Jef Raskin

Jef Raskin (March 9, 1943 – February 26, 2005) is the human-computer interface expert who began the Apple Macintosh project for Apple Computer and is the author of The Humane Interface, which largely builds on his work with the Canon Cat.

Education
Raskin received a B.S. Mathematics and a B.A. in Philosophy from the State University of New York and a M.S. in Computer Science from the Pennsylvania State University. As an assistant professor at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), he taught classes ranging from computer science to photography.

Apple Computer
Raskin joined Apple Computer as the 31st employee on January 3, 1978, the company's first anniversary. His Macintosh project proposal was approved by Mike Markkula in 1979. He hired his former student Bill Atkinson along with Bud Tribble from UCSD to join the Mac development team at Apple. However, he clashed with Apple co-founder Steve Jobs over the design of the Macintosh and left the project by 1981.

After Apple
After leaving Apple, Raskin joined Canon to design the Canon Cat. Released in 1987, the Cat was closer to Raskin's vision of how the Macintosh should have been designed as a simpler information appliance.

At the beginning of the new millennium, Raskin undertook the building of Archy (formerly The Humane Environment, or THE). Archy is a system incarnating his concepts of the humane interface, by using open source elements within his rendition of a ZUI or zooming user interface.

Jef Raskin passed away on February 26, 2005, at the age of 61, reportedly due to cancer.

Articles and interviews

 * Articles from Jef Raskin about the history of the Macintosh by Matt Mora (archived 2001-11-29)
 * The Mac's creator on Apple, Jobs and his new project by Dennis Sellers at MacMinute (2004-02-11, archived 2004-02-27)
 * Talk time: Jef Raskin by Jason Walsh at The Guardian (2004-10-21, archived 2004-10-27)
 * The History of Apple's Pascal "Syntax" Poster, 1979-80. by Lucas Wagner and Jef Raskin (revision 3, archived 2006-06-19)