MacPaint is a bitmap-based image editing computer program that was produced by Apple Computer for bundling with their Macintosh personal computer. Apple eventually formed Claris to market updated versions of MacPaint and other early Apple software after third-party developers complained of unfair competition.

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 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 WYSIWYG 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.

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 (the first combined vector and painting program), 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.

Development

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.

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." This was OK as long as the Mac OS was single-tasking, but became a problem when MultiFinder was released, so it was removed in MacPaint 2.0, which also adopted "normal" windows and floating tool palettes. Later on, the Performa system software replaced the desktop pattern editor (which by then was inside the General Controls control panel) with a choice of preselected desktop patterns. Power users of course complained against that, and so with System 7.5, a compromise was made which allowed desktop patterns to be pasted from a picture editing program.

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.

External links

• MacPaint Evolution from folklore.org
• The Vintage Mac Museum: 1-bit Screenshot of MacPaint