is a
Bitmap -based image editing computer program that was produced by
Apple Computer for bundling with their
Macintosh personal computer. After being "forcibly ignored" for some time due to developer backlash, Apple eventually formed
Claris to market updated versions of MacPaint and other early Apple software. As of 2004, MacPaint 1.5 and 2.0 were still being sold by
Sun Remarketing .
Despite a short life span, MacPaint was many people's first GUI-based bitmap editing experience, and as such became the seminal work by which similar efforts were measured. The original Mac bundle also included
MacWrite , a similarly easy-to-use
Word Processor , and pictures from MacPaint could be placed inside MacWrite documents in a few keystrokes. The pair literally defined user expectations of a
GUI -based computer.
Since the original Macintosh had only a black-and-white monitor, MacPaint only edited monochrome bitmaps with a fixed size of 576 x 720 pixels — the size of the
ImageWriter 's standard 8 x 10 inch (203 x 254 mm) sheet of paper at 72
DPI (350
µm ).
Xerox PARC researcher and Apple Fellow
Alan Kay made a seminal home videotape showing his one year-old daughter starting a Macintosh 128K computer, inserting a floppy disk containing MacPaint, starting the program, and proceeding to paint with it. MacPaint, in part, represented a paradigm shift where computing had become a useful (and even entertaining) part of ordinary people's lives.
The first real improvement was FullPaint by Ann Arbor Softworks, then
SuperPaint by Silicon Beach Software, PixelPaint by Supermac Technology (the first color-capable paint program) and eventually
Adobe Systems introduced
Photoshop around the same time Apple debuted the
Macintosh IIfx .
MacPaint 1.0 was written by
Bill Atkinson , a member of Apple's Macintosh development team. Early beta versions of MacPaint were called MacSketch, still retaining part of the name of its roots, LisaSketch. In
1988 , David Ramsey made some improvements resulting in version 2.0. Both versions came in at around 45 kilobytes for the full application. The original MacPaint consisted of 5,804 lines of Pascal source code, augmented by another 2,738 lines of
68000 assembly language. (In Cringely's
NerdTV interview, Andy Hertzfeld
reports that eventually the source code will be made publicly available through the
computer history museum .)
Somewhat curiously, the original MacPaint in fact broke many of the user interface guidelines then being pushed by Apple as the key to consistency between applications. MacPaint's interface did not consist of separate windows (also true of Atkinson's later
HyperCard ), but used a full screen approach, with fixed tool palettes in a dedicated area on the left and below the editing area. The window title bar shown above the editing area is fake — it cannot be moved. While this approach fit reasonably well with the single-tasking original
Mac OS , the later addition of
MultiFinder meant that MacPaint 1.0 did not "play well with others". This was one of the main issues addressed by MacPaint 2.0, which adopted "normal" windows and floating tool palettes.
This was because Atkinson complained that it was a mistake to allow users to specify their own desktop patterns (in early Macintosh Operating Systems, there was a Pattern Editor for the desktop), because, as he put it, it was "harder to make a nice one than it looked". He could not bear the thought of people creating ugly desktop patterns. In order to avoid potentially hideous patterns marring MacPaint, he made it so MacPaint allocated a window the size of the screen when it started up, and then filled it with the standard 50% gray pattern, covering up the real desktop pattern, protecting users from their "rash aesthetic blunders, at least within the confines of MacPaint."
The original MacPaint did not incorporate a zoom function. Instead, a special magnification mode called FatBits was used, which showed each pixel as a clickable rectangle with a white border. Editing in this mode was extremely easy, and set the standard for many future editors.
As can be seen in the screenshot, MacPaint included a "Goodies" menu that included the FatBits tool. This menu was named the "Aids" menu in prerelease versions, but was renamed "Goodies" as public awareness of the
AIDS epidemic grew in the summer of 1983.
