Photos: Sketching out the Mac
The Lisa user interface began to solidify in the early 1980s with ovals, "roundrects" and overlapping windows.
Apple celebrates 30 years
«Back to main storyEvolution of the Mac interface--Gallery 4
Bill Atkinson was Apple Computer's main developer of the user interface that first appeared on the Lisa and later on the Mac. A passionate photographer, Atkinson had the foresight in the late '70s and early '80s to document his UI work for Apple in a series of Polaroids.
The photos were published by another Mac pioneer, Andy Hertzfeld, in his book, "Revolution in the Valley: The Insanely Great Story of How the Mac Was Made." Through Herztfeld, Atkinson gave CNET News.com permission to republish them here.
Bud Tribble was living at Atkinson's house now, and tended to sleep during the day and work all night, so Atkinson drew the phase diagram on the left with the sketch program.
Credit: Photos courtesy Bill Atkinson. Captions adapted from Andy Hertzfeld's book "Revolution in the Valley."
Apple celebrates 30 years
«Back to main storyEvolution of the Mac interface--Gallery 4
This picture shows fast ovals, which were added to LisaGraf as a basic type in spring 1981, using a clever algorithm that didn't require multiplication.
Credit: Photos courtesy Bill Atkinson. Captions adapted from Andy Hertzfeld's book "Revolution in the Valley."
Apple celebrates 30 years
«Back to main storyEvolution of the Mac interface--Gallery 4
Ovals were quickly followed by rectangles with rounded corners, or "RoundRects," which were suggested by Steve Jobs.
Credit: Photos courtesy Bill Atkinson. Captions adapted from Andy Hertzfeld's book "Revolution in the Valley."
Apple celebrates 30 years
«Back to main storyEvolution of the Mac interface--Gallery 4
By May 1981, the Lisa user interface is beginning to solidify. This photo shows scrollable documents of different types in overlapping windows, still sporting folder tabs for titles.
Credit: Photos courtesy Bill Atkinson. Captions adapted from Andy Hertzfeld's book "Revolution in the Valley."
Apple celebrates 30 years
«Back to main storyEvolution of the Mac interface--Gallery 4
RoundRects began to creep into various UI elements, like menus, providing a more sophisticated look, especially when combined with drop shadows.
Credit: Photos courtesy Bill Atkinson. Captions adapted from Andy Hertzfeld's book "Revolution in the Valley."
Apple celebrates 30 years
«Back to main storyEvolution of the Mac interface--Gallery 4
Menus could be be graphical, as well as text-based.
Credit: Photos courtesy Bill Atkinson. Captions adapted from Andy Hertzfeld's book "Revolution in the Valley."
Apple celebrates 30 years
«Back to main storyEvolution of the Mac interface--Gallery 4
The Lisa team was worried about the closed window tabs being obscured by other windows on the desktop, so Atkinson added a standard menu on the extreme left called "the tray," which could show and hide opened windows.
Credit: Photos courtesy Bill Atkinson. Captions adapted from Andy Hertzfeld's book "Revolution in the Valley."
Apple celebrates 30 years
«Back to main storyEvolution of the Mac interface--Gallery 4
This photo and the following one show a prototype Atkinson created for the Lisa Graphics Editor (which eventually evolved into MacDraw) to demonstrate that modes could sometimes be useful; it was the first program to select modes with a graphical palette, which eventually became the main user interface of MacPaint.
Credit: Photos courtesy Bill Atkinson. Captions adapted from Andy Hertzfeld's book "Revolution in the Valley."
Apple celebrates 30 years
«Back to main storyEvolution of the Mac interface--Gallery 4
Another shot of the Lisa Graphics Editor, which eventually became MacDraw.
Credit: Photos courtesy Bill Atkinson. Captions adapted from Andy Hertzfeld's book "Revolution in the Valley."
Apple celebrates 30 years
«Back to main storyEvolution of the Mac interface--Gallery 4
Finally, in the spring of 1982, Atkinson renamed "LisaGraf" to "QuickDraw" because he wanted a name that was suitable for the Macintosh too.
Credit: Photos courtesy Bill Atkinson. Captions adapted from Andy Hertzfeld's book "Revolution in the Valley."
Apple celebrates 30 years
«Back to main storyEvolution of the Mac interface--Gallery 4
Atkinson added two related features to meet the burgeoning needs of the Lisa applications: pictures and scaling. Pictures were a way of recording graphics operations into a data structure for later playback; this became the basis of both the printing architecture and also cutting and pasting graphics.
Credit: Photos courtesy Bill Atkinson. Captions adapted from Andy Hertzfeld's book "Revolution in the Valley."
Apple celebrates 30 years
«Back to main storyEvolution of the Mac interface--Gallery 4
Since pictures could be drawn into an arbitrarily sized rectangle, Atkinson added bitmap scaling features.
Credit: Photos courtesy Bill Atkinson. Captions adapted from Andy Hertzfeld's book "Revolution in the Valley."