RIP: Jef Raskin

Posted on February 27, 2005

Jef Raskin, one of the original visionaries of the computer industry, died last night.

Jef was the prime mover behind the start of the Macintosh project at Apple (though it was eventually taken from him by Steve Jobs, and the Mac that ended up shipping didn’t look much like Jef’s original vision). He also designed the innovative Canon Cat, and distilled the lessons learned from those experiences into what he called “The Humane Interface“.

Jef was a tireless advocate for systems that were adapted to fit the the user, rather than the other way ’round. In our world, where a distorted marketplace leads users to spend millions of dollars every year training themselves to use baroque software rather than demanding better, his spirit will be sorely missed.