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Not that me being heretical surprises anyone who knows me, but since he's getting air time on this again:

Jef Raskin did not create the Mac, Steve Jobs did.

Well, more technically, Burrell Smith built the first Mac, but the Mac as we know it was Steve Job's baby.

Jef Raskin created a project called the Macintosh. This is true, it is undeniable. It was a low cost appliance, designed to be simple to use, and affordable. Sounds like the Mac doesn't it?

Well, not when you start looking at it.

The project Raskin was working on was not the Mac at all. It was originally based on a Motorola 6809, a 16 - bit processor. Raskin hated the mouse, and still does. It was called the Macintosh, and he worked for Apple. That's about where the similarities end.

But that's kind of immaterial really. Jef Raskin did not drive the decision to use an improved version of the Lisa's UI. That was Jobs, and a couple others. He didn't push the M68000, that was Burrell Smith and Bill Atkinson. He didn't create the basic icons that still define a huge part of the UI even today, that was Susan Kare, and others.

When you look at the Mac, even the 128K Mac, it's not Jef's machine. It's Steve's. It's Bill's, Bruce's, Andy's, Susan's, Bud's, Chris's, etc. (It's not Tog's either). Jef may have started the concept of the Macintosh, the idea of a simple, easy to use, inexpensive computer. But that's like saying that Da Vinci gets credit for the F-22.

He had an idea. A good one. A damned fine idea. But not for what he wants credit for. He also managed to put together a great team, one that can legitimately be called "Legendary". Hell, just for hiring those folks, he deserves a good spot in the Book of Computer History. But could he have created the Mac? No way. He still opposes most of the concepts in the Mac. Some of his points are valid, but if you read enough of his work, and listen to him enough, you'd swear that he's the only person to realize that for many things, a keyboard is faster, and we need consistency in the UI. Well, he's not. Keyboard control of the UI is increasing with each new version of Mac OS X and Windows, and Linux, not decreasing. Other folks have good ideas too, but instead of insisting we chuck all the other good parts, and Be Like Jef, these features are being integrated into the UIs on every platform. So in a sense, he's being proven right, just not with the fanfare he seems to want.

Now, being an egotistical person, if I were to see that the things I had started were kicking ass and taking names, I'd be ecstatic. I mean, talk about validation, his core ideas are at the heart of personal and business computing. Wow. But every time you see him, he has to remind you that he, Jef Raskin, created the Apple Macintosh. Go to his home page. In the first sentence, he created the Apple Macintosh. But it's not really true is it?

No, and in a sense that's sad. Jef started the concept, but in the end, what came to be was not that product. He didn't do the work, the redesigns. He didn't decide that the Swedish Campground symbol for "Something interesting here" should be the meta key. He was no where to be found for the concept of the resource manager. When you look at all the work that was done in the Mac, at the actual work, it's not Jef's spirit. It's Steve's. The hundreds and thousands of ideas that created something truly new, (which his Macintosh would not have been), were not his. They weren't even inspired by him. Steve Jobs was at the heart of it.

He did a really cool thing, but he didn't do what he really, desperately wants people to think he did. He got kicked out of his own project so early on, (and while that may have been a despicable act on the part of Jobs, it was over twenty years ago, get over it) that it became something completely different. Not even the form factor was what he wanted. But, like Richard Stallman whining about "It's GNU/Linux!!!", (which would be like Snap-On wanting Boeing to rename all their planes to have the Snap-On name), knowing that he started the ball rolling, even if the ball became a tesseract that flies, isn't enough. it will never be enough until everyone is chanting his mantra, that he, Jef Raskin, invented the Apple Macintosh.

I feel bad for him, he got screwed. But it was over twenty years ago. Do something new. Really.

Comments

I should have found this a long time ago. But I didn't. Regrets. Still, kudos for "saying outloud" what needed to be said. I am so sick of Raskin bashing the Mac and trying to take credit for it at the same time. Thank you.

Posted by: Pale Rider | October 4, 2005 9:53 PM