Bill Atkinson (1951-2025)

Bill Atkinson (1951-2025)

Author: Derek May 21, 2026 Duration: 44:28

Original text from The Complete HyperCard Handbook (Expanded 2nd Edition with HyperCard 1.2 supplement!!!)

Open HyperCard Stacks with just 512K RAM via HyperDA.

If copying HyperCard was such an obvious idea, where did all the AmigaVision productions go? What happened to all the Asymmetrix Toolbook-ware?

David Greelish “Before Macintosh” interviews with Bill Atkinson: Parts 1, 2, 3

Make beautiful Atkinson-dithered images with HyperDither, GraphicConverter (Effects => Dithering => Atkinson) or in your browser with DitherIt! More than you could ever possibly want to read about dithering and an undergrad lecture on Floyd-Steinberg dithering.

Bill Atkinson’s Rolodex, a.k.a. Casady & Greene QuickDEX (v1.4, II).

Bill Atkinson’s 10 Rules for Making Interfaces More Human

Quotes from:

R.I.P. uliwitness, a.k.a. Uli Kusterer, longtime Macintosh programmer and HyperCard enthusiast. We will miss you too.

Fun fact: I recognized Uli’s name when it popped up in the podcast Discord. Back in the late 1990s a friend and I used “Uli’s Panes” as the playlist interface for a classic MacOS MOD player. Remember Uli, HyperCard and Bill with:

Uli’s Moose, an updated version of The Talking Moose for classic MacOS. Uli told me he tried to submit a new version of Mac OS X to the App Store but it was rejected several times and he eventually gave up. Thanks, Apple!


Derek hosts Mac Folklore Radio, a podcast that serves as a warm, nostalgic conversation about the machines that defined personal computing for a generation. This isn't a dry technical history, but rather a collection of stories, memories, and shared experiences centered on the Macintosh ecosystem from its early beige-box days through the colorful iMac era and beyond. Each episode feels like digging through a box of old software manuals and rediscovering the community, the quirks, and the sheer sense of possibility those computers inspired. You'll hear tales of first setups, beloved and baffling peripherals, the games that consumed hours, and the software that felt like magic. It's crafted specifically for those who lived through it-the users, tinkerers, and enthusiasts who remember the hum of a CRT and the distinct scent of a warm motherboard. Tune in for a dose of genuine, fond reminiscence that functions as comfort food for the Apple-centric soul, preserving the personal side of tech history one story at a time. This podcast is a love letter to the culture built around these machines, celebrating the folklore that official manuals never recorded.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 100

Mac Folklore Radio
Podcast Episodes
Charles Piller: Is Apple Serious About Macintosh Clones? (1995) [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 40:03
Actions speak louder than words: a look at Apple’s extremely quiet Mac OS licensing program. Original text by Charles Piller. Macworld Boston 1994, Tim Bajarin: Apple has to either start licensing, or lower their prices.…
Jim Black on John Carmack and Steve Jobs (2018) [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 11:21
Original text by Jim Black. Previous John Carmack episode: The Steve Jobs Rollercoaster. Peter Graffagnino’s appearance at NeXTEVNT 2015. Peter is interviewed by fellow Pixar veteran Michael Johnson. Some of the original…
The Iconoclast - Send In The Clones (1995) [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 15:17
Apple’s licensing approach (ca. 1994-1997) is a bad idea. Original text by Steven Levy, Macworld January 1995. Andy Bechtolscheim quote about SPARC licensing and Macintosh clones: “Sun had a unified business… it wasn’t r…
Wise Guy - 1984 Redux (1994) [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 11:10
How Macintosh could have taken over the world. Original text by Guy Kawasaki, Macworld February 1994. Various 1993ish Apple commercials courtesy of RetroByte.
Steven Levy - One Mississippi, Two Mississippi, ... (1996) [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 7:03
Why does System 7.5 take so long to start up? Original text by Steven Levy, Macworld April 1996. Avoid conflating Moore’s Law with Dennard scaling. 65scribe has an easily-digested summary of Dennard scaling in his extens…
The Desktop Critic - How to Become a Millionare Overnight (1996) [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 13:09
Eight best-selling Mac products that don’t exist–yet. Original text by David Pogue, Macworld April 1996. More on the history of DiskDoubler. John V. Holder’s TakeABreak has recently been uncovered from the depths of arch…
Jonathan Schwartz - Good Artists Copy, Great Artists Steal (2010) [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 11:59
What to say when Steve Jobs threatens to sue you. Original text by Jonathan Schwartz. More about Lighthouse Design’s Concurrence courtesy of the Apple Wikia instance. Sun famously sued Microsoft over their incompatible J…
James Thomson - Mac OS X Dock History (2025) [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 14:57
Original text by James Thomson. DragThing, one of many Dock-like tools for classic Mac OS. PCalc for classic and modern Mac OS/iOS. Some PCalc history. The One True Place for the Dock may be at the bottom of the screen,…
Darin Adler: 20 Years of Computer Software (1996) [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 42:37
Original text by Darin Adler. An overview of the Motorola MEK6800D2 single board computer/development kit. Roger Heinen “engineers are a dime a dozen” story from episode 40 of the Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs…
Craig Hickman - The History of Kid Pix (2013) [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 27:39
How a little paint program became a worldwide phenomenon. Original text by Craig Hickman. Craig talks about his 8-bit Atari projects on episode 378 of the ANTIC Podcast. Apple honoured Craig in their already-zapped-from-…