Farewell To A Great Pioneer

This is rather off-topic, but I have just learned that Apple legend and Mac user interface pioneer Jef Raskin has died of Cancer at age 61. This is truly a great loss to the computing industry. Though Raskin has long since retired, he was a true pioneer who made great contributions to the world of personal computing, even in small ways. He helped design what would become the Macintosh user interface, and many conventions still used today on modern operating systems. I relished some of the stories he recanted of his early days designing the Mac user interface, such as a heated argument he had with Steve Jobs over the use of user dialog widgets, like the classic "Ok" and "Cancel" buttons, shaped like rectangles with rounded edges. Jobs was dead set against them, insisting instead on straight edged rectangles like those found in Windows. But Raskin stuck to his guns and even showed Steve where such shapes appear in the natural world, like highway interstate signs.Fascinating stuff.

Though his life has ended, his contributions will endure for generations to come. Thanks for everything Jef.

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About me

Name: Kent Pribbernow
Occupation: Creative Professional (Web designer)

"Design is the method of putting form and content together. Design, just as art, has multiple definitions; there is no single definition. Design can be art. Design can be aesthetics. Design is so simple, that's why it is so complicated."

Paul Rand

  • Believe it or not, I don't own a laptop. I generally have little need for a portable, as most of my work in done primarily in front of a workstation (actually two in fact). But on the odd occasion a laptop would be a welcome accessory. So I began researching various PC laptop models on the market today, notably Apple, and came away surprised...
  • Over the Labor Day weekend I and a fellow Mac fanboy decided to pay a visit to our nearest Mecca to all things Apple...the Apple Store located at Keystone, in Indianapolis....
  • *Movie announcer voice* "In a world...where one web browser looks and works just like any other...a small company with big ideas challenges an industry with a browser unlike any before."...
  • In many ways the evolution of mobile devices reminds me so much of another great story in the evolution of mobility...the evolution of the tank in modern warfare.


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