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April 4, 2006
Marching Ants, Hamm's Beer, & Photoshop
MacPaint changed my life, period. I'd fooled with the primitive tools on Apple ]['s and a PCjr., but MacPaint was a whole new animal. At a friend's birthday party in 1984, I laid eyes on their new Mac & dumped my usual "plays well with others" schtick like a hot rock. This machine was the stuff, and the other kids weren't gonna get close until I'd rocked out with MacPaint's cool features (drawing a prison just so I could paintbucket the walls with the brick pattern). I've been hooked ever since.
But who knew that the "marching ants" animation that denotes a selection in Photoshop and other applications comes from the Land of Sky-Blue Waters? According to Folklore.org, MacPaint author & Mac UI pioneer Bill Atkinson was inspired by a Hamm's Beer sign. Groovy. [Via the PhotoshopNews history of the Photoshop toolbar]
On a related note, in covering Apple's 30th anniversary, c|net shows an early ancestor to MacPaint. (Seems like rounded rectangles--always popular, overused in every era--have always been with us). And if you just can't get enough of people waxing Apple's car, check out frog design's shout-out [update: link now MIA], as well as Engadget's review of good, bad, and ugly Apple products from the last 30 years. (Hey, I kind of liked the Network Server! It had a certain ED-209 charm to it...) [Via]
Comments
Ah, the endless hours I spent drawing pixel-by-pixel. I still have that Mac, now 24 YEARS OLD, and fire it up from time to time. 'Course, it's got the flashy Kensington Mac Cooler AND a 500MB Mac Bottom, so it's almost a modern computer, you know. I wonder if I can still get Stylewriter cartridges? I'll run out, someday.