Macintosh Creator Raskin Dies at 61

Spinner

Jef Raskin, a computer interface expert who conceived Apple Computer Inc.'s groundbreaking Macintosh computer but left the company before it came to market, has died. He was 61.

Raskin died Saturday night at his home in Pacifica, Calif., his family said in a statement. In December, he told friends he had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.


Raskin joined Apple in 1978 — as its 31st employee — to start the young company's publications department. At the time, computers were primarily text-based and users had to remember a series of arcane commands to perform the simplest tasks.

Source: Yahoo News

primesuspect

they WERE NOT "arcane" - i mastered Atari Basic by the time I was 8 years old! Any kid could learn the commands!

Axtumanu

I remember working with apple LOGO at about the same age, and Q-basic shortly after. Older computers were hardly hard to use!

Dexter

I think the point they are making in the article is that in order to use any older computer system, you had to learn a new language to some extent. You had to memorize DOS style commands (I mean DOS generically here, it was different from manufacturer to manufacturer.) Seriously, pretend that Apple had not invented the Mac OS, and that there was no ensuing pressure on Microsoft to follow suit and come up with Windows. Sure, someone else would have come up with the idea eventually, but where would we be right now, today, if the whole mouse-driven point and click way of personal computing had not come into being for another 6 or 8 years after the Mac came out? Would we still be using a Windows version equivalent to 3.11, or 95? Would the WWW revolution have erupted in the 90's like it did, or would it still be a "niche" tool/toy of universities and government institutes? Would Short-Media, or even Yahoo or Google exist if the mouse did not become the preffered way to interact with the computer until 1990 or 1994 instead 1984?

Gives some pause for thought, I think....

Dexter...