JW: Several years after leaving Apple, you designed the Canon Cat, famously mis-marketed by that company. JW: What did you make of Jobs and Wozniak? They are both characterised very strongly in the press fairly? Apple has forgotten about this key concept, so all the beautiful packaging is ho-hum and insignificant in the long run. You soon forget what the box looks like and care only about getting something done. But it’s the interface that needs fixing. ![]() JR: iMac G5? The unfoldable portable-shaped box on a stalk? I think it is a practical and space-saving design. JW: What do you make of the new iMac G5? Was the original iMac a step back onto the correct path for the Mac? The principles of putting people first and designing from the interface to the software and hardware are as vital today as they were then. My original vision is outdated and irrelevant today. JR: I think I have answered most of this already. JW: How do you rate today’s Mac UI, both in the context of its competitors and against your original vision for computers with the Mac? His website is, as a result, full of errors. Andy, unfortunately, has not generally gone back to the original documents, and he’s interviewed lots of people about the history of the Mac, but not me. People have put together my dislike of the mouse (confusing dislike for a particular input device with dislike for graphic input devices in general I personally prefer trackballs and tablets) and my careful attention to text handling to a false legend of my wanting a text-based machine. But the text portions of the interface, which I also cared about, would have been cleaner. I designed it to be graphical from the ground up. Some have argued, for instance, that it would have had a text interface. JW: Several people have suggested that whilst you are indisputably the father of the Mac, it would have been a significantly different machine had it followed your original plans. Considering that the key to Apple’s success in this area is largely due to your insistence on the Mac having an all-in-one appliance-like form factor, do you feel that your contribution in this area has been ignored? JW: Many individuals – notably Steve Jobs, Jonathan Ive, Jerry Manock, and Harmut Esslinger – have become noteworthy through Apple’s industrial design. Apple now does development by accretion, and there is very little difference (but there’s still some difference) between using a Mac and a Windows machine. ![]() A third party manual (Pogue’s ‘The Missing Manual’) is nearly a thousand pages and is far from complete. JR: Yes, but unfortunately, the Mac is now a massive mess. Do you think this simplicity of design has been key to making the Mac as popular as it is? JW: Perhaps the longest surviving legacy of your original Mac design is the “appliance” nature of the all-in-one Macs. I answered that with another essay from the same year that is the appendix to “Holes in the Histories” on or surf directly to. It ends with a question: What will millions of people do with them? People who want to know exactly what I was saying in 1979 can read it and other writings of mine at or see the particular document at I wrote forward-looking white papers such as “Computers by the Millions” so that management could see what the computing world would be like in the coming decade. I avoided the supposed “visionaries” in the company who could not understand my idea but presented a business case: People would buy a product that they could readily and happily use. JR: I convinced the chairman of the board at the time, Mike Markkula, of the correctness of my vision. How did you convince the company to allow you to pursue the Macintosh project? JW: You originally managed Apple’s publication unit. I have made changes in the world that are beyond what most people thought was possible, and I hope that my judgment continues to be good as to what is possible to change and what is not. However, like the QWERTY keyboard, some things are so embedded in our culture that it is futile to try to change them. And I did design software that allowed me to compose and edit printed music much more easily than doing it by hand. I’d love to simplify musical instruments we can do better than the present awkward keyboard arrangement on pianos, for example. I was, however, a music graduate student and later a professional musician. ![]() Jef Raskin: I was never a professor of music. Your major contribution to computing, the Macintosh, seems to point in the other direction – simplicity of use. As a musician you presumably appreciate complex but specific tools for use by virtuosos. Jason Walsh: Before the Mac you were a professor of music. He was Apple employee #31 and left the Macintosh team in mid-1981 after Steve Jobs took over the project. ![]() Jef Raskin founded the Macintosh project at Apple, which led to the development of the Apple Mac and the popularisation of the graphical user-interface.
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