Bill Atkinson and Me

Credit: Carlos Salazar and ChatGPT 4o

A personal tribute from a MacNerd team member/advisor, Charlie Salazar.

I discovered my first Mac in high school. I don’t remember the model, but I remember how it made me feel: invited. Safe. Curious. I wasn’t someone who talked much, I stuttered, avoided attention, and spent a lot of time drawing. The Mac, with its friendly smile and intuitive interface, didn’t demand I speak. It just let me create. That’s when I found Photoshop and Illustrator. These tools didn’t just let me design, they gave me a voice. And looking back, I can see how much of that experience was shaped by Bill Atkinson’s design philosophy.

Bill built QuickDraw, the graphics engine behind the original Mac, and co-created MacPaint. That app introduced UI elements we still use today: the lasso tool, the marching ants selection marquee, the floating tool palette. But what made it stick wasn’t just the novelty, it was how human it felt.

Photoshop in the early ’90s inherited much of MacPaint’s DNA: intuitive tools, instant feedback, visual metaphors that made sense. I didn’t need a manual to know what the paint bucket did. I could drag a lasso around a photo and see those same marching ants Bill had invented. It was design that taught by doing.

Atkinson believed software should be forgiving, exploratory, even playful. MacPaint had Undo long before that was common. That safety net made experimentation feel fun, not risky. It encouraged me to try weird things, knowing I could always go back.

Today, I’m a product designer. And I see Bill’s legacy every time I open Figma. When I build a component that teaches itself by how it looks or responds, that’s me echoing “show, don’t tell.” When I structure a flow that encourages play without punishment, that’s “forgive mistakes.”
Bill didn’t just design tools, he designed the experience of using them. He made the Mac feel inevitable. That’s the bar I aim for every time I sit down to design: clarity that feels effortless, feedback that feels instant, and tools that feel like they’re on your side.

I bring this up because Bill passed away recently…

So, thanks Bill for making that first Mac feel like a friend. And for teaching me that design isn’t about speaking louder, it’s about helping people speak for themselves.