Let Us Now Praise Inconspicuous Men
by Mitch Stone, the Accidental Expert
Jef Raskin passed away at the end of February. Over the next few days, the computer scientist was eulogized far and wide as the father of the Macintosh computer. And as the head of Apple’s Macintosh project during its formative years, it’s a worthy credit.
The plethora of media stories that followed Raskin’s death never failed to mention that he was Apple’s 31st employee, and that he named the Macintosh after his favorite fruit. They all invariably recounted his dismissal from the project team in 1981 after a falling-out with Steve Jobs, nearly three years before the Macintosh arrived on the market. But for the most part, these notices failed to give us much reason to care about the loss of one, obscure computer engineer.
And that’s unfortunate. We really ought to properly note his passing, if only because Jef Raskin was a fierce advocate for something that should matter to all of us: technology that serves people, rather than the other way around.
Jef Raskin was passionate about creating computers that adapt to their human operators, instead of forcing people to think like computers. This was an unconventional, if not radical concept when he advanced it during the 1970s, but it would form the basis of the Macintosh computer project from its very inception. The rest, as they say, is history.
A few years ago, at a MacWorld Expo in San Francisco, I found myself jostling at a booth next to a rather rumpled, balding fellow sporting an unruly silver beard. Since this description fits nearly half the attendees at any given technology trade show, I barely gave him a second look. Then something caught my eye: The name on the badge hanging around his neck read “Jef Raskin.”
I was astonished to find myself standing next to a legendary figure in the world of computing. I quickly introduced myself before he had a chance to escape. Raskin seemed genuinely pleased to be recognized by at least one person on the teaming show floor. The first words out of his mouth were, “Welcome to my expo!”
As I learned much later, this was a classic Jef Raskin line. He spent much of his life after departing Apple setting the record straight about who did what on the Macintosh project. He wanted us to know that Apple hadn’t copied the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center’s pioneering work on graphical user interfaces. He pointed out that the Macintosh project was well underway when Steve Jobs made his storied trek to Palo Alto in late 1979.
In one of his many published historical essays, Raskin wrote that it was he who prepared Jobs and the engineers at Apple for what they would see at Xerox, and why it mattered. As it happened, Steve Jobs immediately understood the importance of the work the scientists at Xerox were doing, and threw his support behind the Mac project at Apple in a big way (eventually, taking it over). But ultimately, what the Mac — and later Microsoft Windows — became was in no small measure a result of Raskin’s insights into how a computer should function.
Raskin didn’t give up the fight for a more humane user computer interface during his post-Apple years. He designed the radically simple Canon Cat, which even more nearly represented his ideas about computer interface designs than the Macintosh. Even though Canon yanked the rug out from under the project before they’d sold more than a handful of units, Raskin remained characteristically undaunted. He never stopped making new plans, and expounding about making machines work better for people.
Fortunately for us, Jef Raskin was utterly devoted to these issues, concerning himself with making the places where our lives intersect with technology more productive and satisfying. And that’s why, on the sad event of his passing, we should salute Jef Raskin — and remember something more about him than his favorite fruit.
7 March 2005 |
Jef Raskin, as I met him at the 2001 MacWorld Expo in San Francisco. [Photo: Mitch Stone] |
