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The best is:

MacKenzie, I. Scott, Sellen, Abigail and Buxton, Bill (1991): A Comparison of Input Devices in Elemental Pointing and Dragging Tasks. In: Robertson, Scott P., Olson, Gary M. and Olson, Judith S. (eds.) Proceedings of the ACM CHI 91 Human Factors in Computing Systems Conference April 28 - June 5, 1991, New Orleans, Louisiana. pp. 161-166.

Unfortunately it's not available online.

http://www.umich.edu/~bcalab/documents/MeyerSmithKornblumAW1990.pdf is freely available and somewhat related, as are:
http://www.mackido.com/Interface/menu_target.html
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2006/08/fitts-law-and-infinite-width.html

Macs actually started off with a menu-per-window but moved to the current model after doing such studies; you can see images of the earlier implementation here:
http://folklore.org/projects/Macintosh/images/polaroids/polaroids.14.jpg

Yes, added cost, but consider that you're buying with that extra cost a thinner laptop (because it didn't have to be included) and the option of NOT carrying it around. I've found that I almost never need either the display adapter or the ethernet adapter, so I don't have to carry them around if I don't need them (I have an Air).

The cost of an ethernet or display dongle and the cost of carrying around a built-in versions, pales in comparison to the cost of not having the port or dongle when you need it. We had a convention recently and one of the presenters forgot to bring his display dongle for his Mac. We spent a few minutes scrounging around for one while someone worked on copying his presentation over to a PC. 3 minutes * 150 guests = a cumulative 7.5 hours of wasted time. (And for you Mac fans who don't like how I'm counting time, it's how Steve Jobs thought of saving time.)

For me, the thinness is worth it.

That's the problem. People are starting to think of laptops as fashion statements foremost, rather than as tools. It's fine to want good aesthetics (a good-looking laptop is nicer than a bad-looking one), but one should never give up functionality for the sole purpose of aesthetics. If you're never going to present or plug in, then there's no problem. Any costs associated with forgotten dongles or lack of ports are yours to bear alone. But if you do stuff which might ever externalize that cost, you need to factor that into your decision of functionality vs. aesthetics. (For our part, we're going to have to buy a Mac video dongle for the projector to make sure this doesn't happen again. We're paying for the Mac users' aesthetic tastes. But at least it's damn cheaper than making 150 people wait.)

I think it's a nice update to the look. (Also, text glows didn't exist back then, he's using the wrong font for the labels, etc etc etc. But I love the dither pattern behind the dock.) Believe me, Steve Jobs didn't want any of that stuff (visible pixels and such) in the 80s, he only took them because he had to. Steve Jobs waited 27 long years for glorious 300dpi rounded corners. I think the artist did pretty well.

-----sootman

also 30-something (late 30-something, sadly.)

As documented here...

Jobs was a perfectionist and one that just happened to know what people wanted. He had his misses (the Cube) but rumor had it that the iPhone wasn't going public until it was 'perfect'. It just wasn't the big things, it was the small stuff like how a font looked in WYSIWYG or even rectangles with rounded corners.

Bill fired up his demo and it quickly filled the Lisa screen with randomly-sized ovals, faster than you thought was possible. But something was bothering Steve Jobs. "Well, circles and ovals are good, but how about drawing rectangles with rounded corners? Can we do that now, too?"

"No, there's no way to do that. In fact it would be really hard to do, and I don't think we really need it". I think Bill was a little miffed that Steve wasn't raving over the fast ovals and still wanted more.

Steve suddenly got more intense. "Rectangles with rounded corners are everywhere! Just look around this room!". And sure enough, there were lots of them, like the whiteboard and some of the desks and tables. Then he pointed out the window. "And look outside, there's even more, practically everywhere you look!". He even persuaded Bill to take a quick walk around the block with him, pointing out every rectangle with rounded corners that he could find.

To 90% of the other CEOs out there they would have called it good and moved on. Steve HAD to have the rounded rectangles. And this is one thing I don't mind about OS X. The defaults are such that they actually look good. I recently moved to MATE as my window manager but configuring it is frustrating more than anything. I don't like the choice. I just want to be told what the options are and deal with those and then use my computer to work rather than work on configuring my computer.

* If you want to read up on some stores of either Steve from the early years folklore.org has some great ones.

Jobs was a perfectionist and one that just happened to know what people wanted. He had his misses (the Cube) but rumor had it that the iPhone wasn't going public until it was 'perfect'. It just wasn't the big things, it was the small stuff like how a font looked in WYSIWYG or even rectangles with rounded corners.

Bill fired up his demo and it quickly filled the Lisa screen with randomly-sized ovals, faster than you thought was possible. But something was bothering Steve Jobs. "Well, circles and ovals are good, but how about drawing rectangles with rounded corners? Can we do that now, too?"

"No, there's no way to do that. In fact it would be really hard to do, and I don't think we really need it". I think Bill was a little miffed that Steve wasn't raving over the fast ovals and still wanted more.

Steve suddenly got more intense. "Rectangles with rounded corners are everywhere! Just look around this room!". And sure enough, there were lots of them, like the whiteboard and some of the desks and tables. Then he pointed out the window. "And look outside, there's even more, practically everywhere you look!". He even persuaded Bill to take a quick walk around the block with him, pointing out every rectangle with rounded corners that he could find.

To 90% of the other CEOs out there they would have called it good and moved on. Steve HAD to have the rounded rectangles. And this is one thing I don't mind about OS X. The defaults are such that they actually look good. I recently moved to MATE as my window manager but configuring it is frustrating more than anything. I don't like the choice. I just want to be told what the options are and deal with those and then use my computer to work rather than work on configuring my computer.

* If you want to read up on some stores of either Steve from the early years folklore.org has some great ones.

Yes, Mac OS/LISA were inspired by what they saw at Xerox PARC. However, if you've read up on those, the people who actually worked at PARC said that LISA/Mac went far beyond what they had done or envisioned.

"the Apple work extended PARC's considerably, adding manipulatable icons, and drag&drop manipulation of objects in the file system (see Macintosh Finder) for example. A list of the improvements made by Apple, beyond the PARC interface, can be read at Folklore.org."

My knowledge doesn't come from Wikipedia, I've been in this industry for 30+ years. I just use Wikipedia to support my statements.

The Apple II was more open by far than the macintosh, which is where steve jobs took the helm and directed them down the closed path. The only reason os x has anything to do with unix and bsd is the fact that copland (the original successor to the old mac os) was an abysmal failure and taking far too long.

Apple (well more appropriately at the time NeXt) used open source technology when it couldn't be bothered to develop it's own (which is fine) and then placed proprietary things on top of it to lock people out. A perfect example being quartz, you won't find it in darwin.

After Jobs, you could actually download and modify the kernel to OS X. Couldn't do that before Jobs.

The fact that most of that code was already out in the open and bsd licensed and not even written by them had nothing to do with that I'm sure.

Apple, especially with steve jobs has always had the aim of total control of the user experience. Steve jobs himself was a control freak, this is what many of his followers loved and the reason the interfaces wound up as they were. A few examples.

The Apple II was more open by far than the macintosh, which is where steve jobs took the helm and directed them down the closed path. The only reason os x has anything to do with unix and bsd is the fact that copland (the original successor to the old mac os) was an abysmal failure and taking far too long.

Apple (well more appropriately at the time NeXt) used open source technology when it couldn't be bothered to develop it's own (which is fine) and then placed proprietary things on top of it to lock people out. A perfect example being quartz, you won't find it in darwin.

After Jobs, you could actually download and modify the kernel to OS X. Couldn't do that before Jobs.

The fact that most of that code was already out in the open and bsd licensed and not even written by them had nothing to do with that I'm sure.

Apple, especially with steve jobs has always had the aim of total control of the user experience. Steve jobs himself was a control freak, this is what many of his followers loved and the reason the interfaces wound up as they were. A few examples.

Excessive hours? It's all part of the Apple culture: 90 Hours A Week And Loving It

An Apple orginal!? Rectangles with rounded corners are everywhere! Just look around this room!

Not necessarily. Sometimes the act of explaining how stuff works to a documenter can not only make for better documentation, but enlighten the original developer as well. The development of the "Inside Macintosh" documentation is one such example.

Microsoft has played many roles over its long history with Apple. It has been benefactor, beneficiary, competitor, and on occasion extortionist.

As a benefactor, Microsoft has invested in Apple, more than once IIRC. They have also produced many solid productivity applications, and once upon a time a number of programming tools (MS Basic, QuickBasic, Fortran) for the Mac. Apple desperately needed applications for the Mac, especially during the early years when people were wrestling with the enormous increase in complexity that programming the Macintosh interface represented at the time.

As a beneficiary, Microsoft has reaped a nontrivial amount of money from sales of Microsoft products on the Macintosh platform. It also benefited from early exposure to the GUI ideas in the Macintosh and Lisa that popularized and built upon earlier work at Xerox. It could see the many interesting things Apple was doing with object oriented programming, multimedia, and other innovations.

As a competitor, Microsoft modeled Windows after Macintosh and used it to largely drive Apple from the market for many years. Microsoft used its position as the prime application vendor to shape how Macintosh was used, making it more difficult to use Macintosh in business by withholding key applications or dropping others. (Microsoft dropped Microsoft Project and Foxbase/Foxpro for Macintosh, and never produced Access.) Apple has repeatedly aided Microsoft through brilliance in conception, idiocy in execution, and almost non-existent follow through with future products - both hardware and software. (They are doing much better over the last 10 years.)

Business being business, extortionist may be too harsh a word, but Microsoft is rumored to have forced Apple to sell its marvelous Macintosh Basic to Microsoft for $1.00 if it wanted to get another license for the Microsoft Basic in the ROMs of the Apple IIs - Apple's bread and butter money maker for years after the Macintosh was released. Funny how much Microsoft Basic -> Quickbasic improved around that time. I seem to recall that Microsoft stopped development on Macintosh applications when Apple sued them over the look and feel of Windows as being too close to Macintosh. I don't believe those were the only times that Microsoft played hardball with Apple either, although it probably went both ways at times.

Back in the design days of the original macintosh they used Do It instead of OK, apparently a guy got frustrated and in anger asked "I'm not a dolt, why is the software calling me a dolt?"

http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Do_It.txt&sortOrder=Sort%20by%20Date&detail=medium&search=do%20it

Apple tried this a long time ago with predictable results. (well, predictable to most of us anyway)

Any comments on this:
http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=On_Xerox,_Apple_and_Progress.txt&showcomments=1
http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Busy_Being_Born.txt

Even if they had, nothing in this ought to be patentable anyway - it's all reasonably obvious to any practitioner in the field as soon as the technology

FWIW, I believe patents should be abolished. It's come to a point where patents cost society more than they benefit society, especially software and process patents.

Too many patents are used to stop someone else from doing something even if the patent holder can't do it as well or doesn't even intend to do it. Too many patents are used to stop people from doing something trivial.

It's ridiculous that patent defenders say patents are needed otherwise "important secrets" would be lost, and then others say that patents stop others from copying their stuff easily!

When an expert in the field in the same situation facing the same problem can _independently_ come up with the same solution within a short time, but the organization has to spend a longer time negotiating a patent license, progress is impeded.

Patents reward the trivial more than the innovative. Some really innovative stuff is so nonobvious that the market doesn't grok it till the patents are expired ;).

As for an alternative, how about Prizes for Innovation instead (with categories similar to Hugo and Nebula awards, by public and experts in field). It's easier to reward in hindsight than for an overworked patent examiner to figure out whether something should be patentable.

Sure it means companies won't get monopolies on inventions, big deal. Anyone really believe that Apple wouldn't be making billions in a world without patents? Samsung may be selling a bit more, but Apple would still be raking in the billions. Even with drugs. Do you trust some Indian/Chinese pharmaceutical company to produce a "generic" of the same quality, purity and consistency? So some people will pay extra just to be safe.

Any comments on this:
http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=On_Xerox,_Apple_and_Progress.txt&showcomments=1
http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Busy_Being_Born.txt

Even if they had, nothing in this ought to be patentable anyway - it's all reasonably obvious to any practitioner in the field as soon as the technology

FWIW, I believe patents should be abolished. It's come to a point where patents cost society more than they benefit society, especially software and process patents.

Too many patents are used to stop someone else from doing something even if the patent holder can't do it as well or doesn't even intend to do it. Too many patents are used to stop people from doing something trivial.

It's ridiculous that patent defenders say patents are needed otherwise "important secrets" would be lost, and then others say that patents stop others from copying their stuff easily!

When an expert in the field in the same situation facing the same problem can _independently_ come up with the same solution within a short time, but the organization has to spend a longer time negotiating a patent license, progress is impeded.

Patents reward the trivial more than the innovative. Some really innovative stuff is so nonobvious that the market doesn't grok it till the patents are expired ;).

As for an alternative, how about Prizes for Innovation instead (with categories similar to Hugo and Nebula awards, by public and experts in field). It's easier to reward in hindsight than for an overworked patent examiner to figure out whether something should be patentable.

Sure it means companies won't get monopolies on inventions, big deal. Anyone really believe that Apple wouldn't be making billions in a world without patents? Samsung may be selling a bit more, but Apple would still be raking in the billions. Even with drugs. Do you trust some Indian/Chinese pharmaceutical company to produce a "generic" of the same quality, purity and consistency? So some people will pay extra just to be safe.

This guy should be fired. Look at his productivity metrics results, Negative!

Has happened before. Bill Atkinson wrote -2000 lines of code whilst working on a graphics toolbox at Apple.

You can always tell the haters by the way they distort reality in any way possible (or frankly impossible) to make Apple the worst in any given comparison.

I wonder where the term Reality Distortion Field comes from.

http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Reality_Distortion_Field.txt

Anyway, haters are the only ones still affected by the RDF because of the interaction with their own smugness field and hate bozons created a stable reality warp bubble. Well, as stable as the hater.

Bill Atkinson

http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Round_Rects_Are_Everywhere.txt

I found this gem in the other metrics thread the other day.

-2000 lines of code.

At least give credit where it belongs for the idea that that is a bad metric:

-2000 lines of code
http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Negative_2000_Lines_Of_Code.txt

-- Terry

That's almost asking for a shitload of dead code to be pasted into a routine that just adds two numbers.

Almost?! The only case where it's not exactly asking for this is if your codebase has no additions.

Obligatory folklore

The point is that apple got paid to use someone elses inventions.

ah, you are indeed being intentionally dense, my friend. As others pointed out, the deal struck between Xerox and Apple used discounted Apple shares as compensation. The stigma you are attempting to attach to the deal just isn't there. And Apple innovated far more than they borrowed. You're view of this history is, quite simply, entirely inaccurate. To put it another way, what you believe is not the truth.

Rounded rectangles are everywhere!

Excellent summary, but your facts on the 3.5 are incomplete.

Sony helped developed the 3.5 floppy. Apple helped make it VERY popular in '83 with the original Mac.
http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Hide_Under_This_Desk.txt

It's best when you write -2000 lines of code during the day.

Surprising there wasn't a link there in the story since Susan Kare was featured in them. A few stories from there:

http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=MacPaint_Gallery.txt

http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Steve,_Icon.txt

http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Desk_Ornaments.txt

http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=World_Class_Cities.txt

http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Swedish_Campground.txt

http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Stolen_From_Apple.txt

http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Pirate_Flag.txt

William

Surprising there wasn't a link there in the story since Susan Kare was featured in them. A few stories from there:

http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=MacPaint_Gallery.txt

http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Steve,_Icon.txt

http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Desk_Ornaments.txt

http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=World_Class_Cities.txt

http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Swedish_Campground.txt

http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Stolen_From_Apple.txt

http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Pirate_Flag.txt

William

Surprising there wasn't a link there in the story since Susan Kare was featured in them. A few stories from there:

http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=MacPaint_Gallery.txt

http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Steve,_Icon.txt

http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Desk_Ornaments.txt

http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=World_Class_Cities.txt

http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Swedish_Campground.txt

http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Stolen_From_Apple.txt

http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Pirate_Flag.txt

William

Surprising there wasn't a link there in the story since Susan Kare was featured in them. A few stories from there:

http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=MacPaint_Gallery.txt

http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Steve,_Icon.txt

http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Desk_Ornaments.txt

http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=World_Class_Cities.txt

http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Swedish_Campground.txt

http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Stolen_From_Apple.txt

http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Pirate_Flag.txt

William

Surprising there wasn't a link there in the story since Susan Kare was featured in them. A few stories from there:

http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=MacPaint_Gallery.txt

http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Steve,_Icon.txt

http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Desk_Ornaments.txt

http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=World_Class_Cities.txt

http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Swedish_Campground.txt

http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Stolen_From_Apple.txt

http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Pirate_Flag.txt

William

Surprising there wasn't a link there in the story since Susan Kare was featured in them. A few stories from there:

http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=MacPaint_Gallery.txt

http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Steve,_Icon.txt

http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Desk_Ornaments.txt

http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=World_Class_Cities.txt

http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Swedish_Campground.txt

http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Stolen_From_Apple.txt

http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Pirate_Flag.txt

William

Surprising there wasn't a link there in the story since Susan Kare was featured in them. A few stories from there:

http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=MacPaint_Gallery.txt

http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Steve,_Icon.txt

http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Desk_Ornaments.txt

http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=World_Class_Cities.txt

http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Swedish_Campground.txt

http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Stolen_From_Apple.txt

http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Pirate_Flag.txt

William

It's still buggy, lacking in basic features, but at least it works - though it's only about half as fast as it was a few years ago on the same machine.

Anyone working on a DE should read this, especially the parts about all the work that was done for optimizing for speed and size, like Rounded Rectangles are Everywhere and this about resources, andmanagers should have this shoved in their face.

n another note, OOP has failed. While it did allow us to "kick the can down the road a bit" in terms of managing complexity, ultimately, the extra overhead of dealing with the object model mean that, once a project gets past a certain size, OOP adds more overhead and complexity than it removes, both at code time and at run time. Oh well, c'est la vie.

It's still buggy, lacking in basic features, but at least it works - though it's only about half as fast as it was a few years ago on the same machine.

Anyone working on a DE should read this, especially the parts about all the work that was done for optimizing for speed and size, like Rounded Rectangles are Everywhere and this about resources, andmanagers should have this shoved in their face.

n another note, OOP has failed. While it did allow us to "kick the can down the road a bit" in terms of managing complexity, ultimately, the extra overhead of dealing with the object model mean that, once a project gets past a certain size, OOP adds more overhead and complexity than it removes, both at code time and at run time. Oh well, c'est la vie.

It's still buggy, lacking in basic features, but at least it works - though it's only about half as fast as it was a few years ago on the same machine.

Anyone working on a DE should read this, especially the parts about all the work that was done for optimizing for speed and size, like Rounded Rectangles are Everywhere and this about resources, andmanagers should have this shoved in their face.

n another note, OOP has failed. While it did allow us to "kick the can down the road a bit" in terms of managing complexity, ultimately, the extra overhead of dealing with the object model mean that, once a project gets past a certain size, OOP adds more overhead and complexity than it removes, both at code time and at run time. Oh well, c'est la vie.

It's still buggy, lacking in basic features, but at least it works - though it's only about half as fast as it was a few years ago on the same machine.

Anyone working on a DE should read this, especially the parts about all the work that was done for optimizing for speed and size, like Rounded Rectangles are Everywhere and this about resources, andmanagers should have this shoved in their face.

n another note, OOP has failed. While it did allow us to "kick the can down the road a bit" in terms of managing complexity, ultimately, the extra overhead of dealing with the object model mean that, once a project gets past a certain size, OOP adds more overhead and complexity than it removes, both at code time and at run time. Oh well, c'est la vie.

Why bother with optimization?

Steve Jobs joined the Macintosh project when he was forced out of the Lisa team. By that time, the hardware design was pretty much finished.

Not according to Andy Hertzfeld. This article says that 3 of the 5 Mac hardware designs were done after Jobs joined the team.

Raskin left in 1982, more than a year and a half before the Mac shipped. He was frustrated because Jobs was pushing the platform in a different direction than Raskin envisioned.

Macintosh could have happened without Jobs, but it would have been an entirely different machine.

It's kind of ironic really. Thirty years ago Sculley priced the Mac high, arguing that profit margins were more important than market share, and today is the Apple fan's favorite whipping boy. Ten years ago Jobs priced the iPhone high, arguing that profit margins were more important than market share, and today is the Apple fan's favorite business genius.

pushing to replace the crap OS was just the kind of thing that got Steve Jobs ousted from Apple.

Huh? Jobs got ousted from Apple because Mac sales were slumping and he fought with Sculley over it. The OS had nothing to do with it - it was only on System 2 when Jobs left Apple.

Of course, it was the same OS he'd been pushing for that they eventually bought back along with Jobs himself when they acquired NeXT.

Are you under the impression that Jobs was dreaming up a NeXT-type OS in 1985 to run on a Fat Mac? You're out of your mind.

Steve Jobs was a bit of an unusual case, because the man had a brand unlike almost any other corporate executive in the United States. Think about how he took most of Apple's engineering staff off of MacBook upgrades and OS X development to create the iPhone. It worked, and created Apple its most profitable product line ever. But what other person, at what other large company, has the political capital to sacrifice development of an existing profitable product line for an unknown?

Jobs did that back when Apple had less resources too. He pretty much completely killed the Apple II team to make the Macintosh team. He just got his best people, and put them to work on what he thought was the future product. Take this story for example. Eventually, the people who remained on the Apple II team were only the engineers he didn't have much confidence on (and by "eventually" I mean before the Macintosh got released, not after the user base for the Mac surpassed the Apple II). Relevant quote:

"No, you're just wasting your time with that! Who cares about the Apple II? The Apple II will be dead in a few years. Your OS will be obsolete before it's finished. The Macintosh is the future of Apple, and you're going to start on it now!".

With that, he walked over to my desk, found the power cord to my Apple II, and gave it a sharp tug, pulling it out of the socket, causing my machine to lose power and the code I was working on to vanish. He unplugged my monitor and put it on top of the computer, and then picked both of them up and started walking away. "Come with me. I'm going to take you to your new desk."

Jobs was an asshole in a lot of ways, but it's undeniable that his driven attitude was responsible for his successes. He didn't play it safe, he put his faith in the next product and went ahead full steam. If it doesn't work out, drop the project without a second thought and move on.

Sort of correct - the article you linked doesn't say anything about Lisa's early interface. Lisa had a GUI for applications, but it was not mouse/window-based and it wasn't system-wide See: http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Busy_Being_Born.txt

Interestingly, it says: "The middle picture depicts the initial user interface of the Lisa, based on a row of 'soft-keys', drawn at the bottom of the screen, that would change as a user performed a task. These were inspired from work done at HP, where some of the early Lisa designers hailed from."

So Apple got ideas from HP too, not just Xerox.

Read this history, it is very detailed and englightening:

http://www.guidebookgallery.org/articles/inventingthelisauserinterface

I can't believe people still say this. It is not and never has been correct. The Lisa team already had a GUI before the visit to PARC, and the interface that the Lisa and then Mac ended up with had nothing to do with Smalltalk, or even each other for that matter (except for the underlying drawing architecture, LisaGraf/QuickDraw, both being written by Bill Atkinson). You should check your facts next time.

Let's see what the people actually involved in the project say :

"There's no doubt that Jef was the creator of the Macintosh project at Apple, and that his articulate vision of an exceptionally easy to use, low cost, high volume appliance computer got the ball rolling, and remained near the heart of the project long after Jef left the company. He also deserves ample credit for putting together the extraordinary initial team that created the computer, recruiting former student Bill Atkinson to Apple and then hiring amazing individuals like Burrell Smith, Bud Tribble, Joanna Hoffman and Brian Howard for the Macintosh team. But there is also no escaping the fact that the Macintosh that we know and love is very different than the computer that Jef wanted to build, so much so that he is much more like an eccentric great uncle than the Macintosh's father.

Jef did not want to incorporate what became the two most definitive aspects of Macintosh technology - the Motorola 68000 microprocessor and the mouse pointing device. Jef preferred the 6809, a cheaper but weaker processor which only had 16 bits of address space and would have been obsolete in just a year or two, since it couldn't address more than 64Kbytes. He was dead set against the mouse as well, preferring dedicated meta-keys to do the pointing. He became increasingly alienated from the team, eventually leaving entirely in the summer of 1981, when we were still just getting started, and the final product utilitized very few of the ideas in the Book of Macintosh. In fact, if the name of the project had changed after Steve took over in January 1981, and it almost did (see Bicycle) , there wouldn't be much reason to correlate it with his ideas at all. "

No one disputes Raskin was a visionary and instrumental in getting the ball rolling but I think you're overstating his overall importance here.

Yes :

"The Macintosh User Interface wasn't designed all at once; it was actually the result of almost five years of experimentation and development at Apple, starting with graphics routines that Bill Atkinson began writing for Lisa in late 1978. Like any evolutionary process, there were lots of false starts and blind alleys along the way. It's a shame that these tend to be lost to history, since there is a lot that we can learn from them."

"The rightmost picture shows the final soft-key based UI, which is about to change radically ...into a mouse/windows based user interface. This is obviously the biggest single jump in the entire set of photographs, and the place where I most wish that Bill had dated them. It's tempting to say that the change was caused by the famous Xerox PARC visit, which took place in mid-December 1979, but Bill thinks that the windows predated that, although he can't say for sure. "

Screenshots on folklore.org

First off what they did was take this :

"At $16,000 for the Star workstation and an additional $50,000 to $100,000 for the complete system Xerox only sold about 25,000 units."

And turn it into first the $9,995 Lisa and then into the $2,495 mac. You think it's easy cramming $100.000 worth of technology into a $2,495 machine ? Those guys were friggin' geniuses. They may have gotten the general idea of which way computers were headed from Xerox (who by the way gave plenty of presentations to other companies before Apple and none of them recognized the value of what they saw there) and redeveloped and adapted this stuff for the puny home computers.

You can follow the whole development through a series of screenshots taken during coding here on flolklore.org. To appreciate the complexity of the task think about how long it took Microsoft to catch up with Apple even after they were given Macs by Apple to develop their software on.

Second, Woz is a great guy and engineer but after the Apple 2 his time had passed. I loved the Amiga at the time who were doing sort of the same thing as Woz with clever designs based around custom chips, but that was a dead end. The company started with Woz' technical prowess but it would've died then and there without Job's intuition about where computing was going next : easy to use interfaces, nicely designed boxes and business savvy.

Jobs did design work. An example:

http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Calculator_Construction_Set.txt

Uh... that's not what your link says at all.

The link says that while the Macintosh had been considered for cancellation, it doesn't say Jobs was trying to cancel it.
It also doesn't say that Jobs forced Raskin out.

Reading first hand accounts at http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=The_Father_of_The_Macintosh.txt ,
Jef left because he was becoming alienated because he wanted the Mac to NOT have a mouse, be dependent on meta keys, and use an dead end processor.