Jef Raskin: Holes in the Histories | Hacker News Reader

Jef Raskin: Holes in the Histories

digibarn.com

42 pointsjpablo10 comments

The Halo effect sadly is still the current state in which much people treats Apple, I would love to know who are the engineers that design and write the features of the operating system that I use everyday, suggest some new features to them, etc., and I hate keynotes.

More footage here:

http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&s...

Don't miss the comments at the bottom with some comments from Raskin himself.

Also check http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&s... (and comments).

By the way, the folklore.org book is also inaccurate; I seem to remember it including some of the website comments, but not any from Jef, and some of them were important. Can't remember any of them offhand, though.

And, of course, the bio section didn't mention that he'd died before the book came out.

The stories on this website tend to be uncorraborated, but they're important because they're from the actual players. While it's true that Raskin himself hasn't commented much on that site, it's interesting that he isn't portrayed very kindly. Notably, he was canned from Apple pretty early on.

As the old saying goes: "Never let the truth get in the way of a good story".

History is pop culture.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assume_the_Position_with_Mr._Wu...

Jef Raskin stood out as someone who wanted to take far more credit than he deserved. Much worse than Wolfram in that regard.

The "true histories of great startups" would make an amazing series.

He invented Burrell, no?

From his own chapter notes from, apparently, 1981:

> ... Having been associated with PARC, I repeated called Apple's attention to the kind of thinking going on there, and it was gratifying that the company took note of and based a lot of the LISA software on the published work done at PARC.

http://www.digibarn.com/collections/business-docs/raskin-mac...

Then he proceeds to describe his plans for the Macintosh word processor, which includes magical spread sheets, a calendar, and the ability to dial stuff. Which, of course, never saw the light of day - MacWrite is entirely opposite of what he describes. He also said that multi-moded tools are too complex, and doesn't mention anything about a desktop metaphor, icons, folders -- and he pans the mouse universally.

So, I honestly don't know whether I believe his account at all. I read his book Humane Interface cover-to-cover, and I simply can't imagine a person with his ideas had as much to do with the Mac design as he claims.

In HI, he seemed to claim the Canon Cat as his proudest accomplishment. A modal word processor machine, with no mouse, and a rather complex and arcane (if you ask me) system of changing operation modes with multi-function keys.

There's more on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jef_Raskin

Here's a description of the LEAP functionality of his Archy interface, which seems to replicate what the Canon Cat did -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Leaping_in_the_Archy_inter...

Given the content of his writing, and the nature of his ideas, I have never understood why people in the industry think of him as some patron saint of usability.

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