Jef Raskin: Not a Guy You Invite to Parties
In a recent story at Macminute Jef Raskin pans Mac OS X: Unfortunately, the Mac is now a mess. It seems that Jef is now suffering from crotchity-old-man syndrome.
The Guardian article is full of vague criticisms of both the current state of the Mac and computers in general.
There has been immense progress, primarily in the richness of applications. But all this power is lost on many people, and impedes the utility of it for the rest, because of the unnecessary complexity of using computers. The quest for CPU power has been largely defeated by bloated software in applications and operating systems. Some programs I wrote in Basic on an Apple II ran faster than when written in a modern language on a G4 Dual-processor Mac with hardware 1,000 times sharper.
Which modern programming language? What was the function of the software? My point is that every job has a proper tool to accomplish it with. Making vague accusations such as Jef has here, is at best, a worthless statement. It’s like me saying: Some meals I made with a dull butter knife were on the table faster than when I made the same meal with a Samurai sword 1,000 times sharper.
I’d pick his comments apart sentence by sentence, but I think they are so easily summarized by earlier assertion that he’s just crotchity that I don’t think it’s worth the effort. I will, however, highlight a quote pulled from an old Wired article that was in a recent Cult of Mac entry.
As the creator of the Macintosh project, and the guy who named it ‘Macintosh’ after his beloved McIntosh apples, I can firmly say that pot had nothing to do with it. Unlike our previous president, I have never even brought a reefer to lip, much less inhaled it. I also do not use alcohol, tobacco or any other recreational drugs, and never have.
The guy must be a real riot to hang out with, life of the party. I personally don’t see anyone wanting to watch a baseball game with him and his 15″ black and white television, drinking a couple glasses of tap water.
He fought the inclusion of the mouse on the original Mac. What did he want? A command line interface? Thank goodness Steve took over the Mac project.
Regardless of his criticisms, the guy does have some interesting ideas. Maybe his views on the Mac don’t match our own (I sure don’t agree with him), however his site has some interesting ideas and projects with pretty cool (function-wise) UIs.
You guys don’t know anything about Raskin. He invented Apple’s one-button mouse and holds the patent on it. Just because he invented it, doesn’t mean he thought it was the best way of interacting with a GUI. He also developed the concept of WYSIWYG printing for his Master’s Thesis in computer science in 1967. Learn a little history about computing before you criticize people. A nice place to start would be the 50 year anniversary issue of the Communications of the ACM, where Jef was an invited contributor, unlike Jobs or Gates, who are not viewed as having contributed very much to the world of computing as opposed to their contributions to the commercial computer industry where salesmanship counts for far more than intellectual contribution.
I would agree with you LDE. Jobs and certainly Gates shouldn’t be known for technical knowledge. They’re both incredibly shrewd business man. It’s sad that instead of Gates being recognized solely as a business genius, Trump is.
It’s not that I don’t respect Raskin. He has some great ideas. I just think that he suffers a little bit from “Not invented here” complex as Apple is regularly criticized for.
Raskin’s definitely got a “thing” about Apple and the GUI on the Mac, but then again, so do I. The current MacOS X interface is a mishmosh of the OS 7 and NeXT that leaves much to be desired in terms of consistency. Job’s decision to support Gates in his quest to kill OpenDoc ensured that the software side of computing was set back at least a decade, IMHO (Raskin wasn’t a big fan of OpenDoc either, but at least his criticisms had basis in fact, rather than merely being market-speak designed to get Gates to promote Jobs’ taking over Apple). And don’t get me started on Jobs and the Newton: he was bad-mouthing the very concept of a PDA while offering US Robotics $1 billion cash to buy the Palm Pilot behind the scenes. Ahem. Getting back to Raskin’s criticism of the MacOS X GUI… The fact that Jobs destroyed the human-centric culture at Apple that required that all software graphical interfaces coming out of Apple work together seamlessly says it all. Compare the standard interface for QuickTime with the interface for some other Apple software. Each bit of Apple software now has its own almost completely independent interface philosophy driven by Jobs’ sense of what will look kool, rather than what will make sense to the user.
While I do not always agree with Jef’s perspective, he has consistently had good reasons for his perspective. He strives to base his position on scientific or at least quantitative measures. His designs, are not the same as current designs (neither GUI nor command line), but borrow from both. His issues with OS/X is the inconsistency first, which prevents users from interacting with the system without interruption to their train of thought or workflow. Read his book, The Humane Interface, and you will start to look at user interfaces differently. Highly recommended.
Sounds like sour grapes from a guy on the outside looking in. It must really burn him that Apple (and the rest of the world) is not following his every suggestion. But then again, Bill Gates is not calling on him either! The sad thing is that every time he opens his mouth to trash Apple, the Mac, and/or OS X, the press seizes upon it and propogates his crotchity-old-man comments. Perhaps some of his current ideas might be considered if he would write some actual code and sell it as a third-party add-on. Instead he makes these generalised comments about shortcomings in OS X without offering any real solutions. While we can all appreciate his past contributions, time marches on and he should “lead, follow, or get out of the way”! Despite any of its (real or imagined) shortcomings, OS X is evolving without Jef Raskin.
Drugs needed to enjoy your parties - measure your achievements againest Raskin?
You are young? Not your fault - been there too.
My word: I’ll example; my “belief” in the Macintosh. That’s why Raskin’s recent statement that Mac OS X is missing the point was such as “woop” for me. Against so many people who I argued with I was finally vindicated. Lucky me won that one but I see some times people like Lakoff are ‘”luckier”?’ because their argument go on mainly because they are not staying in reality.
It’s easy in politics to found arguments on current myths etc. In reality all his clever word-smithing is spin-doctoring (it’s called it think - very modern this expression OR is it only new clothes for Gobbles’s Propaganda?) Now that word used to get a good hammering - propaganda/spin-doctoring. In politics what is TRUE is what your side remains convinced of - it’s circular but it’s also a good description.
There are still believers in NAZI propaganda and each new ABC & BBC spin-doctored myth will have long term believers. What do we do! My answer nothing (and I suspect most Western Governments) - it’s always worked. I stand here. If Global warming is only spin-doctoring or not we will have to face up to the consequences anyway and those how have ‘got it right’(well as best be) should gain some advantage and those how don’t will have invested in seaside property under 40 feet of lovely blue ocean.
I’ll leave you looking at that new beach while I get breakfast. I enjoy getting up early and fussing about myself.
TC
Honestly Terry, I have no idea what the point of your rambling was.
I will address the first two sentences of your comment though. First, while Raskin may be a great guy to work with and have some brilliant ideas, the man is a real drag. His comments seem to be nothing but total criticism without constructive suggestions. It’s easy to criticize without specific recommendations as to how to rectify the situation.
I’m sure his current work has some brilliant ideas in it, but the important thing is to illustrate ways to achieve an ideal state from a less than ideal state in a constructive way while recognizing that your own ideas are not perfect and that other ideas have some positive attributes that you had not considered.
Second, the relevance of the last quote is to illustrate that he is so wrapped up in what he considers right that he doesn’t even bother to evaluate other things. How can one denounce alcohol as readily as he does without ever having some? In fact, many studies have shown that a glass of wine every day actually has beneficial effects. That’s not conjecture. How would you like to have someone at a social event that everytime someone suggests trying something new, they shit on your idea and won’t even give it a shot. That is not someone I’d want at a party or associate with socially.
As for my “achievements”, they have nothing to do with this blog entry, so get off it. That’s a juvenille way to suggest that my opinion is worthless.
Finally, I am young. The relevance of that? Nothing.
This was supposed to be light-hearted. The fact that you’ve gotten so worked up is really sad. I just hope you don’t give yourself a heart attack (which drinking some wine might help you avoid).
His original idea for the Mac ended up becoming the Canon Cat: a text-based mouseless system where you do everything from a text editor and move around with ‘leap’ keys.
Oh come on! Are you so thin-skinned that you can’t take a little criticism of your holier-than-thou OS X? Sure I use OS X, and I take the position that it’s the worst operating system out there–except for every other operating system out there. But I can definitely say that OS X has NOT, I repeat NOT made a sum gain of improvements to the Macintosh Human Interface.
Stability aside, OS X really sucks. Recent benchmarks of OS X vs. Linux on a G5 showed that even doing basic file copies on OS X were 40% slower than with Linux. How is OS X living up to it’s expectations of being a high performance OS again? It sure isn’t in the basics. Maybe some obscure Photoshop Gaussian Blur, or some Bicubic Interpolated Scaling function. Oh yeah, too bad 90% of my work doesn’t involve those functions or I’d be praising Allah for the advent of the G5.
Of course, the only way you can truly defend yourself is by making straw-man arguments that “This guy must be a real riot to hang out with.” Oh yeah, you sure proved him wrong about OS X being poorly designed. You really showed him! Maybe if you make a comment about him drinking warm apple juice and eating oatmeal with Wilford Brimley you can prove that Jef Raskin’s original design for the Mac was a mistake. Or maybe by saying that Raskin wears Larry King-style suspenders, you can prove that he isn’t a computer interface expert at all, but that he’s a stupid doo-doo head! Great, let the straw-man mudslinging begin. Useless arguing is so fun. Kinda like watching WWE wrestling.
Am I so thin-skinned? You’re the one getting all worked up. Chill out man.
Whether OS X has made improvements to the Mac’s interface, well, that’s an opinion unless you want to argue a specific point. That’s one of my points here. John Gruber has some criticisms of OS X and I recognize the validity of those arguments because he makes specific arguments and backs up those arguments with concrete ideas. Vague assertions that “OS X is a mess” without singling out what that means is like me accusing the government of being a mess. You can’t really argue with because I’ve made no specific charges. This is along the lines of the first quote in my entry.
Yeah, you’re right OS X does suck. Quartz sucks. Rendezvous sucks. Cocoa sucks. Java 2 sucks. Utilizing both processors sucks. Having Apache built-in sucks. Part of OS X’s performance problems as compared to Linux is the fact that OS X uses a microkernel which trades speed for stability and a small kernel, pushing much of the operating system’s functionality out of the kernel (which slows things down). I am interested in this study though, do you have a link? I’m curious as to what equipment was used, what Linux distribution and if they were using the same file system or not. Thanks.
The main point of this entry is that the guy isn’t fun to hang out with (please note the title). As for this being a “straw man argument”, it really wasn’t. Here’s an explanation of a straw man argument. Enjoy.
It’s a shame that being aggressive online has become a substitute for literacy and critical reading skills.
According to Raskins web site he does NOT hold a patent on the one button mouse but claims to have invented it.
He claims quite a lot of things.
Jeff Raskin’s main argument was about usability. He made no mention of Apache, Quartz, Rendezvous, or Java 2 being bad. The implementation of the interface is his primary concern. I have never heard him complain that Apache was a bad thing (not that Apple had much to do with it’s development). The reason I think OS X sucks is twofold: a Finder that is more like the Windows Explorer than the OS 9 Finder (memory leaks included), and an interface that is slow as molasses on anything less than a G5. If the OS is so advanced, shouldn’t there be a better answer to the solution other than “Hey, you bum, just shell out a couple grand and get a G5, sucka!”
Anyway I realize your article is a rather vapid one. I guess I thought I was on a site that was about relevant Mac issues, not whether or not old fogeys are cool to party with. Yeah, thanks for the news flash. I didn’t realize that an old person would not be fun to hang out with. I’m surprised CNN isn’t giving 24-hour news coverage on that breaking news story. I’m glad that Mac websites are around just so I can learn vital information like this. What’s your next big opinion piece gonna be? “Caution, you shouldn’t drive fast in the rain.” Or what about, “Don’t invite Michael Jackson to a kid’s birthday party.” Hey, just ’cause the message is obvious, doesn’t mean it can’t also be a public service announcement as well.
And my interpretation of a straw man argument would have been valid if your position was about the Mac OS, and not the vapid analysis of Jeff Raskin’s partying skills–which I’m sure we were all dying to hear about from some dude who’s never even met the guy. And don’t watch too much Bill O’Reilly, you’ll end up sounding as crotchity as him–oh wait, you already do.
If my article is so vapid, why have you written so much in response to it and me? If it’s so vapid, why was it listed on MacSurfer (which I assume is how you found my little corner of the web)? My assertion that he wouldn’t be a fun person to hang out with doesn’t rely on the fact that he’s old. Rather, the main reason behind it is his inflexibility to ideas and concepts that are not his own. Being a crotchity old man is icing. I’m not the only one to think this. As the Apple Turns also did a little piece on it and honestly I think they zing him worse than I have. They also highlight the main problem with his criticism of the modern Mac: a lack specifics. Anyone can make vague criticism.
And yet, you read it and felt the need to comment on it. How about that? If you don’t think this was worthy of a link at whatever web site you got this from, why don’t you take it up with them? I did not submit this story to any websites. Either someone else did, or they picked it up on their own.As for Bill O’Reilly, what does that have to do with anything? Did your blood pressure spike and make you light-headed? Seriously, sit down, take a moment and breath. No one should have a heart attack over this.