Bill Atkinson, who made computers easier to use, dies at 74

Bill Atkinson, an Apple Computer designer who created the software that enabled the transformative visual approach pioneered by the company’s Lisa and Macintosh computers, making the machines accessible to millions of users without specialized skills, died Thursday night at his home in Portola Valley, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area. He was 74.

In a Facebook post, his family said the cause was pancreatic cancer.

Atkinson programmed QuickDraw, a foundational software layer used for both the Lisa and Macintosh computers. Composed of a library…