Bill Atkinson, Who Made Computers Easier to Use, Is Dead at 74
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Diverging Reports Breakdown
Trump can block AP from White House events for now, U.S. appeals court rules
A U.S. appeals court on Friday paused a lower court ruling mandating that AP journalists be given access to White House media events. The AP sued in February after the White House restricted the news outlet’s access over its decision to continue referring to the Gulf of Mexico in its coverage despite Trump renaming the body of water. The Associated Press in a statement said it was disappointed by the decision and weighing its options. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. For confidential support on suicide matters call the Samaritans on 08457 90 90 90 or visit a local Samaritans branch, see www.samaritans.org for details. In the United States, call the National Suicide Prevention Line on 1-800-273-8255.
President Donald Trump is free to bar the Associated Press from some White House media events for now, after a U.S. appeals court on Friday paused a lower court ruling mandating that AP journalists be given access.
The divided ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit temporarily blocks an order by U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden, who ruled on April 8 that the Trump administration must allow AP journalists access to the Oval Office, Air Force One and White House events while the news agency’s lawsuit moves forward.
The 2-1 ruling was written by U.S. Circuit Judge Neomi Rao, joined by fellow Trump appointee U.S. Circuit Judge Gregory Katsas.
U.S. government appeals court decision ordering AP journalists back into White House events
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Rao wrote that the lower court injunction “impinges on the President’s independence and control over his private workspaces” and that the White House was likely to ultimately defeat the Associated Press’ lawsuit.
The Associated Press in a statement said it was disappointed by the decision and weighing its options.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In a dissent, Circuit Judge Cornelia Pillard, an appointee of President Barack Obama, said her two colleagues’ ruling cannot be squared with “any sensible understanding of the role of a free press in our constitutional democracy.”
The AP sued in February after the White House restricted the news outlet’s access over its decision to continue referring to the Gulf of Mexico in its coverage despite Trump renaming the body of water the Gulf of America.
The AP’s lawyers argued the new policy violated the First Amendment of the Constitution, which protects free speech rights.
McFadden, who was appointed by Trump during his first term, said in his ruling that if the White House opens its doors to some journalists it cannot exclude others based on their viewpoints.
Trump administration lawyers said the President has absolute discretion over media access to the White House and that McFadden’s ruling infringed on his ability to decide whom to admit to sensitive spaces.
“The Constitution does not prohibit the President from considering a journalist’s prior coverage in evaluating how much access he will grant that journalist,” lawyers for the administration said in a court filing.
On April 16, the AP accused the Trump administration of defying the court order by continuing to exclude its journalists from some events and then limiting access to Trump for all news wires, including Reuters and Bloomberg.
Reuters and the AP both issued statements denouncing the new policy, which puts wire services in a larger rotation with about 30 other newspaper and print outlets.
Other media customers, including local news organizations that have no presence in Washington, rely on the wire services’ real-time reports of presidential statements, as do global financial markets.
The AP says in its stylebook that the Gulf of Mexico has carried that name for more than 400 years and, as a global news agency, the AP will refer to it by its original name while acknowledging the new name Trump has chosen.
Premier Wab Kinew promotes Manitoba trade corridor that could include a pipeline
Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew promoted his province Friday as the route for a future trade corridor, which could include a pipeline. Kinew said Manitoba is looking at boosting shipments through Hudson Bay, currently served by the Port of Churchill. The Alberta government has been pushing for a pipeline across northern British Columbia, but the idea is not supported by the B.C. government.Kinew also told the business crowd Friday his NDP government is finalizing a memorandum with British Columbia to cut trade barriers between the two provinces.Similar to a recent deal with Ontario, it’s aimed at allowing more goods and services to flow freely.
Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew promoted his province Friday as the route for a future trade corridor, which could include a pipeline, in order to get goods from Western Canada to overseas markets.
“The politics are (that) something needs to get built in Western Canada. I think everybody understands that,” Kinew told a breakfast meeting of the Manitoba Chambers of Commerce.
“And if you’ve been following the news, B. C.? Ontario? Maybe. We’ll see. But Manitoba’s open for business, and I think in time Manitoba will show itself as a path to getting natural resources to tidewater across Canada.”
The Alberta government has been pushing for a pipeline across northern British Columbia, but the idea is not supported by the B.C. government.
Kinew said Manitoba is looking at boosting shipments through Hudson Bay, currently served by the Port of Churchill, which is ice-free for only a brief period every year. There have been calls for a second port on the bay, further south at Port Nelson, combined with more rail service and a pipeline, to boost exports to Europe and other destinations.
Kinew said he’s open to different options, but the private sector has to put forward ideas.
A trade corridor could ship Manitoba’s low-carbon hydroelectricity westward to the other Prairie provinces, he said. And a pipeline heading the other direction is a possibility.
“What is the product that makes sense? Are we going to be looking at liquefaction and then maybe it’s a [liquefied natural gas] thing?” Kinew told reporters after his speech.
“Are we looking at oil and gas projects? Are we looking at something novel like green hydrogen or maybe a potash slurry? These are the things that we can signal to the private sector we’re open to having a discussion about.”
Pipeline development in the north could face opposition from environmentalists and others. Much of the area near the coast of Hudson Bay is protected, including Wapusk National Park.
Kinew also told the business crowd Friday his NDP government is finalizing a memorandum with British Columbia to cut trade barriers between the two provinces.
Similar to a recent deal with Ontario, it’s aimed at allowing more goods and services to flow freely. Kinew said it will give Manitobans access to another big Canadian market.
Prime Minister Mark Carney has pledged to break down internal trade barriers by Canada Day, and Ontario, Nova Scotia and other provinces have been working on reciprocal agreements.
Canadian chip company Untether AI winding down operations
Toronto-based Untether designed computer chips for artificial intelligence applications such as autonomous vehicles, robots and drones. The company pivoted too late to the hardware market for powering generative AI applications, according to two sources familiar with the matter. Economic uncertainty owing to U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff agenda contributed to difficulties raising new funds from investors this year, one of the sources said.Untether said in a statement on its website Thursday that it had entered into a “strategic agreement” with chipmaker AMD, which is based in California. The deal is known as an “acquihire,” in which one company strikes a deal with another to gain access to talent instead of products or services. The value of the deal would likely be less than US$100-million depending on how many employees agree to join AMD, a source said. The source added that Meta Platforms Inc., which is working on custom chips forAI applications, was also in talks with Untether.
Promising Canadian chip startup Untether AI Corp. is winding down after failing to raise money earlier this year, and its engineering employees will be transferred to American company Advanced Micro Devices AMD-T.
The arrangement is known as an “acquihire,” in which one company strikes a deal with another to gain access to talent instead of products or services.
Toronto-based Untether designed computer chips for artificial intelligence applications such as autonomous vehicles, robots and drones, and said its products were far more energy efficient than others on the market.
But the company pivoted too late to the hardware market for powering generative AI applications, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, according to two sources familiar with the matter, and struggled to compete against the dominance of Nvidia Corp. NVDA-T in the chip market. Economic uncertainty owing to U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff agenda contributed to difficulties raising new funds from investors this year, one of the sources said.
The Globe and Mail is not identifying the sources because they are not authorized to discuss the matter.
Untether said in a statement on its website Thursday that it had entered into a “strategic agreement” with chipmaker AMD, which is based in California. “While today marks the end of Untether AI’s journey, we are proud of the pioneering research that underpinned our work,” the statement read. The company added it will no longer supply or support its hardware and software products.
AMD said in a statement to trade publication CRN that it is acquiring “a talented team of AI hardware and software engineers” from Untether.
One source said the value of the deal would likely be less than US$100-million depending on how many employees agree to join AMD. The source added that Meta Platforms Inc., which is working on custom chips for AI applications, was also in talks with Untether.
It is not clear what will happen to Untether’s intellectual property, which is not part of the transaction, but the source said it could be sold separately.
Neither Untether nor AMD immediately replied to a request for comment.
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Chris Walker, Untether’s chief executive, left the company in May, according to his LinkedIn profile. He did not reply to The Globe and Mail.
Untether was founded in 2018 and received funding from Intel Capital, Radical Ventures, GM Ventures and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. The company has raised around $150-million. That means given the potential value of the deal, investors are likely not recouping the total amount they invested. However, losses will depend on when investors first put money into Untether.
The company’s products were built on the research of co-founder and former University of Toronto professor Martin Snelgrove, who pioneered a different computer chip architecture.
The dominant approach to chip-making has followed a design laid out by mathematician and physicist John von Neumann in 1945, but that design wastes a lot of energy shuttling data around. Untether cut the distance data must travel by placing memory and processing units side-by-side on the hardware.
Untether pursued the self-driving vehicle market and other systems that use a form of AI know as computer vision, which involves detecting and interpreting objects in videos and images. But the AI world changed with the release of ChatGPT in late 2022, as companies became obsessed with generative AI and chatbots. Nvidia became the most valuable publicly traded company in the world as large tech firms scrambled to purchase chips to install inside data centres for training AI models.
Untether aimed to compete with Nvidia in the much larger market for powering AI inference, the term for using an AI model after it is built, such as asking a question of ChatGPT.
Independent tests gave Untether’s products high marks. MLCommons, an industry and academic consortium that benchmarks AI systems, found last year that one of Untether’s chips was six times more energy efficient than competing products, and with lower latency, in one testing category.
But Untether’s push into the market for chips housed in data centres for generative AI may have come too late, especially given Nvidia’s scale and reputation. The California-based company is worth close to US$3.5-trillion.
Company that worked on ArriveCan app banned from government contracts for 7 years
Public Services and Procurement Canada has announced that GC Strategies Inc. has been deemed “ineligible’ after an assessment of the supplier’s conduct. GC Strategies did not develop or manage the ArriveCan app, but it was tasked by the federal government to assemble a team to complete some parts of the project. The government launched the app in April, 2020 as a way to track health and contact information for people entering Canada during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as to digitize customs and immigration declarations.
Ottawa says it has banned the largest contractor that worked on the ArriveCan app from entering into contracts or real property agreements with the government for seven years.
Public Services and Procurement Canada has announced that GC Strategies Inc. has been deemed “ineligible” after an assessment of the supplier’s conduct.
Last year, the department suspended the security status of GC Strategies, which the auditor general says was awarded more than $19 million for the project.
That move followed an earlier decision to suspend the company from procurement processes within the department. The government also barred two other companies that contributed to the ArriveCan project, Dalian Enterprises and Coradix Technology Consulting, from participating in procurement opportunities.
The federal government launched the app in April, 2020 as a way to track health and contact information for people entering Canada during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as to digitize customs and immigration declarations.
A report by Canada’s Auditor General Karen Hogan found the government’s record-keeping was poor and its reliance on outside contractors allowed the cost of the project to balloon to $60 million.
The first ArriveCan contract was initially valued at just $2.35 million.
On Tuesday, Hogan is set to deliver an audit focusing on whether the contracts awarded and the payments made to GC Strategies and other incorporated companies were “in accordance with applicable policy instruments” and were good value for money.
Public Services and Procurement Canada says the government continues to take action to “strengthen the integrity of the procurement process.”
The Canadian Press has reached out to GC Strategies and to Public Services and Procurement Canada for comment.
GC Strategies partner Kristian Firth was ordered to appear before the bar of the House of Commons last year after refusing to answer questions at a committee hearing.
Firth was grilled by MPs for two hours, though Liberals opted out of questioning after a doctor’s note provided to the clerk of the House recommended that he not appear because of mental-health issues.
GC Strategies did not develop or manage the ArriveCan app, but it was tasked by the federal government to assemble a team to complete some parts of the project.
Bill Atkinson, engineer who helped Apple founder Steve Jobs create Lisa and Macintosh computers, dies at 74: Read CEO Tim Cook’s post
Atkinson was the programmer behind QuickDraw, a foundational software layer for both the Lisa and Macintosh computers. He is widely credited with inventing key elements of graphical computing, including “pull-down” menus and the “double-click” gesture. He had a close relationship with Apple co-founder Steve Jobs during the early 1980s when they worked on the Macintosh. Apple CEO Tim Cook has extended his condolences with a post on X (formerly Twitter).”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,” Cook said in a post.
Atkinson was convinced by Jobs to become 51st team member of Apple
Bill Atkinson , the Apple Computer designer instrumental in creating the graphical user interfaces that made the Lisa and Macintosh computers accessible to millions, has died. He was 74. His family confirmed the cause as pancreatic cancer in a Facebook post. He had a close relationship with Apple co-founder Steve Jobs during the early 1980s when they worked on the Macintosh. Apple CEO Tim Cook has extended his condolences with a post on X (formerly Twitter).”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,” Cook said in a post.Atkinson was the programmer behind QuickDraw, a foundational software layer for both the Lisa and Macintosh computers. This library of small programmes efficiently displayed shapes, text and images on screen. Embedded in the computers’ hardware, QuickDraw provided the distinctive graphical interface that presented a simulated “desktop” with icons for folders, files, and applications.Atkinson is widely credited with inventing key elements of graphical computing, including “pull-down” menus and the “double-click” gesture, which allowed users to open files and applications simply by clicking a mouse button twice.Before the Macintosh debuted in January 1984, most personal computers were text-based, requiring users to type complex commands. Graphics were not an integrated function, and mouse pointing devices were not common.QuickDraw was initially developed for Apple’s Lisa computer, launched in January 1983. Though the Lisa offered early easy-to-use features for business users, its high price of $10,000 (nearly $33,000 today) led to its commercial failure.QuickDraw soon became the basis for the Macintosh’s successful graphical interface. This approach to computing originated from the “Dynabook” project led by computer scientist Alan Kay at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center in the 1970s.In 1979, Xerox provided Jobs and a small team, including Atkinson, a private demonstration of Kay’s work. Since they could not examine the software code, the Apple engineers made assumptions about the technology, leading to fundamental technical advancements and new capabilities.After the Macintosh’s release, Atkinson conceived HyperCard, a programme that wove together text, images and video in a simple database. This software became a significant precursor to the World Wide Web.Atkinson was pursuing a Ph.D. in neurobiology at the University of Washington when Jobs convinced him to become Apple’s 51st employee. Their relationship was close during the early 1980s as they worked on the Macintosh. However, when Jobs was forced out of Apple in 1985 to found Next, Atkinson declined to leave, citing his commitment to the HyperCard project.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/07/technology/bill-atkinson-dead.html