February 26: Jef Raskin and the Macintosh

Jef Raskin, leader of the team that developed Apple’s Macintosh computer between 1980 and ’82, died on this date in 2005 at age 61. Raskin’s other inventions included QuickDraw graphics software, the one-button mouse, an electronic music recording studio program, a digital electronic tuner, and innovative remote-control model aircraft. He was a visual artist who joined group shows at the Museum of Modern Art and the Brooklyn Museum, and a composer, conductor and instrumentalist (he especially favored the pipe organ) who, on the day Apple became a publicly-held company, bought land for a house that he would eventually build that was large enough to accommodate a concert hall. Raskin was a leading theoretician of computer-human interface design who wrote about his ideas in The Humane Interface, 2000.

“Imagine if every Thursday your shoes exploded if you tied them the usual way. This happens to us all the time with computers, and nobody thinks of complaining.” —Jef Raskin