From: Riccardo Mori (rick_at_poc.it)
Date: Fri Mar 04 2005 - 02:48:43 PST
Il giorno 04/mar/05, alle 7:41, Martin Joseph ha scritto:
>
> On Mar 3, 2005, at 5:42 PM, Mike Detlefsen wrote:
>>
>> Raskin was brilliant, and made a huge contribution to the world of
>> computing, but he probably doesn't deserve to be known as the father
>> of
>> the Mac.
>
> I couldn't disagree any more strongly.
>
> He was in fact the moving force behind the mac. The fact that the
> project finished without him is immaterial. At a time when Apple was
> making Lisa, Raskin was the man who wanted to make a "computer for the
> rest of us". That's why he didn't like the 68000. Because it was too
> expensive.
the fact that the project finished without him is absolutely essential
and fundamental to the history of Macintosh. when Steve Jobs took the
project over, the "project" was in a very early stage, basically at a
still theoretical stage. yes, Raskin had the idea of a cheap computer,
but with such ridiculous features which would make this cheap computer
nothing more than a good word processing machine.
about the interface, the main (the only?) merit of Raskin was to take a
bunch of Apple engineers and programmers to visit PARC in Palo Alto. he
knew the place because while a scholar at Stanford's AI Lab, he had
spent some time at PARC. but as Steven Levy writes in his book
"Insanely Great" (and he's not the only one to quote this episode),
Raskin, before leaving PARC when they visited, said to Larry Tesler:
"We don't need this [the Xerox Alto interface and bitmapped display],
but i'm glad they saw it."
i could go on and on reporting things from the huge documentation i've
read so far about Apple's history, but my point is: i admire Jef Raskin
and i agree he had very interesting and innovative ideas in the IT
field, but i would reconsider his role in Apple's history and in the
Mac development. he wanted a cheap computer and its name had to be
Macintosh, and that's it. this computer, according to his notes, had to
have a cheap (read: weak) processor, very little RAM (like 1/4 of the
128K the first Mac later would have), NO MOUSE, not even a floppy-disk
unit (he preferred a tape unit), and it didn't have to be expandable.
he may have had the starting ideas, but the Macintosh as it debuted in
1984, the Macintosh as we know it, was more a product of Steve Jobs and
the great people who worked on it, day and night. Raskin was, all in
all, too conservative to be actually daring and revolutionary with the
Macintosh. like it or not, the man who dared and had intuition to
_lead_ a team of engineers to produce something that has become an
icon, a milestone, was Steve Jobs. Jobs was surely less cultured and
academically prepared than Raskin, but he undoubtedly showed to be more
pragmatic and intuitive to create an "insanely great" product.
regards,
Rick
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