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.