Legendary software pioneer Bill Atkinson died at the age of 74 on Thursday at his home in Portola Valley, Calif., in the San Francisco Bay Area. In a Facebook post, his family said the cause of his death was pancreatic cancer, the New York Times reported.

Apple CEO Tim Cook condoled Bill Atkinson’s death, saying in a post on X, “We are deeply saddened by the passing of Bill Atkinson. He was a true visionary whose creativity, heart, and groundbreaking work on the Mac will forever inspire us. Our thoughts are with his loved ones.”

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Who was Bill Atkinson? Atkinson’s personal life: Atkinson was born in Washington. As a graduate student, he studied computer science and neurobiology at the University of Washington, the Wired reported.

According to Upstox, he left his Ph.D. program to join Apple as its 51st employee, after being recruited by co-founder Steve Jobs.

Jobs had reportedly persuaded him with a now-famous pitch: “Think how fun it is to surf on the front edge of a wave, and how not-fun to dog paddle on the tail edge of the same wave.”

Atkinson had married three times, the reports added. He is survived by his wife, Jingwen Cai; two daughters; a stepson and stepdaughter; two brothers; and four sisters.

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Atkinson’s career Bill Atkinson was the Apple Computer designer who programmed QuickDraw, a foundational software layer used for both the Lisa and Macintosh computers.

The QuickDraw programs were embedded in the computers’ hardware. It provided a distinctive graphical user interface that presented a simulated “desktop,” displaying icons of folders, files and application programs, the New York Times reported.

He was the visionary Apple software designer behind the Macintosh’s graphical interface.

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Atkinson is credited with inventing many of the key aspects of graphical computing, such as “pull down” menus and the “double-click” gesture, which allows users to open files, folders and applications by clicking a mouse button twice in succession.

The QuickDraw library had originally been designed for Apple’s Lisa computer, which was introduced in January 1983. A year later, QuickDraw paved the way for the Macintosh graphical interface.

Before Apple introduced the Macintosh in January 1984, most personal computers were text-based, and navigating them required memorising and inputting complex codes.