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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."
Steve is usually a touchy feely type guy, i'm surprised that there's not anything on the Apple site about it, however small.
cleverly disguised as a responsible adult ||
Bugger.
There are few enough decent UI designers out there who understand what is actually important over what "looks real pretty". Here was a man who was more interested in it working for people, than it looking good on a poster.
The original Mac interface is a design classic, where design is about function, not about style.
So next time you design an interface or a web page remember the creator of the Mac. What you create will be WORSE than the Mac.. BECAUSE of all the colours and "clever" bits you used.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Controversial in his views, at least he had some mindshare and was pushing the envelope in innovation with his interface experiments. Rather than incrementally changing what has become the de facto UI over tha past 20 years, he was willing to step out of the box, get some metrics and push a vision for "easy to use" software and interfaces.
Not just some crank with wild ideas, he was able to get some of his visions into practice and leverage that developmental capital into newer and more refined methods and idioms.
We've lost a visionary folks, and that's just a shame. His loss hurts us all.
They had a good enough reason for that... Why Apple Uses One Buttoned Mice
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.
Sad news indeed. :(
Heres some more information I found about the naming of macintosh apples.
"The Macintosh project began at Apple as one code-named Annie, and spearheaded not by Steve Jobs (he actually lobbied against the Mac project at one point) but by Jeff Raskin, a former computer professor and Apple employee number 31. Raskin is generally credited with quickly changing the codename from Annie to Macintosh, an obvious tie to the Apple brand. Macintosh was spelled differently than the apple variety, however, in an unsuccessful attempt to avoid trademark disputes. Apple itself, lore has it, was named by Steve Jobs for either his love of the Beatles (and their Apple Records label), his interest in health foods, or because of his fond experiences working in the apple orchards of Oregon during a brief stint at college there. Or for none of those reasons. Except for the short-lived Pippin operating system, Apple the company thankfully avoided any other product references to varieties of apple, the fruit."
(taken from creativepro)
I have started reading his webpage and about The Humane Interface, and I have to say that this guy really knew what computers were for. For getting work done, to use as a tool for your tasks at hand. I think a lot more programmers could learn from him.
I can't spell ripburger
With the greatest respect to the guy :)
--Confirmation Dialog--
Jef Raskin, are you sure you want to logout?
[Yes] [No]
liqbase
He truly was one of my heroes, though I only realised it the last few years. Respect to him, condolances to them he left behind.
*steps back and bows again*
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.
I've seen a few comments like this, but the reality is that Jef and Steve weren't exactly close. Iirc Jef was fired shortly before the Mac shipped. He's always been very quick to point out his connection to the first Mac (for obvious reasons) but I've never heard of anyone at Apple talking about him as a pioneer or a VIP. If Woz died, I'm sure there would be something from Apple PR about it, but this guy was no Woz.
My sig is blank, I typed this by hand.
I was looking forward to The Humane Environment (THE). It looked rather promising. I'm sure it will continue development, but without the man who actually had a good grasp on UI technology and THE behind it, the development is likely to go the wrong way. Imagine what would have happened if Stallman's Emacs was given over to Bill Gates to manage. We'd have wound up with a really hard to use word processor the also does calendaring, web browsing, e-mail composition, and a whole host of other things + Clippy. Oh wait... Beyond this, it must really suck for his family since he is of far more signifigance to them than he will ever be even to people who think he was a UI genius (myself inluded).
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
I found your insights to be spectacular. I used to work in a Software Etcetera and make fun of Macintosh computers all the time. Of course then I was a hardened Windows user pushing software. I'm glad I finally came around and bought a Macintosh. The interface simplicity, and how much of it Windows derived, really sold me and now I own three.
...and of course the stories about you at http://www.folklore.org are an inspirational read.
.deviatefromtheabsolute.
From Linda Blum, his wife, comes this note: Dear Friends, Jef died this evening, surrounded by friends and family, with some favorite music playing. While I am overcome by a profound sense of sadness and am not looking forward the days, weeks and years ahead without him, I am also relieved that he did not suffer for a long time and that he is at peace and no longer in pain. There will be a memorial service, time and date to be determined. ----------- My first thoughts: We lost one of the great ones today, a good and generous man. Jef Raskin died of cancer this evening, after being sick for several months. A wonderful spirit and renaissance man, who inspired me and many others. He created the Macintosh project at Apple in 1979, naming it after his personal favorite fruit He left Apple to form Information Appliances, where he designed the Canon Cat with an innovative interface. He continued refining human interface design, publishing his ideas in The Humane Interface (Addison Wesley, 2000.) The Humane Interface ideas are being implemented in the Raskin Center project Archy, where is son, Aza, is a programmer. His artwork was displayed at New York's Museum of Modern Art. He conducted the San Francisco Chamber Opera Society and wrote the score for a movie, "Smog Patterns," shown on PBS. He has a patent for a "Construction Technique for an Airplane Wing," and was a noted model airplane designer, an accomplished archer, and an occasional race car driver. Website is http://jef.raskincenter.org/home/index.html .There is also a collection of photographs and history at http://www.digibarn.com/friends/jef-raskin/index.h tml Jennie Bourne and I are in the midst of making a movie about him http://www.jefthemovie.com .
Slashdot previously covered his project, and there is some interesting discussion about some of his ideas in this article.
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.
There are a lot of great stories on Andy Hertzfeld's folklore.org site about the early days of the Mac, including many of the inevitable personality conflicts that arise when you have a lot of folks working under a deadline to get a huge project shipped. A fascinating site - I read it end to end when I came across it.
My sense is that while Jef had the original vision for the Mac it was Burrell Smith who did much of the actual implementation. If the Mac must have a father, Burrell might be the better choice.
Here's the funniest take on the whole thing.
Jef Raskin had practically nothing to do with the Macintosh. He had the initial vision of an easy-to-use computer appliance, but he left the Mac project in 1981, a full three years before the Macintosh shipped. Apart from the core vision, which started with Jef but rapidly diverged from what he had in mind, there's essentially no Raskin in the Mac.
Good lord, your post made my brain hurt.
First: Jef Raskin did not design the Mac UI. He wasn't even involved with he. Rather, he was the vision guy behind the Macintosh. He came up with the idea of an easy-to-use computer and convinced Apple's board to pursue it. When Steve Jobs took over the Macintosh project, Jef left. That was 1981, years before there was anything even like the Macintosh UI.
Second: The Mac UI was essentially identical to the Lisa UI. The key difference was that on the Mac the pixels were square. The user experience -- overlapping windows, the mouse, the menu bar --was exactly the same.
Well, you're partly wrong. Apple, Microsoft and Xerox all borrowed ideas from somewhere else (that isn't necessarily bad, you know ... it's what makes progress possible.) The real crime is trying to lock up good ideas forever. But in any event, I would say the real GUI pioneer was a man named Doug Englebart, whose remarkable demonstration in 1968 at the Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco really laid the groundwork for what we all think of as a modern computer. Behind that demo was six years of hard work by Englebart and seventeen others at the Standford Research Institute. It took a couple decades for those ideas to take off, but take off they did.
Just FYI, streaming video of the Englebart demo is available HERE if you can handle RealMedia.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Jef Raskins work at Apple, with the Mac is well documented at www.folklore.org. The site created by Andy Hertzfeld has now been made into a book called Revolution in The Valley - a collection of esoteric stories that chronical the birth and development the Mac.
peterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup
We UI developers of various industries owe Jef their deepest gratitude. We also owe you, his family, our gratitude as well. Thank you for letting him work the long hours, for helping him endure what seemed like fruitless (no pun intended) meetings that probably frustrated him from time-to-time, and for listening to him rant aloud about his interface musings as he bored you for hours (don't the great ones often do that?).
I'm sure you realize how much Jef's work has affected, no, changed, our lives. Everyone in the modern world has been touched by Jef's work. Probably more so than most great artists of any genre. Not everyone likes the Beatles, but almost everyone has used a computer interface at work or at home that has been influenced by Mr. Raskin. The users, of course, don't think of Jef every time they click a dialog box, but society is different at every level because of his work. Computers are accessible and usable to almost everyone because not everyone understands what a "command line" is.
Our prayers, thoughts, and thanks for Jef Raskin and his family on this sad day. Godspeed Jef.
Sincerest thanks,
Users and User Interface Developers Everywhere
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!
Raskin's vision was for an easy to use, CHEAP, computer for the everyman. It was actually quite different from what the Mac actually became. About the only credit he deserves in that regard is for the name (did you know the marketeers tried to change it to "Bicycle" ?!?) and for starting the project. The rest is pretty much to the credit of Jobs and the Mac team.
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
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.
Once again.. for the millionth time: it's not about copyright when you are dealing with brand names (like M[a]cIntosh), it's a trademark issue.
Raskin, whether you liked him or not, forced you to think about the issue of usability in the light of learnability, which are too often very separate things. It is possible for an interface to be hard to learn, yet very usable once you understand how it works, and god knows the opposite is also true. This is obviously not a very commercial idea, and possibly why he never got on with Steve Jobs.
Raskin knew that usability isnt just what looks good in the showroom, but what endures and helps the user once the eye candy has worn off. Very few have been prepared or able to make that leap.
"And the meaning of words; when they cease to function; when will it start worrying you?"
until someone empties the Trash.
Cake or Death? Cake Please!
I see a lot of comments here regarding whether Raskin was really the cornerstone of the Macintosh. I don't think any of US can really answer that, but it seems to me that Mr. Raskin fits Apple's definition:
Here's to the crazy ones.
The misfits.
The rebels.
The troublemakers.
The round pegs in the square holes.
The ones who see things differently.
They're not fond of rules.
And they have no respect for the status quo.
You can praise them, disagree with them, quote them, disbelieve them, glorify or vilify them.
About the only thing you can't do is ignore them.
Because they change things.
They invent. They imagine. They heal.
They explore. They create. They inspire.
They push the human race forward.
Maybe they have to be crazy.
How else can you stare at an empty canvas and see a work of art? Or sit in silence and hear a song that's never been written?
Or gaze at a red planet and see a laboratory on wheels?
We make tools for these kinds of people.
While some see them as the crazy ones, we see genius.
Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.
If Nalgene water bottles are outlawed, only outlaws will have Nalgene water bottles.
Sigh. It's very easy to find out the truth about this, yet still the myth persists. Xerox developed some of the GUI concepts (bitmapped display, windows, mouse input, buttons), but Apple were INVITED to view their work in return for investment in the company. What they saw inspired the Lisa and later Mac interface, but Apple added: overlapping moveable windows, pull down menus, the menu bar, mouse dragging, icons, self-refreshing windows, the entire direct manipulation interface for the file system (Finder), resources, drag and drop, and numerous other details that we take for granted today. None of these came from Xerox. Apple employed a number of engineers that started out at Xerox, and it's certain they brought their knowledge with them and extended it at Apple. Is that theft? If they didn't sign a contract forbidding use of intellectual property after leaving the company, then no. (And who ever had that in their contract in those days?). Apple overlooked one thing however, and that's the SmallTalk language - if they had brought object-oriented programming to the Mac along with the GUI concepts right from the start then perhaps Apple's place in history might have been even greater....
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
my favorite jef raskin story:
n tosh&story=I_Invented_Burrell.txt&sortOrder=Sort%2 0by%20Date&detail=medium&search=jef%20raskin
http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Maci
Whatever idea that you came up with, Jef Raskin had a tendency to claim that he invented it at some earlier point. That trait was the basis of Burrell's impersonation of Jef.
Jef had a slight stammer, which Burrell nailed perfectly. Burrell began by folding his fingers together like Jef and then exclaiming in a soft, Jef-like voice, "Why, why, why, I invented the Macintosh!"
Then Burrell would shift to his radio announcer voice, playing the part of an imaginary interviewer. "No, I thought that Burrell invented the Macintosh", the interviewer would object.
He'd shift back to his Jef voice for the punch line.
"Why, why, why, I invented Burrell!"
Me: Please right click on the desktop.
User: What's a right click?
Me: Press down the right button on the mouse. A Menu should appear.
How does twenty years change the fact that a two button mouse button is harder to use than a one button mouse for a total computer illiterate?
Here's a couple tips for you:
1. If you are involved in computer UI design, do some web design for a while. Then tell us that right click menus are necessary.
2. Calling users "idiots" because they cannot figure out an unintuitive interface is anti-social and it will not make you popular with the ladies.
Gawd bloody f'ing geeks. Grow up, move out of your parent's basement and develop some empathy for the "normals" for crying out loud.
I happen to use a two button+scroll with my powerbook at my desktop but I get by just fine with one button on the trackpad because the UI is designed to work with one button. There is always a main menu item for each context menu item.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
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