Andy Hertzfeld Shares His Thoughts on 25 Years of the Mac

blackbearnh writes "It may make you feel very, very old, but the Macintosh will be turning 25 in January. As we approach this momentous anniversary, O'Reilly News had a talk with Andy Hertzfeld, one of the original Macintosh designers, about the long and storied history of the Mac. Hertzfeld, who tells the story of the Mac in his book A Revolution in the Valley, shares his thoughts about how the Mac has aged over time, how life might have been different if Steve Jobs had stayed on at Apple, and the differences between working for Apple, and for Google (his current employer.)" Read on below for a bit of what Hertzfeld had to say.

"They're very similar in certain ways — essentially both Apple and Google want to rewrite the rulebook; they don't want to do things in conventional ways. They want to come up with a better way — for everything; that's not even just the technology but the work processes, the work environment, everything has to be unique and better, so they're very similar in that way. One of the ways that they're different has to do with essentially trust of employees. Apple is very secretive within the company; people working on Macs don't know anything about the new iPods, et cetera. Google is extremely open within the company; once you're a Google employee you have access to just about every piece of information there is."

Comments

What has he done lately?

[dfetter]

I'm curious as to why people are still interviewing Mr. Hertzfeld, given that his most recent successful project was the Mac. Even more puzzling is that he continues to be able to raise funds, attract developers, etc., in view of his decades-long track record of failure.

Re:What has he done lately?

[ryanw]

It's all a mater of perspective. What history have you witnessed? And from what angle?

The daily history of breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Re:What has he done lately?

[Captain Splendid]

It's all a mater of perspective. What history have you witnessed? And from what angle?

The daily history of breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Sounds positively epic. I think I may have to lie down.

Re:What has he done lately?

[Knuckles]

Nautilus is the Gnome file manager and replaced nothing.

Please quote here the appropriate law about errors in posts that correct errors.

Nautilus did replace something: Midnight Commander.

Re:mac, what do you think?

[jollyreaper]

*makes a-ok sign* It stinks!

Now begins the moderation war between mac addicts and MST3K fans. *grins evilly, sips iced tea*

General Magic - Android

[wsanders]

Android will crush you all, it won't have a kill switch. We underestimate the General Magic heritage. It was a pretty cool device, I knew a guy who knew a guy who knew a guy who had one.

Very, very?

[ferd_farkle]

"It may make you feel very, very old, but the Macintosh will be turning 25[...]"

Get the heck off my lawn. And take your fruit machine with you.

Quality control please

[oldhack]

Throw us a bone, will ya? Come on, god damn PC history every other day. Give us more of that Netherlands Neanderthal Cow magnet stuff. Those are good.

How Microsoft and Intel won the West

[burnitdown]

It was probably the decision to openly license it. The Mac--when the Mac came out and for two years thereafter it was at least four or five years ahead of Windows and possibly could have taken the place of Windows if it was openly licensed, but because the Macintosh was restricted to a single member, Apple, it never could become an industry rather than a single platform.

Highly insightful. The Mac was like the old order, where one company made hardware, OS and software. The PC is part of the new order.

Maybe this order will change soon with "cloud computing" (sounds like trying to find the diameter of a fart) but I doubt it.

Re:Mad props

[konohitowa]

You might want to study this before posting again. Familiarizing yourself with this wouldn't hurt either.

Re:whooooo

[konohitowa]

Yar! Twenty-freaking-five years later and I'm still trying to find some real choices in my virus scanning and spyware removal software. Damn you Apple!!!

Re:whooooo

[Anonymous Coward]

Yar! Twenty-freaking-five years later and I'm still trying to find some real choices in my virus scanning and spyware removal software. Damn you Apple!!!

Not to mention games...

Re:25 years of the Mac

[Ash-Fox]

Early on, it was a revolutionary machine, way ahead of its time. The mouse, the GUI, and desktop publishing were all new. The price was high in 2008 dollars, but so was the price of an MS-DOS machine. It was a fairly open environment; you could buy the manual that described all the APIs ("Inside Mac") very cheaply, in a phone-book format. This was roughly the period of the 68000 cpu.

Honestly, you compare a Amiga to the Apple systems and Apple really cannot be compared with Amiga systems, at all. I don't think the Apple was way ahead of it's time, the GUI, publishing, while it was all new, it was all done far better by the Amiga.

I still remember when Apple switched to the Power PC platform and the Amigas were still outdoing the machines in 3d graphics etc. with it's old m68k processor and custom chips.

I have not been impressed by Apple over the years.