The Reality Behind the Myth: Jeff Raskin Was More "Initiator" than Creator of the Mac
02/28/2005 16:41 Filed in: Technology
Jef Raskin: 1943 - 2005
Above: Jef Raskin in 1999 with a miniature model of his Canon Cat.
I'm really not meaning to speak ill of the dead. I intend this to be more of a history lesson than anything else. Today, I got an email from one of you informing me of this news: "The creator of the Macintosh died today. I thought you'd want to know."
Well, I already knew about Jef Raskin's passing at the age of 61 over the weekend. And to be honest, I think it's tragic that he died so young (yes, 61 now seems young to me). However, I have to differ with his being called the "creator" or even the "father" of the Macintosh as is being thrown around today on some of the news sites. I'd Rather think of him as the initiator of the Mac. If there's a father of the Mac, it has to be Steve Jobs who took Raskin's concept and pushed it into the product released in 1984.
To be honest, I've never been a huge fan of Raskin. I've seen him in interviews and read some of his ideas, and I've always found him to be a bit of grump with narrower vision than a lot of people claim.
Raskin was an Apple employ who came up with the idea to make a computer based upon research done at Xerox P.A.R.C. , and he was the one who gave the machine its name, but he left only one year into development (they spent about four years developing the Mac as opposed to IBM's nine months developing the kludgy PC). Evidently, Jeff Raskin and Steve Jobs differed on crucial issues. Jobs picked up on Raskin's concept, but had much greater vision for it. Raskin didn't want to include a mouse, but Jobs did for instance. Raskin wasn't so much concerned with a true graphical user interface like you have on both Macs and Windows machines today, but rather he just primarily wanted an inexpensive computer (his vision was $500 finally met this year with the introduction of the Mac Mini ) that was easy to use.
After Jobs took over Raskin's Macintosh project, Raskin left Apple. He eventually went to work for Canon where he developed a computer closer to his original vision, the Canon Cat . Only about 10,000 ever sold, and if you've ever seen one, you will be glad--even if you're a Windows user (since your GUI is based on the Mac's GUI)--that Raskin's full vision didn't pan out. The Canon Cat seemed more like a glorified typewriter with a CRT displaying a user interface, and it was primarily aimed at secretaries. If Raskin had been able to fully develop his original Macintosh vision at Apple, the Mac as we know it would not exist today, Apple would be out of business (since it was the Mac that kept them in business after the Apple II ran its course) and if you're a Windows user the computer you are looking at right now would be radically different since there would be no Mac GUI for the folks at Microsoft to copy.
Bill Gates of Microsoft and a lot of other folks have tried to imply that the Mac interface was not all that unique--that everything part of the original Mac was stolen from Xerox. However, that's not quite true. Yes, the folks at Xerox P.A.R.C came up with the concepts of a bitmapped display, the mouse as a navigational unit (based upon prototypes by Doug Engelbart ) and pull-down menus. But it was the folks at Apple who gave us what we have today with things like overlapping windows and the entire desktop metaphor: icons representing "files" that are kept in "folders" or deleted by dragging to a "trashcan." These concepts basic to every mainstream GUI (whether Mac, Windows, or the various UNIX/Linux desktops) were all original with the first Mac operating system in 1984. These specific concepts cannot really be attributed to Raskin since he left Apple before they were developed at Apple.
In recent years, Raskin has been very critical of both the Windows and Macintosh interfaces claiming that computers are still too difficult to use. He is correct on that point, but I think we've come a long way. Raskin published his vision of a computer interface for the future in 2000 with his book The Humane Interface: New Directions for Designing Interactive Systems .
See also...
- For more information on Jef Raskin and his ideas, go to http://jefraskin.com .
- For more information about the creation of Macintosh, go to http://folklore.org or read Andy Herzfeld's book, Revolution in the Valley .
- For more information about the history of the graphical user interface and the creation of the Macintosh, read Insanely Great: The Life and Times of Macintosh, the Computer that Changed Everything by Steven Levy.
Above: Jef Raskin in 1999 with a miniature model of his Canon Cat.
I'm really not meaning to speak ill of the dead. I intend this to be more of a history lesson than anything else. Today, I got an email from one of you informing me of this news: "The creator of the Macintosh died today. I thought you'd want to know."
Well, I already knew about Jef Raskin's passing at the age of 61 over the weekend. And to be honest, I think it's tragic that he died so young (yes, 61 now seems young to me). However, I have to differ with his being called the "creator" or even the "father" of the Macintosh as is being thrown around today on some of the news sites. I'd Rather think of him as the initiator of the Mac. If there's a father of the Mac, it has to be Steve Jobs who took Raskin's concept and pushed it into the product released in 1984.
To be honest, I've never been a huge fan of Raskin. I've seen him in interviews and read some of his ideas, and I've always found him to be a bit of grump with narrower vision than a lot of people claim.
Raskin was an Apple employ who came up with the idea to make a computer based upon research done at Xerox P.A.R.C. , and he was the one who gave the machine its name, but he left only one year into development (they spent about four years developing the Mac as opposed to IBM's nine months developing the kludgy PC). Evidently, Jeff Raskin and Steve Jobs differed on crucial issues. Jobs picked up on Raskin's concept, but had much greater vision for it. Raskin didn't want to include a mouse, but Jobs did for instance. Raskin wasn't so much concerned with a true graphical user interface like you have on both Macs and Windows machines today, but rather he just primarily wanted an inexpensive computer (his vision was $500 finally met this year with the introduction of the Mac Mini ) that was easy to use.
After Jobs took over Raskin's Macintosh project, Raskin left Apple. He eventually went to work for Canon where he developed a computer closer to his original vision, the Canon Cat . Only about 10,000 ever sold, and if you've ever seen one, you will be glad--even if you're a Windows user (since your GUI is based on the Mac's GUI)--that Raskin's full vision didn't pan out. The Canon Cat seemed more like a glorified typewriter with a CRT displaying a user interface, and it was primarily aimed at secretaries. If Raskin had been able to fully develop his original Macintosh vision at Apple, the Mac as we know it would not exist today, Apple would be out of business (since it was the Mac that kept them in business after the Apple II ran its course) and if you're a Windows user the computer you are looking at right now would be radically different since there would be no Mac GUI for the folks at Microsoft to copy.
Bill Gates of Microsoft and a lot of other folks have tried to imply that the Mac interface was not all that unique--that everything part of the original Mac was stolen from Xerox. However, that's not quite true. Yes, the folks at Xerox P.A.R.C came up with the concepts of a bitmapped display, the mouse as a navigational unit (based upon prototypes by Doug Engelbart ) and pull-down menus. But it was the folks at Apple who gave us what we have today with things like overlapping windows and the entire desktop metaphor: icons representing "files" that are kept in "folders" or deleted by dragging to a "trashcan." These concepts basic to every mainstream GUI (whether Mac, Windows, or the various UNIX/Linux desktops) were all original with the first Mac operating system in 1984. These specific concepts cannot really be attributed to Raskin since he left Apple before they were developed at Apple.
In recent years, Raskin has been very critical of both the Windows and Macintosh interfaces claiming that computers are still too difficult to use. He is correct on that point, but I think we've come a long way. Raskin published his vision of a computer interface for the future in 2000 with his book The Humane Interface: New Directions for Designing Interactive Systems .
See also...
- For more information on Jef Raskin and his ideas, go to http://jefraskin.com .
- For more information about the creation of Macintosh, go to http://folklore.org or read Andy Herzfeld's book, Revolution in the Valley .
- For more information about the history of the graphical user interface and the creation of the Macintosh, read Insanely Great: The Life and Times of Macintosh, the Computer that Changed Everything by Steven Levy.