Apple donates MacPaint, QuickDraw source code to Computer History Museum

Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
Apple on Tuesday released the source code for MacPaint and QuickDraw, two important pieces of programming from the early days of Apple, to the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif.



MacPaint was a drawing program that allowed users to create images with mouse and keyboard input. Revolutionary for its time, the application can be thought of as a very early precursor to the current industry standard, Adobe Photoshop. And QuickDraw was the Macintosh library for creating bitmapped graphics, and was used by applications like MacPaint.



According to BusinessWeek, the source code donations came about because Andy Hertzfeld, a key member of the original Macintosh development team, began looking for them in January 2004. Once they were found through a former colleague who had them saved on floppy disks built for the Apple Lisa, Hertzfeld thought about posting the code on the Web, in hopes that it may be of use to others -- but he feared a potential lawsuit from Apple.



So, instead, Hertzfeld decided he would attempt to convince Apple to donate the code to the Computer History Museum. But the effort hit a few snags along the way, as Nancy Heinen, a member of the museum's board of trustees and also general counsel for Apple, resigned from her position before the company gave approval to release the code.



But in January of this year, Hertzfeld, who is currently a software engineer at Google, saw Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs, and told him of the roadblocks he had hit in attempting to have the source code donated. Less than a day later, Jobs asked Apple's current general counsel, Bruce Sewell, to approve the release.







Users can download the MacPaint version 1.3 source code, (five files weighing in at 67.8kb), and the QuickDraw source (37 files totaling 180.4kb) direct from the Computer History Museum. Both applications remain under a 1984 copyright to Apple, and are made available only for non-commercial use.



"The Apple Macintosh combined brilliant design in hardware and in software," the museum wrote. "The drawing program MacPaint, which was released with the computer in January of 1984, was an example of that brilliance both in what it did, and in how it was implemented.



"For those who want to see how it worked 'under the hood,' we are pleased, with the permission of Apple Inc., to make available the original program source code of MacPaint and the underlying QuickDraw graphics library."

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 19
    lilgto64lilgto64 Posts: 1,147member
    somewhere around here is the source code for HyperCard...



    just kidding - although I think I have heard folks asking the same thing a number of years ago - for donation of the source code for HyperCard to the public domain - well, okay that may be slightly different, but still how many folks are still running hardware that can use that software? (I have some around here but not sure if it still works).
  • Reply 2 of 19
    damn_its_hotdamn_its_hot Posts: 1,209member
    Cool! Great historical stuff - Atkinson's code is worthy of study, even today (26+ years later).
  • Reply 3 of 19
    oc4theooc4theo Posts: 294member
    Good to have, but what computer can run it these days? Any idea guys, I will love to see this.
  • Reply 4 of 19
    damn_its_hotdamn_its_hot Posts: 1,209member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by lilgto64 View Post


    ...still how many folks are still running hardware that can use that software? (I have some around here but not sure if it still works).



    I just booted my 128K Mac the other day to see if it still works - it does albeit slow. Much more concerned with the 400K disks of the era. Patience is definitely a virtue when booting one of these.



    BTW: I also have a 128K board that I upgraded to 512K but have not installed it and tried it - I also upgraded the ROMs on this to a pair of later release (thought I would leave the original in its original condition).
  • Reply 5 of 19
    damn_its_hotdamn_its_hot Posts: 1,209member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by AppleInsider View Post




    But in January of this year, Hertfeld, who is currently a software engineer at Google, saw Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs, and told him of the roadblocks he had hit in attempting to have the source code donated. Less than a day later, Jobs asked Apple's current general counsel, Bruce Sewell, to approve the release.





    Please fix spelling of Andy's name - it is correct in the previous instances in this article.
  • Reply 6 of 19
    msnlymsnly Posts: 378member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by OC4Theo View Post


    Good to have, but what computer can run it these days? Any idea guys, I will love to see this.



    I'm restoring a 512K to sit on my desk right now...
  • Reply 7 of 19
    joe hsjoe hs Posts: 488member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by OC4Theo View Post


    Good to have, but what computer can run it these days? Any idea guys, I will love to see this.



    an old macintosh or an emulator for Mac OS X
  • Reply 8 of 19
    maestro64maestro64 Posts: 5,043member
    hell the last time I checked it worked on the last PPC mac with OSX and OS9.2. Can anyone point to the program that works across so many systems and OS changes.
  • Reply 9 of 19
    kirkgraykirkgray Posts: 31member
    There are emulators for old Mac systems that run on OS X, Windows, or Linux. For help getting started, start here: <http://www.macintoshgarden.org/guides>
  • Reply 10 of 19
    kirkgraykirkgray Posts: 31member
    And, check it out! A Mac Plus emulator for the iPhone!



    <http://namedfork.net/iphone/minivmac>



    ( I assume a jailbroken iPhone is required as emulation is a No-No.)
  • Reply 11 of 19
    john galtjohn galt Posts: 960member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by OC4Theo View Post


    Good to have, but what computer can run it these days? Any idea guys, I will love to see this.



    My SE/30 runs it just fine. Along with Hypercard, Excel, Word, etc...



    It's even networked (Appletalk).



    See this video (not mine): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blywSnj4Igk



    Somewhere around the net is a "fat mac" running a server.



    Any computer running Classic can run MacPaint era programs, including the G3 iMac that I use every day - I'm using it right now, though I upgraded to Tiger and haven't had any need for Classic for many years. I still use an Imagewriter II for printouts and multipart FedEx waybills, I depend upon it so much I bought a spare (Craigslist, $9).



    Try that with a 23 year old PC.
  • Reply 12 of 19
    The Computer Museum in Mountain View is a great place to visit. I went there late 2009 while on holiday from the UK. I was amazed how many of the exhibits I had either used or still had in the garage. It really made me feel old.



    David
  • Reply 13 of 19
    john galtjohn galt Posts: 960member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by john galt View Post


    Somewhere around the net is a "fat mac" running a server.



    It's a Mac Plus, actually: http://www.spacerogue.net/Camneerg/index.html



    And another... a Forrest Gump special, running System 7 on floppy disks: http://aurejac.dyndns.org/
  • Reply 14 of 19
    lilgto64lilgto64 Posts: 1,147member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by kirkgray View Post


    And, check it out! A Mac Plus emulator for the iPhone!



    <http://namedfork.net/iphone/minivmac>



    ( I assume a jailbroken iPhone is required as emulation is a No-No.)



    I just may have to try that on my iPhone 2G after i get my iPhone 4.





    Quote:
    Originally Posted by john galt View Post


    My SE/30 runs it just fine. Along with Hypercard, Excel, Word, etc...



    It's even networked (Appletalk).



    See this video (not mine): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blywSnj4Igk



    Somewhere around the net is a "fat mac" running a server.



    Any computer running Classic can run MacPaint era programs, including the G3 iMac that I use every day - I'm using it right now, though I upgraded to Tiger and haven't had any need for Classic for many years. I still use an Imagewriter II for printouts and multipart FedEx waybills, I depend upon it so much I bought a spare (Craigslist, $9).



    Try that with a 23 year old PC.



    I've got a Mac SE That I upgraded with a noV 68030 accelerator with 20MB of RAM and external monitor - (internal monitor is cracked) - only problem is that I think the internal disk stopped spinning - I may have a zip disk with a boot image on it that has the device drivers for the noV board. A G3 Blue Tower upgraded to G4 with 4 hard drives it in that is not working very well - and some other OS8 and OS9 era machines - most of which I should get rid of one way or another - as it is just collecting dust.
  • Reply 15 of 19
    bedouinbedouin Posts: 331member
    Things I do with my Mac Classic.



    Facebook:







    VNC Server:







    Web Server:



    http://haroon.me:8080 (may shut it off later today though)
  • Reply 16 of 19
    wingswings Posts: 261member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by lilgto64 View Post


    I just may have to try that on my iPhone 2G after i get my iPhone 4.









    I've got a Mac SE That I upgraded with a noV 68030 accelerator with 20MB of RAM and external monitor - (internal monitor is cracked) - only problem is that I think the internal disk stopped spinning - I may have a zip disk with a boot image on it that has the device drivers for the noV board. A G3 Blue Tower upgraded to G4 with 4 hard drives it in that is not working very well - and some other OS8 and OS9 era machines - most of which I should get rid of one way or another - as it is just collecting dust.



    Hey, I remember having that same problem with mine! But you MAY be able to get it going. What you do is as soon as you turn it on, get a good grip on the thing and give it a really sharp twist several times. If you're lucky it will help overcome the stuck disk platter and get it started. Worked for me every time.
  • Reply 17 of 19
    zoetmbzoetmb Posts: 2,654member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Damn_Its_Hot View Post


    Cool! Great historical stuff - Atkinson's code is worthy of study, even today (26+ years later).



    Absolutely, because code back then had to be written to be efficient from both a memory standpoint and the amount of disk space it took up and today's programmers don't take any of this into consideration, which is one of the reasons so many apps wind up with memory leaks and the like and they're so huge, they're near impossible to maintain.



    I have an article somewhere from around this same time, perhaps from Softtalk(?) magazine, about how Wozniak wrote some piece of code in something like 75 bytes. Today, programmers would think nothing of doing the same thing in 7.5MBytes or even 75MB.



    I used to keep MacWrite and MacPaint on one floppy and my files on a second floppy. Before I wrangled a second floppy drive, the Mac would eject the app disk whenever it wanted the data (file) disk. It was a LOT of disk switching before the first 20MB hard disk came along for the Mac.



    I was working for a publisher at the time and I took one of our books and emulated the design and font styles on the Mac and printed it out on the first Laser Printer. People were absolutely shocked that this was possible on a personal computer.
  • Reply 18 of 19
    maximaramaximara Posts: 409member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by zoetmb View Post


    Absolutely, because code back then had to be written to be efficient from both a memory standpoint and the amount of disk space it took up and today's programmers don't take any of this into consideration, which is one of the reasons so many apps wind up with memory leaks and the like and they're so huge, they're near impossible to maintain.



    While this is true to some degree we must admit programing in the old days were not without it problems. Many programs were written in 68k assembly and sometimes the compilers had bugs to where they would run on OS version up to a certain point and then wouldn't compile on anything past that point.



    For example, Appleton (the author of World Builder) had to use a ResEdit hack to get his program to run on 32-bit clean systems in 32-bit mode as the version of the compiler he used had a bug and a later version of the same compiler wouldn't compile the code for some reason.



    Similarly, Bill Atkinson said that Hypercard had more assembly language than QuickDraw and that quickly became an update nightmare.



    Back when Copeland was still being planned an Apple representative explained to our local that part of the problems was the System OS was filled with "black box" code that was the result of compiled code being patched after the fact--sometimes by code compiled in another language or worse via ResEdit.



    So in the old days you wound up with code that no one really knew what it did thanks to patches via long defunct compilers or undocumented tweeks with ResEdit.



    This may explain why Silicon Beach's Superpaint program never got major updates after being sold to other companies--it might have been a wild mixture of assembly, Pascal and C that the buyers didn't really understand how it all went together and as a result just wrote around those parts until it become impractical to do that anymore.
  • Reply 19 of 19
    Great nostalgia here. I remember first time I saw Macpaint at a party and ended up playing with it all night instead of socializing. What a nerd.
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