20 ms·

Bill Atkinson: Reflections on the 40th anniversary of my joining Apple

219 points by kick 7y ago

musicale 7y ago
> Apple published HyperCard in 1987, six years before Mosaic, the first web browser Mosaic was the first Mac and Windows web browser (1992-93) but the first UNIX/NeXT web browser was WWW, 1990-91. Bill Atkinson (and HyperCard) are awesome though. Imagine a networked HyperCard ushering in the web in 1987; or Intermedia for that matter in 1985; or much earlier in the 20th century a la Vannevar Bush (1930s) or Ted Nelson (1960s); or if Netscape had focused on Gopher, WAIS, FTP, and/or NNTP and dropped HTTP as being superfluous.
- fanf2 7y ago
  Mosaic was the first browser to support inline images and the <img> tag.
- mamp 7y ago
  I used and programmed HyperCard quite a bit back in the day (even C extensions into HyperCard!). The jump from HyperCard to web is bigger than it appears from the UI: - to make HC work on the hardware at the time it had quite a lot of optimised MC68000 assembly so it wasn't very extensible which was why it didn't take off like visual basic i.e. you could build stacks but not really apps - there was no declarative format, stacks were binary files - It didn't support networking at all as far as I can remember - Networking at Apple based on AppleTalk so their thinking was very much in the local network, in fact their TCP/IP extension (not built into the OS at the time) was not very well supported. HyperCard was great, but it was never designed with a browser model in mind, mainly sharing binary stacks between people.
  - paulrpotts 7y ago
    All very true - I also wrote XCMD/XFCN plug-ins back in the day, and my first published technical articles, in MacTutor and Washington Apple Pi magazine, were about how to do that. HyperCard had more innovations that I miss. One of them was the ability to paint on the card background and foreground layers separately. This meant that you could cover black pixels in the background with white pixels in the foreground. The HyperTalk language was kind of an oddball, quirky mess; it was designed to closely resemble English, but this actually tended to make it harder to come up with just the right syntax to do what you wanted. But that object-oriented model was carried over into AppleScript, and the whole scripting model for writing scriptable applications. It was not exactly easy to write code that would follow the OSA scripting model, but applications that supported it could be "puppeted" to do some amazing stuff. For example, I wrote a C++ program in PowerPlant which would "puppet" Quark XPress to generate customized newsletters. Atkinson deserves a lot of credit for making a 68000 do things people could barely believe could be done without custom graphics hardware, and his whole region model (described in a patent) is amazing. And you can now browse the source code for MacPaint and QuickDraw: https://computerhistory.org/blog/macpaint-and-quickdraw-source-code/ https://computerhistory.org/blog/macpaint-and-quickdraw-sour... It's not really legible if you don't have some expertise in 68000 assembly language, but even if you don't, it's still a model of clarity and an inspiration.
    - jandrese 7y ago
      Hypertalk (the language of HyperCard) had a lot of syntactic sugar, but was pretty easy to get started with even with almost no programming background. For example, a very simple button might have a script that looks like: on mouseUp ask "What is your name?" put it into card field "Name" end mouseUp You could get pretty far by reading scripts and trying things out in Hypercard. I also tend to think that the idea of network aware Hypercard sounds super cool, but would have been a security nightmare. Hypercard wasn't written in an era of adversarial coding, it would have been knocked over 10 different ways every day by hackers. Code and content were heavily mixed together and there was no permission model beyond preventing people from editing your stacks by accident. Every stack or even card you loaded would be downloading and executing code.
      - DonHopkins 7y ago
        HyperCard inspired Arthur van Hoff to develop a network aware version of HyperCard in PostScript for James Gosling's networked-PostScript-based NeWS Window System. It was originally called "GoodNeWS", then called "HyperNeWS", then finally released as a product called "HyperLook", which I worked on with Arthur and used to port SimCity to X11/NeWS on SunOS/Solaris. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_van_Hoff https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_van_Hoff Arthur later went on to Sun, wrote the Java compiler in Java, developed the AWT user interface toolkit, then formed Marimba with Kim Polesi and Jonathan Payne and others from the original Java team, where they developed Castanet and Bongo. https://www.wired.com/1996/11/es-marimba/ https://www.wired.com/1996/11/es-marimba/ >1996-11-01: Tuning in to Marimba. Kim Polese wants you to upgrade your HTML-based browser to a more interactive, more TV-like, Java-based "tuner" by the name of Castanet. >Marimba's first product, scheduled to be announced in early October, is the punnily named Castanet, which aims to push Java toward its full potential. Java was created to deliver interactive content over distributed networks, and its much-hyped arrival last year promised to completely change the way information and entertainment are delivered electronically. The first popular Java programs have been based on HTML - for example, the Java applets that lend some animation to boring Web pages. But Java doesn't need the Web to fly. It was designed to communicate over any kind of decentralized system. [...] Marimba developed Bongo, a Java-based gui toolkit / user interface editor / graphical environment, inspired by HyperCard (and HyperLook), which they used to develop and distribute interactive user interfaces over Castanet. https://people.apache.org/~jim/NewArchitect/webtech/1997/10/note/index.html https://people.apache.org/~jim/NewArchitect/webtech/1997/10/... >Feel the Beat with Marimba's Bongo, By Chris Baron >In 1996, four programmers from the original Java-development team left Sun to form Marimba and produce industrial-strength Java-development tools for user interface and application administration. Bongo, one of Marimba's two shipping products, allows developers to create either a Java-application interface or a standalone Java-based application called a "presentation." A Bongo presentation resembles a HyperCard stack -- it allows developers to quickly create an application with a sophisticated user interface, but without the tedious programming of directly coding in Java or C/C++. Bongo's nonprogramming, visual approach makes it ideal for producing simple applications that don't involve a lot of processing, such as product demonstrations, user-interface prototypes, and training applications. Bongo is fully integrated with Castanet, Marimba's other product, a technology for remotely installing and updating Java applications. Bongo was unique at the time in that it actually let you edit and dynamically compile scripts for event handlers and "live code" at run-time (in contrast with other tools that required you to recompile and re-run the application to make changes to the user interface), which was made possible by calling back to the Java compiler (which Arthur had written before at Sun, so he knew how to integrate the compiler at runtime like a modern IDE would do). Without the ability to dynamically edit scripts at runtime (easy with an interpreted language like HyperTalk or PostScript or JavaScript, but trickier for a compiled language like Java), you can't hold a candle to HyperCard, because interactive scripting is an essential feature. Danny Goodman, who wrote the book on HyperCard, also wrote a book about Bongo. Arthur later founded Flipboard and JauntVR, and now works at Apple. https://www.amazon.com/Official-Marimba-Guide-Bongo-Goodman/dp/1575212544 https://www.amazon.com/Official-Marimba-Guide-Bongo-Goodman/... I've written lots more about HyperLook, NeWS and SimCity: https://medium.com/@donhopkins/hyperlook-nee-hypernews-nee-goodnews-99f411e58ce4 https://medium.com/@donhopkins/hyperlook-nee-hypernews-nee-g... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19837817 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19837817 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18314265 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18314265 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20182294 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20182294 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19007885 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19007885
  - scarface74 7y ago
    There was actually some type of Gopher server built on top of HyperCard. I don’t know all of the technical details, but my first paid program was a college that asked me to port a freeware Hypercard chat app I wrote to it.
- DonHopkins 7y ago
  While there was a debate at the time about whether HyperCard was truly "Hypertext" or a "User Interface Design Tool" or a "Personal Database" or just how to classify it, the much more important thing was that it was not just a browser, but also an authoring tool, that enabled regular users to switch back and forth between browse mode and edit mode WHILE they were using it, and empowered users as authors. This is in stark contrast with the other hypertext browsers, authoring tools, and user interface design tools of the time (the cutting edge of which was the NeXT Interface Builder), that made a distinction between "run time" and "design time", and did not enable ordinary users to switch into design or edit mode while the normal application was running, which was absolutely essential to HyperCard. At the beginning of the web, browsers did not have the ability to author hypertext (and server-side authoring tools like Medium or even AJAX-y client-side authoring tools did not exist yet). So authoring tools (and user interface editing tools) were big and expensive and complex and not user friendly, and there was often a compilation step between editing and browsing in a different program, so you couldn't just pop into edit mode and tweak the actual specification then pop back into browsing like you could do with HyperCard. Eventually Netscape and Internet Explorer got some shitty half-assed WYSIWYG editing abilities that were sub-par, and produced terrible HTML, and couldn't be applied to any web page, and required a lot of other user interface support to be usable even for the most trivial kinds of editing, but that was a far cry from the comprehensive fully integrated high fidelity WYSIWYG browsing/editing tool that HyperCard was from day one. In fact, one of the earliest tools that enabled anyone, even children, to author and publish their own interactive dynamic web applications with graphics, text, and even forms and persistent databases, was actually based on HyperCard and the MacHTTP/WebStar web browser on the Mac: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16226209 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16226209 >One of the coolest early applications of server side scripting was integrating HyperCard with MacHTTP/WebStar, such that you could publish live interactive HyperCard stacks on the web! Since it was based on good old HyperCard, it was one of the first scriptable web authoring tools that normal people and even children could actually use! [8] >[8] MacHTTP / WebStar from StarNine by Chuck Shotton, and LiveCard HyperCard stack publisher: CGI and AppleScript: http://www.drdobbs.com/web-development/cgi-and-applescript/184409741 http://www.drdobbs.com/web-development/cgi-and-applescript/1... >Cal discusses the Macintosh as an Internet platform, then describes how you can use the AppleScript language for writing CGI applications that run on Macintosh servers. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7865263 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7865263 MacHTTP / WebStar from StarNine by Chuck Shotton! He was also VP of Engineering at Quarterdeck, another pioneering company. https://web.archive.org/web/20110705053055/http://www.astronomy.pomona.edu/archeo/WebSTAR%20Doc.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20110705053055/http://www.astron... http://infomotions.com/musings/tricks/manuscript/0800-machttp.html http://infomotions.com/musings/tricks/manuscript/0800-machtt... http://tidbits.com/article/6292 http://tidbits.com/article/6292 It had an AppleScript / OSA API that let you write handlers for responding to web hits in other languages that supported AppleScript. I used it to integrate ScriptX with the web: http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/lang/scriptx/scriptx-www.html http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/lang/scriptx/scriptx-www.htm... The coolest thing somebody did with WebStar was to integrate it with HyperCard so you could actually publish live INTERACTIVE HyperCard stacks on the web, that you could see as images you could click on to follow links, and followed by html form elements corresponding to the text fields, radio buttons, checkboxes, drop down menus, scrolling lists, etc in the HyperCard stack that you could use in the browser to interactive with live HyperCard pages! That was the earliest easiest way that non-programmers and even kids could both not just create graphical web pages, but publish live interactive apps on the web! Using HyperCard as a CGI application http://aaa-proteins.uni-graz.at/HyperCGI.html http://aaa-proteins.uni-graz.at/HyperCGI.html https://web.archive.org/web/20021013161709/http://pfhyper.com/hcfaq/hcfaq4.html https://web.archive.org/web/20021013161709/http://pfhyper.co... http://www.drdobbs.com/web-development/cgi-and-applescript/184409741 http://www.drdobbs.com/web-development/cgi-and-applescript/1... https://web.archive.org/web/19990208235151/http://www.royalsoftware.com/descriptions/comments.html https://web.archive.org/web/19990208235151/http://www.royals... >Livecard has exceeded all expectations and allows me to serve a stack 8 years in the making and previously confined to individual hospitals running Apples. A whole Childrens Hospital and University Department of Child Health should now swing in behind me and this product will become core curriculum for our medical course. Your product will save lives starting early 1997. Well done. - Director, Emergency Medicine, Mater Childrens Hospital The following is taken from the LiveCard web site (http://www.royalsoftware.com): "LiveCard is a HyperCard add-on that enables remote users to browse and interact with HyperCard files, called "stacks", on your web server. Once installed, you'll be able to serve any HyperCard stack without extensive preparation - often with no preparation at all. This means you have all the advantages of HyperCard as part of your server solution, plus you can now serve those stacks to anyone on the Web, regardless of whether they're using a text- or graphics-based browser and regardless of their platform: Macintosh, Windows, UNIX, whatever." "LiveCard implements a CGI (Common Gateway Interface) between Macintosh servers, such as WebStar, and HyperCard. It makes the HyperCard interface available as high-resolution, compressed image-maps and HTML form elements, and transforms user gestures in a web browser to a format HyperCard can understand. LiveCard translates between HTML, HTTP, and HyperCard "on the fly," requiring little or no preparation of the HyperCard stack. LiveCard generates HTML dynamically - as stack content and functionality changes, these changes are reflected live in the remote users browser." What does this mean for you? Well, if you have access to a Macintosh web server running WebStar, MacHTTP, or similar server software that is cgi-aware, you can serve your stacks using LiveCard. LiveCard can generate an HTML forms page using the text fields on the card, an image map with stack graphics and buttons that responds to user clicks (although the buttons can't highlight), or a combination of the two. In addition, each generated page has a header and footer that can be set by scripting...and is HTML aware. This gives an incredible amount of flexibility. Note that LiveCard requires a Macintosh web server (not really a criticism... I love Mac servers...but you do have to have access to the server, and it *has* to be a Mac, since LiveCard is HyperCard-based). And to fully realize the potential of LiveCard, you need to learn some new commands...but there aren't too many, and they make sense. Plus, the examples provided are very helpful. At this point in time LiveCard has a limited ability to work with QuickTime...you can kludge your way around the limitations, but if your stack relies on a lot of QuickTime, you have to do some serious modifications. Rumor has it that future versions will have more QuickTime functionality. But for static graphics (color spoken here!), there are no modifications. Where LiveCard really shines is in the area of forms and databases. I created a stack to be used for a course I was teaching...very simple, with about 5 text fields for the students name, college, major, and a topic they were interested in. I then just dragged this stack into my server folder where LiveCard resides. That was it. I called up my page on a browser (remember, any browser, any platform), went to the LiveCard page, clicked on the link to my stack (automatically created by LiveCard), and there was a forms-based page with all of the fields...including their labels. I filled the page out and hit submit. Voila...the data appeared on the stack residing on my server. Now that is cool. Pros: Can serve your stack mostly without modification. Can use externals in the stack. Browser is *completely* platform independent since a plug-in is not required. Data can be easily transferred between web page and stack. Leverages existing HyperCard stacks, especially databases and order processing. Cons: Requires a Macintosh web server. Limited ability to work with QuickTime. Can be a tad slow. Lose button highlights and card transitions. 3. Convert your stack to a SuperCard project. Allegiant (makers of SuperCard - http://www.allegiant.com) has recently released Roadster, which is a plug-in for Netscape navigator. Roadster is in public beta at this time (December '96), and is available for both Mac *AND* Windows 95. Can anyone say cross-platform? Before you get too excited, remember that you first have to convert your HyperCard stack into a SuperCard project. This is fairly painless however...unless you use externals. Externals present two problems for the SuperCard/Roadster approach...they don't always convert, and more importantly, at this time Roadster does not support *any* XCMD's. This is due to security concerns (you could do some nasty damage to a client computer...kinda like a java applet gone bad). A future intranet version of Roadster may show up that supports externals. Another potential problem is that Roadster only supports a single window. Now this might not be a problem for HyperCarders, since one window is the norm. But for dedicated SuperCard people that have grown used to multiple windows in projects, some tinkering has to be done. Since Roadster is a plug-in, you get some more good news and bad news. The bad news is that people have to download the plug-in and install it into their Netscape Plug-ins folder before they can view your project. The good news is the plug-in is free, and your project runs in the browser exactly as it does on the desktop...buttons highlight, transitions work, etc... And perhaps even more importantly, Roadster is available for Windows, so you can finally get your stack into the hands of the unfortunate Intel-laden masses. Pros: Project looks and runs just like on the desktop. Cross-platform. Ability to transfer information via forms commands. Ability to cache and preload graphics. Very good with external media such as QuickTime, audio, etc. Cons: Have to convert your stack. Browser requires plug-in. Lose all functionality of externals.
spectramax 7y ago
> Inspired by a mind-expanding LSD journey in 1985, I designed the HyperCard authoring system that enabled non-programmers to make their own interactive media. I want to do this badly. Has anyone taken LSD here on HN? What can you share about this, almost sounds like an urban myth, claim that one can have revolutionary ideas, profound realizations that otherwise cannot be had?
- enneff 7y ago
  Not a myth. Plenty of information available about it online and in books. Look up Timothy Leary who was a pioneer of LSD use.
  - kick 7y ago
    Or, better, read Be Here Now. I recommend it every chance I get: never have had a friend who's disliked it. It has a few anecdotes on Leary, and it's probably influenced Atkinson far more than Leary has (Jobs recommended it a bunch, and, in his own (paraphrased) words, there once was a time where every college student in America had read Be Here Now).
- JohnBooty 7y ago
  Have not myself. Many of my friends have. The revelations are often profound and positive but directly tangible results like "LSD --> Hypercard" seem to be quite the exception and I suspect Atkinson left out many steps for the sake of brevity. Standard psychedelic advice is to try them with experienced friends if at all possible when getting started. Trips can also be bad and scary (and sometimes, that is a necessary step on the road to positive change)
  - travisjungroth 7y ago
    I dream of someone taking psychedelic drugs and coming back with an invention completely beyond their capabilities and a memory of it being gifted. I don’t mean a talented scientist being inspired to make HyperCard. I want a cashier to be handed the plans for a more efficient rocket.
DonHopkins 7y ago
I recently posted these thoughts about Bill Atkinson, and links to articles and a recent interview he gave to Brad Myers' user interface class at CMU: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21726302 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21726302 Bill Atkinson is the humblest, sweetest, most astronomically talented guy -- practically the opposite of Rony Abovitz! I think they're on very different drugs. The Psychedelic Inspiration For Hypercard, by Bill Atkinson, as told to Leo Laporte. "In 1985 I swallowed a tiny fleck of gelatin containing a medium dose of LSD, and I spent most of the night sitting on a concrete park bench outside my home in Los Gatos, California." ... https://www.mondo2000.com/2018/06/18/the-inspiration-for-hypercard/ https://www.mondo2000.com/2018/06/18/the-inspiration-for-hyp... Full interview with lots more details about the development of HyperCard: https://twit.tv/shows/triangulation/episodes/247?autostart=false https://twit.tv/shows/triangulation/episodes/247?autostart=f... Bill Atkinson's guest lecture in Brad Meyer's CMU 05-640 Interaction Techniques class, Spring 2019, Feb 4, 2019: https://scs.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=25053106-2187-4cde-9981-a9eb002aa4e8 https://scs.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=... Including polaroids of early Lisa development. About PhotoCard: http://www.billatkinson.com/aboutPhotoCard.html http://www.billatkinson.com/aboutPhotoCard.html PhotoCard by Bill Atkinson is a free app available from the iTunes App store, that allows you to create custom postcards using Bill's nature photos or your own personal photos, then send them by email or postal mail from your iPad, iPhone or iPod touch. Bill Atkinson, Mac software legend and world renowned nature photographer, has created an innovative application that redefines how people create and send postcards. With PhotoCard you can make dazzling, high resolution postcards on your iPad, iPhone or iPod touch, and send them on-the-spot, through email or the US Postal Service. The app is amazingly easy to use. To create a PhotoCard, select one of Bill's nature photos or one of your own personal photos. Then, flip the card over to type your message. For a fun touch, jazz up your PhotoCard with decorative stickers and stamps. If you're emailing your card, it can even include an audible greeting. When you've finished your creation, send it off to any email or postal address in the world!
- pvg 7y ago
  Was this bit about LSD and Hypercard covered before what seems like a 2016 interview and some later articles? So much has been written about HyperCard (and MacPaint and QuickDraw) I'm wondering if I somehow managed to miss it in all that material.
acqq 7y ago
The article was written and published in 2018 and needs (2018) in the title here on HN. Also the date in the article header "1979" is a typo, as the ID on the picture proves. That one should refer to 1978, but of course can't be changed here.
- kick 7y ago
  Oh, wow, nice eye! I was mistaken thinking 1979+40=2019 when it was actually 1978+40=2018. Can't edit it now, though, sorry.
decasteve 7y ago
So many articles come along discussing his work without actually mentioning his name. I think Bill is one of those contributors to technology that are often underestimated. Anecdote: Steve Jobs came up to him standing in line to buy the original iPhone and said to him, “Bill, I already sent you one!” Bill responded, “But I need three more!”
- ksec 7y ago
  >Steve Jobs came up to him standing in line to buy the original iPhone and said to him, “Bill, I already sent you one!” Bill responded, “But I need three more!” I LOLed, Any Source on that? Great Story.
  - decasteve 7y ago
    It was in an interview Bill gave a few years back. That story stuck out in my mind but I don’t remember the interviewer.
machinecoffee 7y ago
On a slightly related note, I have to say I love the whole folklore website. It adds a really human face to the fascinating developments in IT at that time, and a lot of that I think comes from Andy Hertzfeld who tells a story really well.
hcs 7y ago
> Some say Steve used me, but I say he harnessed and motivated me, and drew out my best creative energy. Oh, to be so used.
dep_b 7y ago
A had a bit of a chuckle watching this video mentioned elsewhere in the comments: https://scs.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=25053106-2187-4cde-9981-a9eb002aa4e8 https://scs.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=... So around 5:10 he starts to explain why the soft keys they thought to use were such a bad idea, because they would relabel with changing contexts but the user never would read the label again. That's basically one of the major problems with the TouchBar.
- mistersquid 7y ago
  > So around 5:10 he starts to explain why the soft keys they thought to use were such a bad idea, because they would relabel with changing contexts but the user never would read the label again. > That's basically one of the major problems with the TouchBar. The soft keys Atkinson describes are quite a bit different than the UI of the Touch Bar. For many softwares, Touch Bar elements change shape, size, and color as well as text. For example, in QuickTime Player opening a video shows a play button, a timeline/scrubber, and panel for brightness, volume, and Siri. Tapping the brightness button hides all the other elements and expands the brightness button into a slider with a dismissal "x". Tapping the "x" restores the controls to their original state. There is little (no) possibility of touching a button whose text label has changed in this case. Other apps, like Mail, which do have changing text labels are dynamic enough that most (?) users would not be likely to tap a button by mistake due to a changing label. In summary, Touch Bar elements are much more varied than what Atkinson describes with the Lisa prototype. The two don't present comparable usability models, so criticizing the Touch Bar based on how soft keys worked on the Lisa prototype doesn't really make sense.
  - dep_b 7y ago
    The problem with putting keys on the keyboard that radically change depending on context is that you cannot use them from memory just like the other keys. Of course CMD+C doesn't copy when you didn't select anything nor will CMD+W close a tab in a tabless application but when I want to lower the volume on a TouchBarless Mac it's always the same key in the same place while it might exist or not exist depending on the application I'm in. Perhaps in Final Cut Pro I'm not able to lower the volume anymore because there's a video scrubber in the place of that key instead. So I cannot depend on that key anymore.
davebryand 7y ago
I’d love to understand how much of a role psychedelics in the creation of Apple’s story arc. Does anyone have information about where this has been discussed? Thanks!
- flir 7y ago
  I haven't read my copy yet, but What the Dormouse Said looks about right. John Markoff.
  - lioeters 7y ago
    Oops, didn't see before I commented that you'd mentioned the same book. I second this recommendation, it's a fun read.
- lioeters 7y ago
  The following book is in that direction: What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_the_Dormouse_Said https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_the_Dormouse_Said
- mistrial9 7y ago
  It might be useful to understand early Apple Inc -- as an Apple II company, then secondly as a Macintosh company. The former was very 'California' with health and folksy undertones, but later came money-at-a-large-scale and waves of corporate hires that enabled the corporate side. So you have the California folksy (plus yes, psychedelics/art/education core) base in Phase I, adding large, expensive structure and people who were professionals at doing that, in Phase II. The fuels of market success add to the constant growth, yet the California core is still in the fabric of the culture -- that was the Macintosh era. In Phase II, 'creatives' now have modern cubicles to work with computers -- HyperCard, typography and desktop publishing, awareness of the media business (LA) and some interaction with LA, but definitely print itself, worldwide. The printed word had a significance that is hard to explain if you only know a post-Internet world. So Apple was in education, print, media, and also (they thought) business. You might ask similarly, what was the role of psychedelics in Hollywood? of course it was there, but to be a business, you had the business people, who were not-at-all about expanded consciousness, but competitive and territorially aggressive, ego-driven, etc. Same but different at corporate Phase II Apple. By the time of the Macintosh, a feeling of Big Corporation was in the air already, and the tie-dye was not often worn on the outside. Steve must have taken psychedelics, but was way too arrogant, aggressive and lets say it, dangerous (he was at NeXT in Fremont by then). Steve personally traded tie-dye for scary and intimidating black luxury cars early on. So how do you categorize that ?
slavapestov 7y ago
The source code to MacPaint and QuickDraw: https://computerhistory.org/blog/macpaint-and-quickdraw-source-code/?key=macpaint-and-quickdraw-source-code https://computerhistory.org/blog/macpaint-and-quickdraw-sour...
- kick 7y ago
  Amazing find! Thanks for sharing!
jonstewart 7y ago
I credit HyperCard with slyly teaching me many of the principles of OOP when I was a kid. Thank you, Bill.
thomasfl 7y ago
HyperCard was a great idea. In 1989 Bill Appleton released SuperCard. SuperCard had support for networking and better support for colors. I wrote an email client for it. If SuperCard only had been able to download supercard code from the net, it could have become what the web is today.
cpr 7y ago
Fun side note: Our Xdata data publishing plugin for QuarkXPress uses HyperTalk as its scripting language, since we shipped it first 30 years ago. Still shipping, though XPress is dying...
- cpr 7y ago
  Though our equivalent plugin for InDesign is still going strong after 20 years...
ksec 7y ago
Why did Apple dropped Pascal and went with Objective-C instead? Market Pressure?
- DonHopkins 7y ago
  Because they bought NeXT. The actual question is why did NeXT choose to use Objective C? The answer is C++.
- mikelevins 7y ago
  It went with Objective-C because of Nextstep. Apple bought NeXT because NeXT had a real operating system and Apple didn't. Apple had burned a few years and a hundred million dollars or so trying to build a proper operating system, and they weren't very happy with what they had to show for it. So they bought NeXT. The application layer of Nextstep was written in Objective-C. So Objective-C became Apple's new application-programming language. By the time of the NeXT acquisition, Pascal was already out of fashion. Apple's officially-blessed application framework, MacApp, was originally written in Object Pascal, but Pascal wasn't particularly popular with programmers inside or outside of Apple. People liked C better, and most of them used it whenever they could. When it came time to plan for development of MacApp 3.0, the development team was hearing a lot of complaints about Pascal and hopeful wishes about C. I remember a meeting where Steve Friedrich, the lead developer on MacApp, wrote down all the options he could think of on a whiteboard and crossed them off one-by-one. All the objections boiled down to what programmers inside and outside Apple would put up with. The last thing left on the list was C++, so MacApp 3.0 was written in C++. Only a handful of programming-language nerds complained about the change. Ironically, one of the complainers was Steve himself. He was a Smalltalk guy, but he was there to give Mac developers what they wanted, not to push his linguistic preferences.

219 points by kick 7y ago

> Apple published HyperCard in 1987, six years before Mosaic, the first web browser Mosaic was the first Mac and Windows web browser (1992-93) but the first UNIX/NeXT web browser was WWW, 1990-91. Bill Atkinson (and HyperCard) are awesome though. Imagine a networked HyperCard ushering in the web in 1987; or Intermedia for that matter in 1985; or much earlier in the 20th century a la Vannevar Bush (1930s) or Ted Nelson (1960s); or if Netscape had focused on Gopher, WAIS, FTP, and/or NNTP and dropped HTTP as being superfluous.

fanf2 7y ago
Mosaic was the first browser to support inline images and the <img> tag.
mamp 7y ago
I used and programmed HyperCard quite a bit back in the day (even C extensions into HyperCard!). The jump from HyperCard to web is bigger than it appears from the UI: - to make HC work on the hardware at the time it had quite a lot of optimised MC68000 assembly so it wasn't very extensible which was why it didn't take off like visual basic i.e. you could build stacks but not really apps - there was no declarative format, stacks were binary files - It didn't support networking at all as far as I can remember - Networking at Apple based on AppleTalk so their thinking was very much in the local network, in fact their TCP/IP extension (not built into the OS at the time) was not very well supported. HyperCard was great, but it was never designed with a browser model in mind, mainly sharing binary stacks between people.
- paulrpotts 7y ago
  All very true - I also wrote XCMD/XFCN plug-ins back in the day, and my first published technical articles, in MacTutor and Washington Apple Pi magazine, were about how to do that. HyperCard had more innovations that I miss. One of them was the ability to paint on the card background and foreground layers separately. This meant that you could cover black pixels in the background with white pixels in the foreground. The HyperTalk language was kind of an oddball, quirky mess; it was designed to closely resemble English, but this actually tended to make it harder to come up with just the right syntax to do what you wanted. But that object-oriented model was carried over into AppleScript, and the whole scripting model for writing scriptable applications. It was not exactly easy to write code that would follow the OSA scripting model, but applications that supported it could be "puppeted" to do some amazing stuff. For example, I wrote a C++ program in PowerPlant which would "puppet" Quark XPress to generate customized newsletters. Atkinson deserves a lot of credit for making a 68000 do things people could barely believe could be done without custom graphics hardware, and his whole region model (described in a patent) is amazing. And you can now browse the source code for MacPaint and QuickDraw: https://computerhistory.org/blog/macpaint-and-quickdraw-source-code/ https://computerhistory.org/blog/macpaint-and-quickdraw-sour... It's not really legible if you don't have some expertise in 68000 assembly language, but even if you don't, it's still a model of clarity and an inspiration.
  - jandrese 7y ago
    Hypertalk (the language of HyperCard) had a lot of syntactic sugar, but was pretty easy to get started with even with almost no programming background. For example, a very simple button might have a script that looks like: on mouseUp ask "What is your name?" put it into card field "Name" end mouseUp You could get pretty far by reading scripts and trying things out in Hypercard. I also tend to think that the idea of network aware Hypercard sounds super cool, but would have been a security nightmare. Hypercard wasn't written in an era of adversarial coding, it would have been knocked over 10 different ways every day by hackers. Code and content were heavily mixed together and there was no permission model beyond preventing people from editing your stacks by accident. Every stack or even card you loaded would be downloading and executing code.
    - DonHopkins 7y ago
      HyperCard inspired Arthur van Hoff to develop a network aware version of HyperCard in PostScript for James Gosling's networked-PostScript-based NeWS Window System. It was originally called "GoodNeWS", then called "HyperNeWS", then finally released as a product called "HyperLook", which I worked on with Arthur and used to port SimCity to X11/NeWS on SunOS/Solaris. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_van_Hoff https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_van_Hoff Arthur later went on to Sun, wrote the Java compiler in Java, developed the AWT user interface toolkit, then formed Marimba with Kim Polesi and Jonathan Payne and others from the original Java team, where they developed Castanet and Bongo. https://www.wired.com/1996/11/es-marimba/ https://www.wired.com/1996/11/es-marimba/ >1996-11-01: Tuning in to Marimba. Kim Polese wants you to upgrade your HTML-based browser to a more interactive, more TV-like, Java-based "tuner" by the name of Castanet. >Marimba's first product, scheduled to be announced in early October, is the punnily named Castanet, which aims to push Java toward its full potential. Java was created to deliver interactive content over distributed networks, and its much-hyped arrival last year promised to completely change the way information and entertainment are delivered electronically. The first popular Java programs have been based on HTML - for example, the Java applets that lend some animation to boring Web pages. But Java doesn't need the Web to fly. It was designed to communicate over any kind of decentralized system. [...] Marimba developed Bongo, a Java-based gui toolkit / user interface editor / graphical environment, inspired by HyperCard (and HyperLook), which they used to develop and distribute interactive user interfaces over Castanet. https://people.apache.org/~jim/NewArchitect/webtech/1997/10/note/index.html https://people.apache.org/~jim/NewArchitect/webtech/1997/10/... >Feel the Beat with Marimba's Bongo, By Chris Baron >In 1996, four programmers from the original Java-development team left Sun to form Marimba and produce industrial-strength Java-development tools for user interface and application administration. Bongo, one of Marimba's two shipping products, allows developers to create either a Java-application interface or a standalone Java-based application called a "presentation." A Bongo presentation resembles a HyperCard stack -- it allows developers to quickly create an application with a sophisticated user interface, but without the tedious programming of directly coding in Java or C/C++. Bongo's nonprogramming, visual approach makes it ideal for producing simple applications that don't involve a lot of processing, such as product demonstrations, user-interface prototypes, and training applications. Bongo is fully integrated with Castanet, Marimba's other product, a technology for remotely installing and updating Java applications. Bongo was unique at the time in that it actually let you edit and dynamically compile scripts for event handlers and "live code" at run-time (in contrast with other tools that required you to recompile and re-run the application to make changes to the user interface), which was made possible by calling back to the Java compiler (which Arthur had written before at Sun, so he knew how to integrate the compiler at runtime like a modern IDE would do). Without the ability to dynamically edit scripts at runtime (easy with an interpreted language like HyperTalk or PostScript or JavaScript, but trickier for a compiled language like Java), you can't hold a candle to HyperCard, because interactive scripting is an essential feature. Danny Goodman, who wrote the book on HyperCard, also wrote a book about Bongo. Arthur later founded Flipboard and JauntVR, and now works at Apple. https://www.amazon.com/Official-Marimba-Guide-Bongo-Goodman/dp/1575212544 https://www.amazon.com/Official-Marimba-Guide-Bongo-Goodman/... I've written lots more about HyperLook, NeWS and SimCity: https://medium.com/@donhopkins/hyperlook-nee-hypernews-nee-goodnews-99f411e58ce4 https://medium.com/@donhopkins/hyperlook-nee-hypernews-nee-g... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19837817 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19837817 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18314265 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18314265 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20182294 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20182294 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19007885 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19007885
- scarface74 7y ago
  There was actually some type of Gopher server built on top of HyperCard. I don’t know all of the technical details, but my first paid program was a college that asked me to port a freeware Hypercard chat app I wrote to it.
DonHopkins 7y ago
While there was a debate at the time about whether HyperCard was truly "Hypertext" or a "User Interface Design Tool" or a "Personal Database" or just how to classify it, the much more important thing was that it was not just a browser, but also an authoring tool, that enabled regular users to switch back and forth between browse mode and edit mode WHILE they were using it, and empowered users as authors. This is in stark contrast with the other hypertext browsers, authoring tools, and user interface design tools of the time (the cutting edge of which was the NeXT Interface Builder), that made a distinction between "run time" and "design time", and did not enable ordinary users to switch into design or edit mode while the normal application was running, which was absolutely essential to HyperCard. At the beginning of the web, browsers did not have the ability to author hypertext (and server-side authoring tools like Medium or even AJAX-y client-side authoring tools did not exist yet). So authoring tools (and user interface editing tools) were big and expensive and complex and not user friendly, and there was often a compilation step between editing and browsing in a different program, so you couldn't just pop into edit mode and tweak the actual specification then pop back into browsing like you could do with HyperCard. Eventually Netscape and Internet Explorer got some shitty half-assed WYSIWYG editing abilities that were sub-par, and produced terrible HTML, and couldn't be applied to any web page, and required a lot of other user interface support to be usable even for the most trivial kinds of editing, but that was a far cry from the comprehensive fully integrated high fidelity WYSIWYG browsing/editing tool that HyperCard was from day one. In fact, one of the earliest tools that enabled anyone, even children, to author and publish their own interactive dynamic web applications with graphics, text, and even forms and persistent databases, was actually based on HyperCard and the MacHTTP/WebStar web browser on the Mac: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16226209 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16226209 >One of the coolest early applications of server side scripting was integrating HyperCard with MacHTTP/WebStar, such that you could publish live interactive HyperCard stacks on the web! Since it was based on good old HyperCard, it was one of the first scriptable web authoring tools that normal people and even children could actually use! [8] >[8] MacHTTP / WebStar from StarNine by Chuck Shotton, and LiveCard HyperCard stack publisher: CGI and AppleScript: http://www.drdobbs.com/web-development/cgi-and-applescript/184409741 http://www.drdobbs.com/web-development/cgi-and-applescript/1... >Cal discusses the Macintosh as an Internet platform, then describes how you can use the AppleScript language for writing CGI applications that run on Macintosh servers. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7865263 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7865263 MacHTTP / WebStar from StarNine by Chuck Shotton! He was also VP of Engineering at Quarterdeck, another pioneering company. https://web.archive.org/web/20110705053055/http://www.astronomy.pomona.edu/archeo/WebSTAR%20Doc.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20110705053055/http://www.astron... http://infomotions.com/musings/tricks/manuscript/0800-machttp.html http://infomotions.com/musings/tricks/manuscript/0800-machtt... http://tidbits.com/article/6292 http://tidbits.com/article/6292 It had an AppleScript / OSA API that let you write handlers for responding to web hits in other languages that supported AppleScript. I used it to integrate ScriptX with the web: http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/lang/scriptx/scriptx-www.html http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/lang/scriptx/scriptx-www.htm... The coolest thing somebody did with WebStar was to integrate it with HyperCard so you could actually publish live INTERACTIVE HyperCard stacks on the web, that you could see as images you could click on to follow links, and followed by html form elements corresponding to the text fields, radio buttons, checkboxes, drop down menus, scrolling lists, etc in the HyperCard stack that you could use in the browser to interactive with live HyperCard pages! That was the earliest easiest way that non-programmers and even kids could both not just create graphical web pages, but publish live interactive apps on the web! Using HyperCard as a CGI application http://aaa-proteins.uni-graz.at/HyperCGI.html http://aaa-proteins.uni-graz.at/HyperCGI.html https://web.archive.org/web/20021013161709/http://pfhyper.com/hcfaq/hcfaq4.html https://web.archive.org/web/20021013161709/http://pfhyper.co... http://www.drdobbs.com/web-development/cgi-and-applescript/184409741 http://www.drdobbs.com/web-development/cgi-and-applescript/1... https://web.archive.org/web/19990208235151/http://www.royalsoftware.com/descriptions/comments.html https://web.archive.org/web/19990208235151/http://www.royals... >Livecard has exceeded all expectations and allows me to serve a stack 8 years in the making and previously confined to individual hospitals running Apples. A whole Childrens Hospital and University Department of Child Health should now swing in behind me and this product will become core curriculum for our medical course. Your product will save lives starting early 1997. Well done. - Director, Emergency Medicine, Mater Childrens Hospital The following is taken from the LiveCard web site (http://www.royalsoftware.com): "LiveCard is a HyperCard add-on that enables remote users to browse and interact with HyperCard files, called "stacks", on your web server. Once installed, you'll be able to serve any HyperCard stack without extensive preparation - often with no preparation at all. This means you have all the advantages of HyperCard as part of your server solution, plus you can now serve those stacks to anyone on the Web, regardless of whether they're using a text- or graphics-based browser and regardless of their platform: Macintosh, Windows, UNIX, whatever." "LiveCard implements a CGI (Common Gateway Interface) between Macintosh servers, such as WebStar, and HyperCard. It makes the HyperCard interface available as high-resolution, compressed image-maps and HTML form elements, and transforms user gestures in a web browser to a format HyperCard can understand. LiveCard translates between HTML, HTTP, and HyperCard "on the fly," requiring little or no preparation of the HyperCard stack. LiveCard generates HTML dynamically - as stack content and functionality changes, these changes are reflected live in the remote users browser." What does this mean for you? Well, if you have access to a Macintosh web server running WebStar, MacHTTP, or similar server software that is cgi-aware, you can serve your stacks using LiveCard. LiveCard can generate an HTML forms page using the text fields on the card, an image map with stack graphics and buttons that responds to user clicks (although the buttons can't highlight), or a combination of the two. In addition, each generated page has a header and footer that can be set by scripting...and is HTML aware. This gives an incredible amount of flexibility. Note that LiveCard requires a Macintosh web server (not really a criticism... I love Mac servers...but you do have to have access to the server, and it *has* to be a Mac, since LiveCard is HyperCard-based). And to fully realize the potential of LiveCard, you need to learn some new commands...but there aren't too many, and they make sense. Plus, the examples provided are very helpful. At this point in time LiveCard has a limited ability to work with QuickTime...you can kludge your way around the limitations, but if your stack relies on a lot of QuickTime, you have to do some serious modifications. Rumor has it that future versions will have more QuickTime functionality. But for static graphics (color spoken here!), there are no modifications. Where LiveCard really shines is in the area of forms and databases. I created a stack to be used for a course I was teaching...very simple, with about 5 text fields for the students name, college, major, and a topic they were interested in. I then just dragged this stack into my server folder where LiveCard resides. That was it. I called up my page on a browser (remember, any browser, any platform), went to the LiveCard page, clicked on the link to my stack (automatically created by LiveCard), and there was a forms-based page with all of the fields...including their labels. I filled the page out and hit submit. Voila...the data appeared on the stack residing on my server. Now that is cool. Pros: Can serve your stack mostly without modification. Can use externals in the stack. Browser is *completely* platform independent since a plug-in is not required. Data can be easily transferred between web page and stack. Leverages existing HyperCard stacks, especially databases and order processing. Cons: Requires a Macintosh web server. Limited ability to work with QuickTime. Can be a tad slow. Lose button highlights and card transitions. 3. Convert your stack to a SuperCard project. Allegiant (makers of SuperCard - http://www.allegiant.com) has recently released Roadster, which is a plug-in for Netscape navigator. Roadster is in public beta at this time (December '96), and is available for both Mac *AND* Windows 95. Can anyone say cross-platform? Before you get too excited, remember that you first have to convert your HyperCard stack into a SuperCard project. This is fairly painless however...unless you use externals. Externals present two problems for the SuperCard/Roadster approach...they don't always convert, and more importantly, at this time Roadster does not support *any* XCMD's. This is due to security concerns (you could do some nasty damage to a client computer...kinda like a java applet gone bad). A future intranet version of Roadster may show up that supports externals. Another potential problem is that Roadster only supports a single window. Now this might not be a problem for HyperCarders, since one window is the norm. But for dedicated SuperCard people that have grown used to multiple windows in projects, some tinkering has to be done. Since Roadster is a plug-in, you get some more good news and bad news. The bad news is that people have to download the plug-in and install it into their Netscape Plug-ins folder before they can view your project. The good news is the plug-in is free, and your project runs in the browser exactly as it does on the desktop...buttons highlight, transitions work, etc... And perhaps even more importantly, Roadster is available for Windows, so you can finally get your stack into the hands of the unfortunate Intel-laden masses. Pros: Project looks and runs just like on the desktop. Cross-platform. Ability to transfer information via forms commands. Ability to cache and preload graphics. Very good with external media such as QuickTime, audio, etc. Cons: Have to convert your stack. Browser requires plug-in. Lose all functionality of externals.

spectramax 7y ago

> Inspired by a mind-expanding LSD journey in 1985, I designed the HyperCard authoring system that enabled non-programmers to make their own interactive media. I want to do this badly. Has anyone taken LSD here on HN? What can you share about this, almost sounds like an urban myth, claim that one can have revolutionary ideas, profound realizations that otherwise cannot be had?

enneff 7y ago
Not a myth. Plenty of information available about it online and in books. Look up Timothy Leary who was a pioneer of LSD use.
- kick 7y ago
  Or, better, read Be Here Now. I recommend it every chance I get: never have had a friend who's disliked it. It has a few anecdotes on Leary, and it's probably influenced Atkinson far more than Leary has (Jobs recommended it a bunch, and, in his own (paraphrased) words, there once was a time where every college student in America had read Be Here Now).
JohnBooty 7y ago
Have not myself. Many of my friends have. The revelations are often profound and positive but directly tangible results like "LSD --> Hypercard" seem to be quite the exception and I suspect Atkinson left out many steps for the sake of brevity. Standard psychedelic advice is to try them with experienced friends if at all possible when getting started. Trips can also be bad and scary (and sometimes, that is a necessary step on the road to positive change)
- travisjungroth 7y ago
  I dream of someone taking psychedelic drugs and coming back with an invention completely beyond their capabilities and a memory of it being gifted. I don’t mean a talented scientist being inspired to make HyperCard. I want a cashier to be handed the plans for a more efficient rocket.

DonHopkins 7y ago

I recently posted these thoughts about Bill Atkinson, and links to articles and a recent interview he gave to Brad Myers' user interface class at CMU: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21726302 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21726302 Bill Atkinson is the humblest, sweetest, most astronomically talented guy -- practically the opposite of Rony Abovitz! I think they're on very different drugs. The Psychedelic Inspiration For Hypercard, by Bill Atkinson, as told to Leo Laporte. "In 1985 I swallowed a tiny fleck of gelatin containing a medium dose of LSD, and I spent most of the night sitting on a concrete park bench outside my home in Los Gatos, California." ... https://www.mondo2000.com/2018/06/18/the-inspiration-for-hypercard/ https://www.mondo2000.com/2018/06/18/the-inspiration-for-hyp... Full interview with lots more details about the development of HyperCard: https://twit.tv/shows/triangulation/episodes/247?autostart=false https://twit.tv/shows/triangulation/episodes/247?autostart=f... Bill Atkinson's guest lecture in Brad Meyer's CMU 05-640 Interaction Techniques class, Spring 2019, Feb 4, 2019: https://scs.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=25053106-2187-4cde-9981-a9eb002aa4e8 https://scs.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=... Including polaroids of early Lisa development. About PhotoCard: http://www.billatkinson.com/aboutPhotoCard.html http://www.billatkinson.com/aboutPhotoCard.html PhotoCard by Bill Atkinson is a free app available from the iTunes App store, that allows you to create custom postcards using Bill's nature photos or your own personal photos, then send them by email or postal mail from your iPad, iPhone or iPod touch. Bill Atkinson, Mac software legend and world renowned nature photographer, has created an innovative application that redefines how people create and send postcards. With PhotoCard you can make dazzling, high resolution postcards on your iPad, iPhone or iPod touch, and send them on-the-spot, through email or the US Postal Service. The app is amazingly easy to use. To create a PhotoCard, select one of Bill's nature photos or one of your own personal photos. Then, flip the card over to type your message. For a fun touch, jazz up your PhotoCard with decorative stickers and stamps. If you're emailing your card, it can even include an audible greeting. When you've finished your creation, send it off to any email or postal address in the world!

pvg 7y ago
Was this bit about LSD and Hypercard covered before what seems like a 2016 interview and some later articles? So much has been written about HyperCard (and MacPaint and QuickDraw) I'm wondering if I somehow managed to miss it in all that material.

acqq 7y ago

The article was written and published in 2018 and needs (2018) in the title here on HN. Also the date in the article header "1979" is a typo, as the ID on the picture proves. That one should refer to 1978, but of course can't be changed here.

kick 7y ago
Oh, wow, nice eye! I was mistaken thinking 1979+40=2019 when it was actually 1978+40=2018. Can't edit it now, though, sorry.

decasteve 7y ago

So many articles come along discussing his work without actually mentioning his name. I think Bill is one of those contributors to technology that are often underestimated. Anecdote: Steve Jobs came up to him standing in line to buy the original iPhone and said to him, “Bill, I already sent you one!” Bill responded, “But I need three more!”

ksec 7y ago
>Steve Jobs came up to him standing in line to buy the original iPhone and said to him, “Bill, I already sent you one!” Bill responded, “But I need three more!” I LOLed, Any Source on that? Great Story.
- decasteve 7y ago
  It was in an interview Bill gave a few years back. That story stuck out in my mind but I don’t remember the interviewer.

machinecoffee 7y ago

On a slightly related note, I have to say I love the whole folklore website. It adds a really human face to the fascinating developments in IT at that time, and a lot of that I think comes from Andy Hertzfeld who tells a story really well.

hcs 7y ago

> Some say Steve used me, but I say he harnessed and motivated me, and drew out my best creative energy. Oh, to be so used.

dep_b 7y ago

A had a bit of a chuckle watching this video mentioned elsewhere in the comments: https://scs.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=25053106-2187-4cde-9981-a9eb002aa4e8 https://scs.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=... So around 5:10 he starts to explain why the soft keys they thought to use were such a bad idea, because they would relabel with changing contexts but the user never would read the label again. That's basically one of the major problems with the TouchBar.

mistersquid 7y ago
> So around 5:10 he starts to explain why the soft keys they thought to use were such a bad idea, because they would relabel with changing contexts but the user never would read the label again. > That's basically one of the major problems with the TouchBar. The soft keys Atkinson describes are quite a bit different than the UI of the Touch Bar. For many softwares, Touch Bar elements change shape, size, and color as well as text. For example, in QuickTime Player opening a video shows a play button, a timeline/scrubber, and panel for brightness, volume, and Siri. Tapping the brightness button hides all the other elements and expands the brightness button into a slider with a dismissal "x". Tapping the "x" restores the controls to their original state. There is little (no) possibility of touching a button whose text label has changed in this case. Other apps, like Mail, which do have changing text labels are dynamic enough that most (?) users would not be likely to tap a button by mistake due to a changing label. In summary, Touch Bar elements are much more varied than what Atkinson describes with the Lisa prototype. The two don't present comparable usability models, so criticizing the Touch Bar based on how soft keys worked on the Lisa prototype doesn't really make sense.
- dep_b 7y ago
  The problem with putting keys on the keyboard that radically change depending on context is that you cannot use them from memory just like the other keys. Of course CMD+C doesn't copy when you didn't select anything nor will CMD+W close a tab in a tabless application but when I want to lower the volume on a TouchBarless Mac it's always the same key in the same place while it might exist or not exist depending on the application I'm in. Perhaps in Final Cut Pro I'm not able to lower the volume anymore because there's a video scrubber in the place of that key instead. So I cannot depend on that key anymore.

davebryand 7y ago

I’d love to understand how much of a role psychedelics in the creation of Apple’s story arc. Does anyone have information about where this has been discussed? Thanks!

flir 7y ago
I haven't read my copy yet, but What the Dormouse Said looks about right. John Markoff.
- lioeters 7y ago
  Oops, didn't see before I commented that you'd mentioned the same book. I second this recommendation, it's a fun read.
lioeters 7y ago
The following book is in that direction: What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_the_Dormouse_Said https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_the_Dormouse_Said
mistrial9 7y ago
It might be useful to understand early Apple Inc -- as an Apple II company, then secondly as a Macintosh company. The former was very 'California' with health and folksy undertones, but later came money-at-a-large-scale and waves of corporate hires that enabled the corporate side. So you have the California folksy (plus yes, psychedelics/art/education core) base in Phase I, adding large, expensive structure and people who were professionals at doing that, in Phase II. The fuels of market success add to the constant growth, yet the California core is still in the fabric of the culture -- that was the Macintosh era. In Phase II, 'creatives' now have modern cubicles to work with computers -- HyperCard, typography and desktop publishing, awareness of the media business (LA) and some interaction with LA, but definitely print itself, worldwide. The printed word had a significance that is hard to explain if you only know a post-Internet world. So Apple was in education, print, media, and also (they thought) business. You might ask similarly, what was the role of psychedelics in Hollywood? of course it was there, but to be a business, you had the business people, who were not-at-all about expanded consciousness, but competitive and territorially aggressive, ego-driven, etc. Same but different at corporate Phase II Apple. By the time of the Macintosh, a feeling of Big Corporation was in the air already, and the tie-dye was not often worn on the outside. Steve must have taken psychedelics, but was way too arrogant, aggressive and lets say it, dangerous (he was at NeXT in Fremont by then). Steve personally traded tie-dye for scary and intimidating black luxury cars early on. So how do you categorize that ?

slavapestov 7y ago

The source code to MacPaint and QuickDraw: https://computerhistory.org/blog/macpaint-and-quickdraw-source-code/?key=macpaint-and-quickdraw-source-code https://computerhistory.org/blog/macpaint-and-quickdraw-sour...

kick 7y ago
Amazing find! Thanks for sharing!

jonstewart 7y ago

I credit HyperCard with slyly teaching me many of the principles of OOP when I was a kid. Thank you, Bill.

thomasfl 7y ago

HyperCard was a great idea. In 1989 Bill Appleton released SuperCard. SuperCard had support for networking and better support for colors. I wrote an email client for it. If SuperCard only had been able to download supercard code from the net, it could have become what the web is today.

cpr 7y ago

Fun side note: Our Xdata data publishing plugin for QuarkXPress uses HyperTalk as its scripting language, since we shipped it first 30 years ago. Still shipping, though XPress is dying...

cpr 7y ago
Though our equivalent plugin for InDesign is still going strong after 20 years...

ksec 7y ago

Why did Apple dropped Pascal and went with Objective-C instead? Market Pressure?

DonHopkins 7y ago
Because they bought NeXT. The actual question is why did NeXT choose to use Objective C? The answer is C++.
mikelevins 7y ago
It went with Objective-C because of Nextstep. Apple bought NeXT because NeXT had a real operating system and Apple didn't. Apple had burned a few years and a hundred million dollars or so trying to build a proper operating system, and they weren't very happy with what they had to show for it. So they bought NeXT. The application layer of Nextstep was written in Objective-C. So Objective-C became Apple's new application-programming language. By the time of the NeXT acquisition, Pascal was already out of fashion. Apple's officially-blessed application framework, MacApp, was originally written in Object Pascal, but Pascal wasn't particularly popular with programmers inside or outside of Apple. People liked C better, and most of them used it whenever they could. When it came time to plan for development of MacApp 3.0, the development team was hearing a lot of complaints about Pascal and hopeful wishes about C. I remember a meeting where Steve Friedrich, the lead developer on MacApp, wrote down all the options he could think of on a whiteboard and crossed them off one-by-one. All the objections boiled down to what programmers inside and outside Apple would put up with. The last thing left on the list was C++, so MacApp 3.0 was written in C++. Only a handful of programming-language nerds complained about the change. Ironically, one of the complainers was Steve himself. He was a Smalltalk guy, but he was there to give Mac developers what they wanted, not to push his linguistic preferences.