MacPaint 1.x

MacPaint was designed as a simplified, easy to use raster/bit-mapped paint program, and was sold along side the original 1984 Apple Macintosh System. A historically notable feature was its ability to copy and paste images to and from other applications such as MacWrite. The final 2.0 version was released and maintained under Claris.

The user interface inspired many clone products, such as Apple's own Mousepaint (AppleII) Broderbund's Dazzle Draw (Apple II), Mouse Systems' PC Paint (PC), IBM's Color Paint (PCJr), IBM Drawing Assistant, Logitech's PaintShow Plus, FullPaint, and ZSoft PC Paintbrush (PC).

CHM has made available the source code for MacPaint 1.3

Screenshots

Release notes

At release, MacWrite and MacPaint were basically the only software available for the Macintosh. As such, they were influential in defining what the Macintosh was and how users interacted with it.

Apple also bundled a guided tour of MacPaint and MacWrite.

Installation instructions

Important: MacPaint 1.0 will ONLY run on Macintosh 128k, 128ke, 512k, and 512ke machines. It will not run on a Macintosh Plus or later. If you attempt to do so, you will receive the error "There is not enough room in memory for MacPaint".