Jef Raskin dead (he invented the 1-button mouse and a lot of other things for Apple)

Giaguara

Giaguara

Chmod 760
Staff member
Mod
Jef Raskin, the inventor of 1-button mouse, is dead.

From Wikipedia
Raskin joined Apple in January 1978 as the 31st employee. He later hired his former student Bill Atkinson from UCSD to work at Apple, and began the Macintosh project. He is credited with the decision to use a one-button mouse as part of the Apple interface, a departure from the Xerox PARC standard of a three-button mouse. He has since stated that were he to redesign the interface today, he would have used a two button mouse.

Raskin designed the Canon Cat, released in 1987.

At the beginning of the new millennium, Raskin undertook the building of The Humane Environment (THE). THE 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 died peacefully on February 26th, 2005.
Click to expand...

More links for those who want to have a look for more: http://jef.raskincenter.org/home/index.html http://digibarn.com/friends/jef-raskin/index.html and some stuff Raskin wrote himself:

http://digibarn.com/stories/mac20/raskin-and-the-mac.html etc.

Impressive. Rest in peace.
 
I read an article on how he actually didn't like the mac as it is today. As much as I was annoyed at him, he brought up some brilliant points in his defense. Rest in peace, good man.
 
If people like Jef kept their mouths shut, evolution of the Macintosh platform would cease... criticism is a necessity for evolution.

Rest in peace. I'm sure his journeys now will far exceed the brilliance of what he accomplished on Earth.
 
But I don't think anyone 'major' (Like the directors at Apple) paid attention to what he was saying. It was a recent interview, and he brought up good points. I understand what you mean though. Hopefully, Apple will check the interview out, and take the good man's points into consideration and constructive criticism.
 
Think different...

One thinker is gone.

Others will come.

Life goes from one being to several others.
 
I remember when I first saw a Macintosh. The local Apple dealer had a display at the local shopping mall. I had just become familiar with PC's and here was a computer that was entirely different from anything out there. I remember the mouse, the graphics, the whirr of the CLV floppy disk drive. Not to mention the floppies themselves! How strange! A 3" hard "floppy" disk! I was allowed to sit there at the display computer for hours. I drew pictures. Crude, child like pictures. (I was about twenty years old!). No one asked me to leave or in any way interfered with my enjoyment of the machine. The salesman running the show actually came by to encourage me in my "work". I could never afford to buy the machine, but I sure dreamed of one! Eventually I did buy my first Mac. When I see the original icons and graphics, it makes me wax nostalgic. I know the machines we have now are here only because of the original, but they are not the same machine. And they are nowhere near as fantastic (compared to other machines available now) as they were then! Rest in peace!
 
Rest in peace Jef. You stirred the Apple pot to try to make it a better machine for all of us. May you find happiness.
 
Very sad indeed. I really got into Raskin's work when writing my dissertation. As has been said, he was frequently critical of the modern Mac, but mostly with good reason. I would heartily recomend that you read his book, The Humane Interface (on amazonhere ).

I just hope they keep developing THE, the zoomworld demo was very interesting, and it would be a shame to see such clever ideas abandonend.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top