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GUI Pioneer Jef Raskin Has Passed Away
Viridian writes "Jef Raskin, GUI pioneer, interface expert, Apple employee #31, and the man most credited with the creation of the Apple Macintosh, died of cancer on Saturday February 26, 2005. It was Raskin who named it after his favorite fruit, the McIntosh apple, although he said that he changed the spelling to "Macintosh" to avoid potential copyright conflicts with McIntosh, the audio equipment manufacturer."
He was one of my VERY few programming heros.
I know we have discussed his more recent work on ZUI and whatnot here before and some people are a big fan of it and others are not. But I wonder what will happen with the project, or if it will be continued by others he was working with. He seems to be the one who really spear-headed the effort. Does anyone know? It would be a shame if he couldn't finish his project as he conceived it and it got dropped because there was no one to take it over. Condolences to anyone who knew him well.
Unfortunately, he and Steve have been mad at each other since 1982. But we'll see. There will be plenty of accolades for a man who changed the face of personal computing from the inside. (Steve Jobs changed it from the outside.)
Freelance tech journalist for the Economist, MIT Technology Review, Macworld, and others
I hope you'll be more satisfied up there than you were down here. So long and thanks.
Back when the Macintosh was invented, we didn't have the same fruit diversity available at the market that we now have today...
Could be worse though... imagine if his favourite fruit had been the Durian
Bizarre UI. Would have been interesting if it had been cultivated.
Apple gets a lot of flak about the one-button mouse, but I can't see any justification for it. The whole interface was designed from the start not to need a second button on the mouse It's paramount to the simplicity of the Mac interface, but even the person responsible for it admits to the usefulness of having a second mouse button (from the Wikipedia article):
He is credited with the decision to use a one-button mouse as part of the Apple interface, a departure from the Xerox PARC standard of a three-button mouse. He has since stated that were he to redesign the interface today, he would have used a two button mouse.
I don't think it was a mistake for them to go with a single button, but it's more of a fundamental difference in the design. I couldn't imagine using a Windows computer without the right button, as much as I can't see a need for one on a Mac.
Bears don't normally eat things that talk and move backwards.
The only mention I can find on the entire Apple site (using their "advanced search") is something about "DB2 HyperCard Demo Disks" referring to the "Raskin-Bobbins Hypercard Stack". You'd think that someone of Raskin's stature and relevance to Apple's success would at least have an honorable mention somewhere.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
It's a sad, sad day; especially to lose another great mind to cancer. I just hope Jef's ideas may be taken even more seriously now that he's sloughed off this mortal coil.
It is sad to note the passing of this pioneer. But the Mac UI as we know it has very little to do with Jef Raskin.
Raskin didn't "invent the Mac", he merely initiated the project. His original vision for the Mac was more along the lines of his Canon Cat. That all changed when Jobs took the project over and turned the Mac into "Lisa Jr".
I must confess I'm a bit surprised and disappointed at how effective Raskin's "I invented the Mac!" claims have been, even among slashdotters, who really ought to know better. A lot of posters here seem to have uncritically accepted his claims.
Read this for a bit of insight into Raskin's penchant for self promotion: I Invented Burrell
See also Andy Hertzfeld's take on who "invented the Mac".
Iirc Jef was fired shortly before the Mac shipped.
Actually, after Jobs got ousted from the Lisa project, he commandeered the Macintosh project from Raskin (then a project to make a very cheap $500 computer). Shortly after taking the reigns, Jef and Steve had a number of "conflicts" and Steve eventually pushed Jef out on a leave of absence.
He truly was a pioneer though. From his very early influence on the project to his comprehensive manual on what a GUI should be.
I just wasted your mod points! HA!
I dont know what hapens after we die , but if your out there somewhere then i hope this gets to you
Mr Raskin
The first computer i ever used was a zx spectrum , the first computer that ever made me feel pasionate about computing was a mac.
I myself am severly dyslexic and dysphraxic and during my younger years had great difficulty in schooling, had it not been for the mac in our school i feel i would still be marked slow , the interface allowed me to put my thoughts down so other people could understand , it allowed me to excell and fill in a void which would have crippled my education.
I owe you and your team alot as do many others who were in my situation.
so tonight i shall open a 12 year old speyside single malt and drink a glass to honour your memory.
Thank you for all you have done for the world
Gregg Taylor Kincaid
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
It is probably BS that the decision to name Apple Computers had anything to do with this, but the story about Turing is likely true, at least that is what is reported here, among other places.
Of course I'm not seriously making that argument -- it would be stupid. But that was Jef's argument taken to it's logical conclusion. What is wrong with CTRL-S? Is SHIFT-S bad too because it requires two keys? Maybe switching between upper and lower case should be a menu item? Yes, it's ridiculous. That's my point.
He would cite case study after case study of how people would take longer to recall and use a keyboard shortcut than to find the menu item. But he obviously wasn't studying people who knew their way around the program! I don't want computers designed only for newbies! Give them their menu items and give me my shortcuts. I know what I'm doing.
Admittedly, if they're inconsistent, like on Windows, the utility goes down. But even there if you spend much of your time in one or two applications (most people do) it's still better once you learn them.
On the Mac, where the shortcuts are pretty damn consistent (every program I use follows the same conventions) it is a dream.
Of course you want menu items too -- but I couldn't bear listening to him claim that I'd be better off reaching for the mouse and hunting for a close button or selecting File -> New a thousand times a day rather than including it in my 80WPM typing routine.
Cheers.
In October 1979 as I was being shown Bandley III for the first time, I had the striking memory of seeing the writer Steve Clark's office embrasured with a passel of fold-together cardboard widgets which I was told Jef had designed, just for fun.
After Apple went public he bought a Bentley(!), which for Cupertino-Palo Alto was still a novelty among the technouveau riche.
For me Jef was the spiritual prototype for John Percival Hackworth, the Victorian nanotech engineer.
Rest in peace and see you in version 2.0, Jef.
Slashdotters, I have been working with the Raskins for several years to document Jef's life and work for the DigiBarn Computer Museum. I have turned Jef's page at the museum site into a memorial page for him. See what Jef was all about (more than just GUIs) at:
Jef Raskin: A Life of Design and the rest of the DigiBarn is of relevance to this topic at:
DigiBarn Computer Museum
Thanks!
Bruce Damer, Curator