Inspiration: 90 Minutes with a Giant
It is not everyday that you get to meet one of the giants in the computer industry. Specifically, the one person who was part of the most magnificent “Insanely Great”team that built the original Macintosh. How insane is that?
Bill Atkinson. Creator of MacPaint, QuickDraw, and HyperCard – the precursor of today’s hyperlinks in this crazy world we now call “the web” and other Mac/Lisa software.
It wasn’t surprising to me that I’d be in awe of The Creator — the guy who practically built the Mac! The Macintosh 128K was my second computer. My first computer was an Apple IIe.
But why am I taking the time to write all of this? What was it about those 90+ minutes I spent talking to a man who I hardly knew as a person, but only as a name? But not just any name — this is the guy who worked on the product that changed the world and has changed many peoples lives. The Mac 128K. WOW! I could not believe I was standing next to him and we were carrying a conversation as if we have known each other for a long time.
Bill was open, humble, and voluble. And after all these years, he was still insanely passionate about the Mac! He is a great storyteller; he shared with me some of his moments while developing MacPaint and QuickDraw. He shared his ideas about HyperCard, the original name, and the changing of that name due to lawyers being afraid of the original name (they were afraid it would collide with an existing product for the Apple IIe line). He also shared other stories related to the original Mac team and what it took to get the Mac out. And he is still insanely mad about Apple. He whipped up his iPad and started to show me an app he wrote for his photography collection. To learn more about his photography, visit BillAtkinson.com.
He also shared a story of how he urged Apple to donate the source code of MacPaint and QuickDraw to the Computer Science Museum, and he thanks another giant in the computer science field for pushing Steve (Jobs, CEO of Apple) to donate the sources. That would be Donald Knuth, Author of the seminal work The Art of Computer Programming (another giant whom I also had the pleasure to meet for my birthday not long ago).
There is a lot to say about Bill, but after my high wore off, I started to think and ponder: These guys – Bill & Co., the original Mac team — did it all in a machine that only had 128kb of RAM. When it came to programming, these guys squeezed every ounce of memory, optimization, and invented tricks in order for QuickDraw and MacPaint to do so much with so little RAM.
And take a look at us nowadays: Machines with a standard 2 gigs of RAM, a terabyte of HD here and there, 1-gigabit networks, fiber optics, etc. We are spoiled. And our programming has become slack. We have so much power today in desktops, we don’t care about optimizing any more. We don’t care about the size of an image because 8 gigs of RAM is the standard nowadays (for developers, at least). We have video cards with X number of GPU cores, flash drives, etc. CPU/GPU speed is a non-issue now, unless you are doing mission critical stuff. And even then…
What Bill did with the Mac 128K is inspiration. He taught us that you could squeeze as much as you can from a processor if you set your mind to it. That optimization is still crucial, and that clever programming can get you there.
And we are doing exactly that now days.
Mobile is not the same as desktop. For me, mobile is going back to programming in the days of limited performance, memory, and screen sizes.It is like programming anewworld. Our code name internally is based off the movie Ratatouille for two reasons.
1.) In the movie, the Chef, Auguste Gusteau tells little Remy (the rat, out of all things) that anyone can cook. We believe that anyone can “mobile.”
2.) Antono Ego, the food critic. When he took a bite out of Remy’s ratatouille, he was taken back to when he was a kid and had his mom’s ratatouille. And that’s how we feel about mobile development. It takes us back to those days of limited RAM, CPU, screen sizes, input devices, and more. Corona 1.1 came in at a puny 300K in today’s standards. Now, that’s insanely great.
Thanks Bill for a great hour-and-half, and for re-inspiring me!
Carlos Icaza (left) and Bill Atkinson (right)
To learn more about how insanely great Bill and others were when building the original Mac, visit Folklore.org.
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This sounds like a great time, and it must be very inspiring to meet those who have inspired you. My first computer was also an Apple IIe, and I spent almost 2 solid summers during high school being creative with Basic. And Hypercard was awesome, too, as well as first using a Mac.
I also thank your team for providing a great canvas to work with on mobile. Within the past month, I’ve learned the vast potential of Corona, and it’s kind of humbling to know what yet is to be done with it.
Thanks for sharing this, as I have memories and experiences very similar to the ones your describe – and Bill is indeed (and has been for years) an inspiration. I still find myself lamenting for the days of HyperCard from time to time.
I’m simply amazed at the power we now carry in our pockets today, and saddened by the number of developers who are only focused on the bleeding edge. There’s so much opportunity already out there in the hands of billions, why focus only on the shiny new toys of the few.
Mobile design (and development) to me is a lovely challenge in dealing with balance and constraints, and it’s a place where craft still matters. You’ve simply have got to have that passion and attention to details to make wonderful mobile apps.
BTW – any chance of seeing Corona support Nokia (Symbian or Meego) devices anytime soon?
Very cool story, Carlos. Thanks for sharing!