One day in 1988 while I was using MacPaint, the wonderful paint program that came with the Macintosh, my 3-year-old son Ben asked to try using the program. I was surprised at how quickly he got the knack of using the mouse and how easily he was able to select tools. The problem was that he didn’t have total control of the mouse and would occasionally (like every five minutes or so) pull down a menu and bring up a dialog box that he couldn’t dismiss without being able to read. Everything was fine as long as I was in the room, but if I stepped out for a few minutes I would come back and find Ben kicking on the floor in frustration. This was not what I had in mind for his introduction to the computer. As it turned out I was looking for a good programming project. I decided to write a simple paint program for Ben to use.
Wonderful walk through the history and thinking behind a delightful application from the classic Macintosh days. When I was a kid I spent a bunch of time playing with Kid Pix. Can’t say I ever drew anything particularly noteworthy but I sure had a lot of fun.
If you’d like to try Kid Pix today, version 2 is available on Infinite Mac.
System 7.5.3 seems like a good host version. Fire it up and navigate to:
Infinite HD:Graphics:Kid Pix and double click Kid Pix 2.
