From our 5-part series on Silicon Valley Pioneers meet Bill Atkinson, who was part of the team that created the original Macintosh at Apple computers. He helped create the hypercard, dropdown menu, Macintosh paint and other innovative features for Apple’s User Interface.

Atkinson grew up in Los Gatos in Silicon Valley when it was known as the “Valley of Heart’s Delight.” He was studying to be a neuroscientist at the University of Washington, Seattle, when he got a call from his former university teacher Jeff Raskin to come and visit Apple Computers. Atkinson had neither heard of Steve Jobs nor did he know anything about Apple computers when he got that call from Raskin. Atkinson declined the invitation to visit Apple. Finishing his PhD was his priority. But then he got a roundtrip ticket from Raskin with a note: “Just visit for a weekend. No strings attached.” Atkinson decided to visit Apple and shares: “Steve Jobs spent the entire day recruiting me. He took me around and I met all 30 (people at Apple).” And Jobs told him: "Come to Apple, where we're inventing the future and you can help to invent it." And that is what Atkinson did. He dropped out of his PhD program, joined Apple in 1978 and helped invent the future in personal computing technology.

This is part-1 of our 5-part series with Atkinson and Andy Hertzfeld, who worked at Apple in the 1970s and went on to co-found General Magic along with Marc Porat. General Magic was a spin-off from Apple, whose goal was to create a personal communicator device for the post-computer world. This was the most famous startup that you have never heard of is how the startup is described by some observers.

This conversation is part of Season 4 of our Silicon Valley Pioneers series that spotlights the role of “hidden figures” in Silicon Valley. This 5-part series is sponsored by Zoho.

The Kamla Show is filmed and produced in Silicon Valley and airs on TV in the US and is available on YouTube.

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