There are too few visionaries in this world, and when one leaves us prematurely, we must mourn that passing. So it is with sadness that I read the news that Jef Raskin, considered by some to be the father of the Mac, died Saturday at the age of 61, a victim of pancreatic cancer. Raskin joined Apple in 1978 as its 31st employee. In 1979 he put together a team to create an affordable consumer computer with a friendly, graphical interface, which eventually became the Macintosh. Raskin didn’t stick around to see the realization of his dream. After Steve Jobs got involved in the Macintosh project, he and Raskin had a falling out, and Raskin got off the speeding train. He left Apple the following year. More recently, Raskin was developing what he felt was a better way to interact with a personal computer, which he called The Humane Interface. You can learn more about his work at his Web site, which will, for now at least, continue to be maintained. By the way, one of our readers notes that “what’s even more sad is that Apple did not even mention him anywhere on their site. Maybe, it’s because he once said: ‘Steve Jobs would make a great King of France.’

This article was posted on Saturday, March 5th, 2005 at 1:46 AM and is filed under News and tagged with: Apple, Cancer, Computer Interface, Consumer Computer, Graphical Interface, Humane Interface, Macintosh, Macintosh Project, Paragraph, Personal Computer, Realization, Steve Jobs.