with personal messages that could then be printed and sent via postal service or over email.

Atkinson was married three times and had two daughters, a stepson, and a stepdaughter. He died at the age of 74 in Portola Valley, California, on June 5, 2025, from pancreatic cancer.

Actor Nelson Franklin portrayed him in the 2013 film Jobs that covered the early days of Apple under Steve Jobs. The film had drawn criticism for its take on the environment at the company. Atkinson's co-worker Bill Fernandez did not see the film, saying "It seems to me that there’s a lot of fan fiction about Apple Computer and about Steve Jobs, and I think that this is the biggest, flashiest piece of fan fiction that there’s been to date."

• Bill Atkinson at IMDb