Wow. One of the absolute greatest. The world truly is a different place because of Bill. Bill’s importance in the history of computing cannot be overstated. Hypercard is probably my favorite invention of his. So ahead of its time. Rest in peace Bill
Bill Atkinson has died
121–130 of 295 posts
Re: Bill Atkinson has died
#122From Walter Isaacson's _Steve Jobs_: > One of Bill Atkinson’s amazing feats (which we are so accustomed to nowadays that we rarely marvel at it) was to allow the windows on a screen to overlap so that the “top” one clipped into the ones “below” it. Atkinson made it possible to move these windows around, just like shuffling papers on a desk, with those below becoming visible or hidden as you moved the top ones. Of cou…
Bill Atkinson, all smiles as he receives applause from the audience for his work on Mac Paint:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhISGtLhPx4
Re: Bill Atkinson has died
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pretty awesome story, but also with a bit of dark lining. Of course any owner, and triple that for Jobs, loves over-competent guys who work themselves to the death, here almost literally. But that's not a recipe for personal happiness for most people, and most of us would not end up contributing revolutionary improvements even if done so. World needs awesome workers, and we also need ie awesome parents or just happy…
Pretty much. Most of us have creative itches to scratch that make us a bit miserable if we never get to pursue them, even if given a comfortable life. It’s circumstantial whether we get to pursue them as entrepreneurs or employees. The users or enjoyers of our work benefit either way.
Just to add on, some of us have creative itches that are not directly monetizable, and for which there may be no users or enjoyers of our work at all (if there are, all the better!).
Naturally I don’t expect to do such things for a living.
Re: Bill Atkinson has died
#124When I was on the ColorSync team at Apple we, the engineers, got an invite to his place-in-the-woods one day. I knew who he was at the time, but for some reason I felt I was more or less beholden to conversing only about color-related issues and how they applied to a computer workflow. Having retired, I have been kicking myself for some time not just chatting with him about ... whatever. He was at the time I met him…
There probably still isn't a good way to get that kind of dynamic range entirely in the digital domain. Oh, I'm sure the shortfall today is smaller, say maybe four or five stops versus probably eight or twelve back then. Nonetheless, I've done enough work in monochrome to recognize an occasional need to work around the same limitations he was, even though very few of my subjects are as demanding.
Re: Bill Atkinson has died
#125From Walter Isaacson's _Steve Jobs_: > One of Bill Atkinson’s amazing feats (which we are so accustomed to nowadays that we rarely marvel at it) was to allow the windows on a screen to overlap so that the “top” one clipped into the ones “below” it. Atkinson made it possible to move these windows around, just like shuffling papers on a desk, with those below becoming visible or hidden as you moved the top ones. Of cou…
Bill Atkinson, all smiles as he receives applause from the audience for his work on Mac Paint: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhISGtLhPx4
That's a great video. Everything he does gets applause and he is all (embarrassed?) grins.
Re: Bill Atkinson has died
#126From Walter Isaacson's _Steve Jobs_: > One of Bill Atkinson’s amazing feats (which we are so accustomed to nowadays that we rarely marvel at it) was to allow the windows on a screen to overlap so that the “top” one clipped into the ones “below” it. Atkinson made it possible to move these windows around, just like shuffling papers on a desk, with those below becoming visible or hidden as you moved the top ones. Of cou…
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Re: Bill Atkinson has died
#127When I was on the ColorSync team at Apple we, the engineers, got an invite to his place-in-the-woods one day. I knew who he was at the time, but for some reason I felt I was more or less beholden to conversing only about color-related issues and how they applied to a computer workflow. Having retired, I have been kicking myself for some time not just chatting with him about ... whatever. He was at the time I met him…
There probably still isn't a good way to get that kind of dynamic range entirely in the digital domain. Oh, I'm sure the shortfall today is smaller, say maybe four or five stops versus probably eight or twelve back then. Nonetheless, I've done enough work in monochrome to recognize an occasional need to work around the same limitations he was, even though very few of my subjects are as demanding.
I wish a good monochrome digital camera didn't cost a small fortune. And I'm too scared to try to remove the Bayer grid from a "color" CCD.
Seems that, without the color/Bayer thing, you could get an extra stop or two for low-light.
I had a crazy notion to make a camera around an astronomical CCD (often monochrome) but they're not cheap either — at least one with a good pixel count.
Re: Bill Atkinson has died
#128Some notable stories from Folklore.org: https://www.folklore.org/Joining_Apple_Computer.html https://www.folklore.org/Negative_2000_Lines_Of_Code.html --- something to bring up whenever lines of code as a metric is put forward https://www.folklore.org/Rosings_Rascals.html --- story of how the Macintosh Finder came to be https://www.folklore.org/I_Still_Remember_Regions.html --- surviving a car accident
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Re: Bill Atkinson has died
#129Re: Bill Atkinson has died
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
There probably still isn't a good way to get that kind of dynamic range entirely in the digital domain. Oh, I'm sure the shortfall today is smaller, say maybe four or five stops versus probably eight or twelve back then. Nonetheless, I've done enough work in monochrome to recognize an occasional need to work around the same limitations he was, even though very few of my subjects are as demanding.
I wish a good monochrome digital camera didn't cost a small fortune. And I'm too scared to try to remove the Bayer grid from a "color" CCD. Seems that, without the color/Bayer thing, you could get an extra stop or two for low-light. I had a crazy notion to make a camera around an astronomical CCD (often monochrome) but they're not cheap either — at least one with a good pixel count.
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