Jef Raskin, known as the father of the Mac, died this weekend at the age of 61.
We interviewed him back in October with a piece that kicked up something of a storm for his assertion that "the Mac is now a mess". That line said a lot about his dedication to clean, cheap, usable design.
It is that dedication which made him known inside the technology industry - initially for his contributions as an Apple employee. Joining as the company's 31st employee in 1978, he was soon made head of the team tasked with developing the firm's flagship home computer. Raskin named the Macintosh after his favourite variety of apple (not before tweaking the name for copyright reasons) and was part of a team which helped pioneer the "click and drag" interface that is now the bedrock of home computing.
We take such things for granted these days, but when Apple championed it, graphical user interface became a design revolution. It is now 21 years since Steve Jobs first unveiled the Macintosh, but by that point Raskin had already left following a dispute.
Raskin's CV reads something like a masterclass in being a polymath: he was an accomplished musician, programmer and designer. Above all, though, he was dedicated to interfaces that people could use. "Jef viewed good design as a moral duty, holding interface designers to the same ethical standards as surgeons," his family said in a statement released on his website.
A native New Yorker, Raskin studied mathematics, philosophy and computer science before moving to California in 1967 - at the height of the counterculture movement - to study electronic and computer music. His move coincided with the beginnings of Silicon Valley, and soon he was at the heart of the technology revolution.
After leaving Apple, he founded the firm Information Appliance to continue building computer interfaces - including the Canon Cat - and spent much of the last decade championing human-computer design in books like The Humane Interface and writing for the likes of Wired Magazine and Forbes.
Raskin remained a vociferous correspondent - keeping regular contact with Online - and consistently maintained that he was misrepresented by a number of books about the early days of Apple. The things claimed by all camps remain in dispute, but one fact that cannot be denied is that Raskin helped change the face of computing as we know it.
Perhaps it is best to sum up his contribution in the words he told Online last year:
"I am only a footnote, but proud of the footnote I have become."
(You can read more at Slashdot, the Beeb, and the New York Times and, of course, at JefRaskin dot com)
