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Can anyone explain what the parent means by "Jef Raskin-esque rant" ?

sanoli 13y ago
Raskin had a different vision of what the Mac interface should have been. Jobs' vision won. Raskin still ranted about it long time after.
mmcconnell1618 13y ago
Jef Raskin was a computer/ui designer who worked on the Canon Cat before becoming the leader on the Macintosh program at Apple. Steve Jobs took over the program and Jef was, by some accounts, forced out of the project. He expressed strongly opinionated ideas about what computer interfaces should be in a way that many see as rants about what might have been. His book, The Humane Inerface (http://www.amazon.com/The-Humane-Interface-Directions-Interactive/dp/0201379376 http://www.amazon.com/The-Humane-Interface-Directions-Intera...) does have some interesting thoughts on how novice and expert users have completely different ways of interacting with machines.
- pdw 13y ago
  Wasn't it the other way around? Raskin started the Macintosh project, and then did the Canon Cat after Jobs forced him out.
- tygorius 13y ago
  As has been pointed out, you've got the sequence reversed. Raskin was on the original Macintosh team first. His ideas for the project included keeping the cost down. Things like using an 8-bit CPU (the 6809?) rather than the still-pricey 68000, a character-based display rather than bit-mapped, etc. He later created his own company and used those ideas in what became the Canon Cat product -- something that looked like a shrunken ADM-3A terminal. It kept all your documents on a floppy disk eschewing normal filesystem in favor of a Forth-based image system (not too unlike Smalltalk images). Unfortunately he was convinced his ideas for interfaces should be protected by patents, virtually guaranteeing that things like his "leap" keys would never be adopted. Back in the 1960s and 1970s there was a tremendous sense of possibility for what computers could do for us on the personal level. I think Nelson, like Alan Kay, is worth revisiting on that basis: reminding us of possibilities, not so much who was right and wrong or who was first to think of X.

Raskin had a different vision of what the Mac interface should have been. Jobs' vision won. Raskin still ranted about it long time after.

mmcconnell1618 13y ago

Jef Raskin was a computer/ui designer who worked on the Canon Cat before becoming the leader on the Macintosh program at Apple. Steve Jobs took over the program and Jef was, by some accounts, forced out of the project. He expressed strongly opinionated ideas about what computer interfaces should be in a way that many see as rants about what might have been. His book, The Humane Inerface (http://www.amazon.com/The-Humane-Interface-Directions-Interactive/dp/0201379376 http://www.amazon.com/The-Humane-Interface-Directions-Intera...) does have some interesting thoughts on how novice and expert users have completely different ways of interacting with machines.

pdw 13y ago
Wasn't it the other way around? Raskin started the Macintosh project, and then did the Canon Cat after Jobs forced him out.
tygorius 13y ago
As has been pointed out, you've got the sequence reversed. Raskin was on the original Macintosh team first. His ideas for the project included keeping the cost down. Things like using an 8-bit CPU (the 6809?) rather than the still-pricey 68000, a character-based display rather than bit-mapped, etc. He later created his own company and used those ideas in what became the Canon Cat product -- something that looked like a shrunken ADM-3A terminal. It kept all your documents on a floppy disk eschewing normal filesystem in favor of a Forth-based image system (not too unlike Smalltalk images). Unfortunately he was convinced his ideas for interfaces should be protected by patents, virtually guaranteeing that things like his "leap" keys would never be adopted. Back in the 1960s and 1970s there was a tremendous sense of possibility for what computers could do for us on the personal level. I think Nelson, like Alan Kay, is worth revisiting on that basis: reminding us of possibilities, not so much who was right and wrong or who was first to think of X.