home » registration » Leo stretched out years of life occupation. Jef Raskin

Leo stretched out years of life occupation. Jef Raskin

How the rating is calculated
◊ The rating is calculated based on the points awarded in the last week
◊ Points are awarded for:
⇒ visiting pages dedicated to the star
⇒ voting for a star
⇒ commenting a star

Biography, life story of Jeff Raskin

Jeff Raskin
Jef Raskin
Birthday: 03/09/1943, USA
Date of death: 02/26/2005, USA

In his home, surrounded by relatives and friends, the great Jef Ruskin died quietly, two weeks before he was 62 years old. He was the 31st employee at Apple, but he owes him the Macintosh, which celebrated its 20th anniversary last year in January. Raskin was killed by pancreatic cancer

Jeff Raskin did not at all correspond to the usual appearance of a computer guru, and not only because he was a versatile and addicted person. He was not just a programmer, but a thinker and always felt a moral responsibility for the codes he wrote. Raskin believed that the creators of the computer interface belong to the same ethical group as surgeons, and their main task is not to harm.

He took the "first law of robotics" quite seriously, invented by Isaac Asimov for artistic purposes (a robot must not harm a person or let it be harmed by its inaction), rewriting its wording for his own needs: "No system should harm the content or by failing to act to allow the content to be harmed. "

From this postulate comes the famous user-friendliness of Apple's interface, and many other conveniences of the products of this company, and, perhaps, even the well-known arrogance of its fans. By the way, it was Jeff Raskin who invented the one-button "mouse" as opposed to the first-born of the "mouse" tribe from Xerox, which had three buttons.

One button is always easier than three, isn't it?

What can I say, the origin of the name Macintosh itself, which Ruskin also invented, betrays a dreamer and a romantic in it - but with a practical head. McIntosh is the name of Jeff's favorite apple; but he deliberately changed the spelling of the word slightly so that there would be no copyright problems.

CONTINUED BELOW

Jeff Raskin left Apple back in 1982 to found Information Appliance Inc. This company had only one task - to make the computer become an ordinary tool for solving everyday everyday tasks; after all, Jeff believed that the only job of computers was to make life easier for humans.

At the same time, Raskin set to work on the psychology of cognition - and by the early 1990s he had provided a scientific basis for designing friendly computer interfaces, after which it became simply impolite to make them somehow difficult to understand and master.

By 2000, his knowledge and experience were embodied in the bestselling book "The Humane Interface". Jeff introduced the concept of "ergonomics of the mind" and correctly and consistently described the terms and the procedure for creating interfaces, after which this previously creative discipline got into a rigid framework and acquired clear rules. The book served as the basis for hundreds of computer courses around the world, it has been translated into a dozen languages, including Russian.

The logical consequence of Jef Raskin's work to maximize humanization of relations with the computer was the establishment of a center called the Raskin Center for Humane Interfaces, where work is underway on the Archy project, the purpose of which the creators declare "reorganization of the basic principles of machine computing" and "fundamentally new paradigm relationship between man and computer. "Now Jeff's son, Aza Raskin, is working on the project.

It is a pity that Jeff Raskin will not see the public presentation of the first working model of Archy.

One button is always easier than three, isn't it?

Best of the day

The logical consequence of Jef Raskin's work to maximize humanization of relations with the computer was the establishment of a center called the Raskin Center for Humane Interfaces, where work is underway on the Archy project, whose goal the creators declare "reorganization of the basic principles of machine computing" and "a fundamentally new paradigm of human-computer relations" ... Now Jeff's son, Aza Raskin, is working on the project.

It is a pity that Jeff Raskin will not see the public presentation of the first working model of Archy.

A quarter of a century ago, in July 1987, a rather unusual computer was born - the Canon Cat. Its history, and especially the creative biography of its creator, the famous researcher in the field of computer interface Jeff Raskin, is associated with many interesting and little-known pages in the history of computer technology.

A native of New York, Jeff Raskin (1943–2005) was an expert in many different fields at the same time. Higher education and he received a bachelor's degree in two specialties at once - mathematics and philosophy, and became a master in computer science, and his diploma project (1967) was a music program. Raskin was a rather serious musician and composer - he played the organ almost professionally and conducted the chamber orchestra of the San Francisco Amateur Opera Society. In addition, he was fond of painting, archery, cycling and aeromodelling - and even received a patent for an invented glider wing design.

Jeff Raskin with his "cat" model

With such a variety of interests, Ruskin earned his living in a variety of ways: first he taught art at the University of California, after which he founded an independent center to develop a course in teaching programming to students in the arts and humanities, and then created his own consulting firm. The beginning of the most interesting stage in his life is connected with the last enterprise: in 1976, Ruskin, taking into account his experience in explaining the latest computer technologies in simple human language, hires a newly created Apple- for advice in writing a user manual for the BASIC language for the Apple II. And two years later, he became a full-time, 31st employee - the head of the publications department, who, in fact, was engaged in writing various kinds of instructions and manuals.

From left to right: Michael Scott (first Apple CEO), Steve Jobs, Jeff Raskin, Chris Espinoza (programmer, now the company's oldest employee) and Steve Wozniak

This occupation, as Raskin soon found out, was rather problematic: the Apple II turned out to be far from the device, the principle of operation of which could be clearly explained to the most unprepared user. For example, the system behaved completely differently depending on the optionally installed disk controllers, RAM extensions, the type of keyboard connected, etc. The researcher came to the conclusion that it is unrealistic to write sensible and intelligible instructions for existing Apple PCs: ideally, one should either make a dozen notes to the description of each action, or even compile a whole separate manual for using ... a standard user manual.

Jeff Raskin didn't even try to simplify or redesign the architecture of Apple II computers, but decided to create a completely new type of PC. At the same time, he formulates the main ideas of his project as follows:

The machine should not have expansion slots so that the end user does not have access to the inside of the case (of course, external ports for connecting various peripherals remain in place);

The amount of RAM should be fixed so that all programs are guaranteed to run on any PC;

The user should receive a complete system - with built-in keyboard, monitor and disk drives (and ideally also with a printer);

Based on all this, developers are able to precisely determine how any fonts and any graphics will look on the screen, and this not only simplifies the writing of software, but also - most importantly - makes it possible to quickly teach any non-specialist to use this software.

Oddly enough, Apple management initially took these unusual ideas with hostility. Steve Jobs, for example, at that time set himself the goal of making machines as powerful as possible - and therefore expensive, primarily for business users - rather than public, home and cheap. From now on, Ruskin and Jobs will forever remain ideological and personal opponents and will speak of each other with obvious hostility. The first of them could not get used to the methods of leadership of the second: “Jobs would have made a good king of France,” Ruskin would later note with some irony.

But other leaders, Steve Wozniak and Mike Markkula, although they expressed their doubts, nevertheless showed the necessary tolerance, and in 1979 Jef Ruskin was appointed head of a research project to develop a computer, as they said at the time, "for a man on the street." The author of the idea gave his alleged brainchild the name "Macintosh", which simultaneously emphasized both a break with the Apple line and a kind of continuity: McIntosh was Ruskin's favorite apple variety, and the "incorrect" spelling was deliberate to avoid controversy about brand name with manufacturers of professional sound equipment of the same name with apples.

The same apples

True, the creation of a new computer progressed extremely slowly at first. The company did not attach any importance to it and was financed on a leftover basis. Apart from Ruskin, only three employees worked on the project, and several times the Macintosh was under threat of closure. Everything changed radically in 1980 when own project Steve Jobs, Apple III, failed miserably in sales - both because of gross design errors and because the price of the proposed computers started at around five thousand dollars. For comparison: Apple II at the time of its release three years earlier cost from $ 1298 (model with 4 KB of RAM) to $ 2638 for 48 KB; Jobs' next "mega-project" - Lisa - will start with an astronomical sum of 10 thousand dollars (and will also turn into a failure); Well, Raskin was guided by a PC with a cost, if not up to 500, then at least up to $ 1000.

In a crisis situation, the authorities began to pay more attention to the Macintosh - and in 1981 Steve Jobs simply took over the project, leaving Ruskin only the software and documentation part. As a result, the new PC was transformed in appearance, becoming more like a mini-version of the Lisa than the small laptop that Ruskin dreamed of creating - but the project finally received good funding, and its original author had more opportunities to realize his vision ideal software environment. Raskin's main idea was the priority of man over electronic technology, and more specifically - the primacy of any user actions in relation to the work of the PC: the machine had to understand the intentions of the operator and switch programs on the fly. For example, if you started just typing, the computer had to go into text editor mode, and when numbers were typed on the keyboard, the calculator was automatically turned on. In general, Ruskin saw the entire operating system environment of the new PC as an integrated text and graphics editor - all other applications had to work in it as additional commands launched through the menu and the editor interface.

Dummy: Personal Computer according to Ruskin - miniature, one-piece, including even a printer, and portable

However, by 1982 the indefatigable Jobs began to select for himself the software component of the project - he was a supporter of the newest graphical interface user and mouse as the main controller. Jeff Raskin protested against both: in his opinion, all this was too expensive and only slowed down the operator's work and distracted his attention - albeit in the end it turned out to be much more spectacular. Still, Ruskin managed to convince the management to at least minimize the use of this harmful rodent: instead of the original three buttons a la Xerox Alto, the Macintosh mouse has only one.

By the way, it was Raskin who at one time drew the attention of Steve Jobs and his other colleagues to the research that was carried out in the depths of Xerox PARC, from where the Macintosh borrowed both the mouse and many of the ideas for its GUI. As you know, in the course of work on the new PC, Jobs organized a study tour for himself and his employees around the Xerox Alto computer development center, paying for it with the right to buy back Apple shares at preferential prices. Nevertheless, the creators of the Macintosh cannot be accused of plagiarism. Raskin wrote an entire article on this, in which he argued that attributing the authorship of all new ideas for a PC from Apple to the team from Xerox PARC is doubly unfair, since this team also designed a lot of interesting things that are not and did not exist in the Macintosh, and the developers of the latter designed the lion's share of their brainchild "from scratch". Raskin himself, for example, came up with the idea of WYSIWYG (an edit mode that would look exactly the same as the final result) back in the late 1960s, before the idea was independently implemented by Xerox Palo Alto Research Center employees in the mid-seventies. ...

On the other hand, the Macintosh project team worked throughout the entire period of its existence, both during Ruskin's time and under Jobs's leadership, a lot former employees Xerox, which confirm that while both the Lisa and the Mac owe some of their key features to PARC, they were still independent and innovative systems. By borrowing general principle graphical interface, with icons and mouse controls, the developers from Apple have provided it with such important elements GUI and all modern operating systems like menu bar, drag-and-drop control, file manager and file presence different types, control panels and much more - not to mention the purely "iron" innovations such as monoblock case design, serial ports or auto-eject drives.

The finished 1984 Macintosh didn’t have much in common with Ruskin’s original vision, but the basic idea of a simple, affordable all-in-one PC did come true.

Unfortunately, all this saw the light already without Jeff Raskin - in 1982, having lost control over the Macintosh project and could not stand the fight with Jobs, he left Apple for good. Although he does not stop working with the apple company, especially with Wozniak, who always highly appreciated his contribution to the development of the computer interface. Raskin founds his own company - Information Appliance, where he tries to realize his ideas, which were not realized in the Macintosh. By "information device" he just understood his ideal of a computer - more like a PDA than a desktop PC, and not so much universal as subordinate to the solution of one specific human problem.

Raskin's first product turns out to be SwyftCard, an expansion card for Apple II: implemented at the hardware level text editor with extended functionality - as a single workspace that allows not only creating texts, but also managing files, performing mathematical calculations, checking mail, etc. The kit even included stickers to rename the keys on the standard keyboard; a special role was played by the new LEAP key ("jump"): if it was pressed and typed in any text, a search took place in real time - files whose name began with letters or numbers being typed (an idea that is familiar and understandable to today's PC user, as opposed to the man of the early eighties).

Jeff Raskin with one of his mid-1980s Swyft PC prototypes

And yet, Ruskin's dream was to create his own PC - to implement all ideas not only in the program, but also in the hardware. Several prototypes of a portable computer called Swyft were made, but this did not go further than this - own funds Information Appliance did not have a full-fledged production launch. Ruskin was advised to seek support from large corporations, which he did, eventually signing an agreement with Canon, which agreed to license the Swyft design and release it under his own brand.

So twenty-five years ago, in July 1987, the Canon Cat was born - the closest to the ideal embodiment of Jef Raskin's ideas about what a publicly available personal computer of that time should be like. As you would expect, the monoblock case included a 9-inch black-and-white monitor, a 3.5-inch floppy disk drive and a keyboard with all Ruskin's "proprietary" unusual keys, including Leap, Undo, etc. Inside was a Motorola 68000 CPU. (same exact as Macintosh) 5 MHz clock, 256 KB RAM and 300/1200 bps modem. All applications, including a text editor, communication programs, a spelling dictionary of 90 thousand words, and programming environments in assembly and Forth were recorded in ROM with a volume of only 256 KB. Of the external ports, the "Cat" could boast of only two telephone connectors and single serial and parallel. All this weighed about 7.7 kg and was offered for $ 1,495.

Canon Cat in the flesh. Two red buttons under the space bar - "jump" left and right

At first glance, the novelty looked more like an electronic typewriter - for a PC of that time specifications looked rather outdated and overpriced. But the innovative interface still attracts the attention of researchers: although the entire environment was implemented as a text editor with control only from the keyboard, "Cat" provided such opportunities for creating macros, programming and mathematical calculations that it was possible to create both databases and spreadsheets.

Alas, despite all its innovative features, Ruskin's PC was on sale for no more than six months: only about 20 thousand copies of the device were sold. One of the reasons for the failure was the unsuccessful marketing decision of Canon, which for some reason positioned "Cat", with its enormous programming and text editing capabilities, like ... a computer for secretaries. The latter, in turn, could not appreciate the functionality of an unusual PC and were lost in the situation of an "invisible" interface (well, casual games for Canon Cat, of course, were absent as a class). Although Raskin himself blamed the failure of the same Steve Jobs, who, according to rumors, demanded the closure of the project of his old rival as a condition of cooperation with Canon's own new company, NeXT.

Canon Cat Workspace

Jeff Raskin no longer tried to create an original computer, but in the field of improving the computer interface, bringing it closer to human needs, he continued to work until his death. In 2000, he published a book on this topic under the title “Human Interface” (in the Russian edition, the word “human” was, however, removed from the title, but in the text it was translated as “human-oriented”). At the same time, he also launches the project The Human Environment (THE), later renamed Archy and dedicated to the creation of a "human" environment for programming and communication with a computer. Among the most interesting (but not indisputable) of Ruskin's ideas are, for example:

The widespread use of text is obligatory: although graphic icons are acceptable, without signatures they only confuse users;

We need to get rid of "warning screens" that require the user to confirm their actions: anyway, no one reads them out of habit. And in order to avoid undesirable results, it is necessary that any action can be canceled, preferably with a special key, and the document or application must be closed and reopened;

It's time to stop naming directories and files: the content of a file or directory itself is the best name for them;

The previous idea becomes realizable thanks to the use of a scalable user interface: for example, a small button, from which only the icon is initially visible, when zooming in, gives out a whole text - say, instructions for using the corresponding program, and a graphical representation of a catalog, of course, when scaling reveals everything contained in it documentation.

Another of Jeff Raskin's laptop prototypes

So far, only a very small number of these ideas have come to life - and not only in Canon Cat, but also in Ubiquity, a small addition to Firefox browser developed by Jeff's son Aza Raskin after the Archy project was orphaned and partly merged with Mozilla Labs. Jeff Raskin was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer - in a cruel twist of fate, almost at the same time as his old opponent, Steve Jobs. But he was destined to live quite a bit after that - the outstanding interface researcher passed away on February 26, 2005. And although many of Raskin's grandiose plans still remain unfulfilled, he probably would be happy with the appearance and popularity of devices such as the iPad and Android tablets. Perhaps, the “humanization” of computers themselves and the way people interact with them, the approach of the software and user environment to the level of everyday human communication is just beginning.

) - specialist in computer interfaces, author of articles on usability and the book "The Humane Interface", employee No. 31 of Apple Computer, best known as the initiator of the Macintosh project in the late 70s.

Jeff Raskin
English Jef Raskin
Jeff Raskin with a Canon Cat Computer Model
Date of Birth	9th of March(1943-03-09 )
Place of Birth	New York, USA
Date of death	26 february(2005-02-26 ) (61 years old)
A place of death	Pacifica, California
Citizenship	USA USA
Occupation	Computer interface specialist, author of usability articles and The Human Interface, best known for initiating the Macintosh project in the late 1970s.
Spouse	Linda S. Bloom
Children	Aza Raskin, Aviva and Aeneas
Jeff Raskin at Wikimedia Commons

Ruskin left Apple in 1982 and founded the firm Information Appliance, Inc. to implement his own concepts excluded from the Macintosh project. His first product was SwyftCard, an expansion card for the Apple II computer that contained the SwyftWare software package. The Information Appliance later shipped Swyft as a standalone computer. Raskin entered into an agreement with Canon to manufacture a similar product under the Canon Cat name. The computer was released in 1987 and contained a number of usability innovations but was not a commercial success.

In 2000, Jeff Raskin's book "The Humane Interface" was published, devoted to the problems of human-machine interaction and the development of an interface taking into account the principles of cognetics.

At the beginning of the 21st century, Ruskin began the Human Environment (THE) project, the development of a computer interface based on his thirty years of work and research in this area. In 2005 the project was renamed Archy. The work is continued by his son, Aza Raskin, at Humanized, founded shortly after Jef Raskin's death to preserve his legacy. Humanized released Jeff's memory program Enso based on his work on the interface. Work on the Archy project was suspended in 2008, the developers switched to creating a Ubiquity plugin for Mozilla Firefox, embodying some of the interface concepts from Jef Raskin's ideas.

Literature

Raskin D., Interface: new directions in the design of computer systems. - Per. from English - SPb: Symbol-Plus, 2004 .-- 272 p., Ill. ISBN 5-93286-030-8

"The interface should not harm a person or, by its inaction, allow a person to be harmed."... Azimov-Ruskin

Photo: Jeff Raskin. That feeling when you alone know how to make interfaces right, but the whole world does not.

For those who don't know yet Jeff Raskin(Jef Raskin) - Computer interfaces specialist, author of usability articles and the book "The Humane Interface", No. 31 employee of Apple Computer, best known for initiating the Macintosh project in the late 70s.

Brought Steve Jobs to Xerox PARC.
Wore Google glasses before Google.
Hated a computer mouse.
Created a computer cat.
Didn't like GUI, dreamed of ZUI.
One cursor was not enough for him, he made two.
Conducted the orchestra.
He played instruments with Donald Knut and was also a fan of the organ.
He wrote a programming language for the humanities, which contained 6 instructions.

My first interface where I was most productive at that time (and for the tasks of my youth) was DOS Navigator, then Total Commander replaced it.

Under the cut is a bit of Jeff Raskin's legacy.

Jeff Raskin and his "first apple"

Jeff and his laptop

Jeff and his gang

Foldable great

Desktop

Ruskin has a patent for an airplane wing

A prototype "cat" made of cardboard

Hammers and screwdrivers

Cutaway cat

Let's write down our font for convenience

Double cursor: black - what can be deleted, gray - where printing will start.

Easter egg inside the cat

instruction

Also try leaping (either way) to the pattern: QWERASDFZXCV
press and hold USE FRONT N (the EXPLAIN command)

Transparency for the user

Raskin made a joystick for Apple //

Some comics

Poster

Together with Jobs, Ruskin drew an infographic syntax hint

Jef Raskin said it was code.
Steve Jobs said it was art.
You decide.

Big picture

Book

Interface elements can often be called familiar because they can be easily used by a "blind" user. Interfaces built on the principles outlined in this book can often be used even by blind users - and in relation to what is outside our locus of attention, we are all blind in the most literal sense.

The challenge for designers is to create interfaces that prevent habits from causing problems for users. We must create interfaces that, first, purposefully rely on the human ability to form habits and, second, develop habits in users that make it easier to work with. In the case of an ideal human-centered interface, the share of the interface itself in the user's work should be reduced to the formation of useful habits. Many problems that make software products difficult and inconvenient to use, occur due to the fact that the used interface "man-machine" does not take into account the beneficial and harmful properties of the human ability to form habits. A good example serves the tendency to provide for several ways of solving the same problem at once. In this case, many options lead to a shift in the user's locus of attention from the task itself to choosing a path.

Book in html (but with annoying ads)
List of Ruskin's Articles
Article from Computerra