Biography Raskin Jeff

The articles of the technology are his story, and especially the creative biography of its creator, the famous researcher in the field of the computer interface, Jeff Rakkin, is associated with many interesting and little -known pages in the history of computer technology. A native of New York, Jeff Raskin-was a specialist in various fields at the same time. He received higher education and bachelor's degree in two specialties-mathematics and philosophy at once, and the master became the master in the field of computer sciences, and his diploma project was a musician and composer Raskin was quite serious-he almost professionally played on the organ and conducted the chamber orchestra of the amateur opera society of San Francisco.

In addition, he was fond of painting, onion shooting, bicycle sports and aircraft modeling - and even received a patent for the invented design of the glider wing. Jeff Raskin with a model of his “cat” with such a variety of interests, Raskin and for life earned a variety of ways: at first he taught fine art at the University of California, after which he founded an independent center for developing a course of teaching programming to students of humanitarian and art specialties, and then created his own consulting company.

It is with the last enterprise that the beginning of the most interesting stage in his life is connected: in the year of Raskina, taking into account his experience, explaining the latest computer technology in a simple human language, is hired by the newly created company Apple - to consult a user of the BASIC user for Apple II. And two years later, he becomes a regular, m on a row by an employee - the head of the publication department, who, in fact, was writing various kinds of instructions and manuals.

From left to right: Michael Scott, first chapter of Apple, Steve Jobs, Jef Raskin, Chris Espinosis, a programmer, now the oldest employee of the company and Steve Wozniak, this, as Raskin soon found out, was quite problematic: Apple II turned out to be far from the device, the principle of which could be clearly explained to the most unprepared user. For example, the system behaved in a completely different way depending on optionally installed disk controllers, RAM extensions, such as connected keyboard, etc.

The researcher came to the conclusion that it is unrealistic to write an intelligent and intelligible instruction for existing PCs from Apple: ideally, it was necessary to either do a dozen notes to describe each action, or even compose a whole separate guide for the use of ... standard guidance of the user. Jeff Raskin did not even try to simplify or rebuild the architecture of Apple II computers, but decided to create a completely new type of PC.

Oddly enough, Apple's leadership initially took these unusual ideas into hostility. Steve Jobs, for example, at that time set himself the goal of creating cars as powerful as possible-and, therefore, expensive, mainly for business users-and not publicly available, homely and cheap. From now on, Raskin and Jobs will forever remain ideological and personal opponents and will respond to each other with obvious hostility.

The first of them could not get used to the methods of leadership of the second: “From Jobs, the King of France would have turned out to be a good king,” Prakin would not be noted without irony. But the other leaders, Steve Wozniak and Mike Markul, although they expressed their doubts, but nevertheless showed the necessary tolerance, and in the year Jeff Raskin was appointed head of the research project to develop a computer, as they said, “for a person from the street”.

The author of the idea gave his alleged brainchild the name “Macintosh”, which simultaneously emphasized both the rupture with the Apple line and a kind of continuity: Mcintosh was a favorite variety of explosions of Raskin, and the “incorrect” spelling was deliberate to avoid disputes about the brand with manufacturers of the same name with apples of professional sound equipment.

The same apples are true, the creation of a new computer at first advanced extremely slowly. The company did not attach any importance to him and financed by the residual principle. In addition to Raskina, only three employees worked on the project, and Macintosh was threatened with closing several times. Everything fundamentally changed in the year, when the own project of Steve Jobs, Apple III, with a bang failed on sale - both due to gross mistakes in design, and because the price of the proposed computers began in the region of five thousand dollars.

In a situation of crisis, the authorities began to pay more attention to Macintosh - and in the year Steve Jobs simply took the leadership of the project, leaving only the software and documentation part.

As a result, the new PC was transformed externally, becoming more like a mini-version of Lisa than a small portable computer that Raskin was to create, but the project finally received good funding, and its original author had more opportunities to implement his vision of an ideal software environment. The main idea of ​​Raskina was a person’s priority over electronic technologies, and more specifically, the championship of any user’s actions in relation to the PC: the machine had to understand the operator’s intentions and switch programs on the fly.

For example, if you just start typing the text, the computer had to go into the text editor mode, and when the numbers were typed on the keyboard, the calculator was automatically turned on. In general, the entire working system environment of the new PC Poskin saw as an integrated text editor and graphics - all other applications were supposed to work in it as additional commands launched through the menu and the editor interface.

Jeff Raskin protested against both of them: in his opinion, all this was too expensive and only slowed down the operator’s work and distracted his attention - even if it turned out much more spectacular. Nevertheless, the scrap managed to convince the leadership at least minimize the use of this harmful rodent: instead of the initial three buttons a la Xerox Alto, only one remained at the macintosh mouse.

As you know, in the course of work on the new PC, Jobs organized an introductory excursion to his employees at the Xerox Alto computer development center, paying for it the right to redeem Apple shares at preferential prices. However, it is impossible to blame the creators of Macintosh of plagiarism. Raskin wrote a whole article on this subject, in which he proved to be attributing to the authorship of all new ideas from Apple to the Xerox PARC team is doubly unfair, since this team designed a lot of interesting things, which was not and was not in Macintosh, and the developers of the latter constructed the lion's share of their brainchild from zero.

Raskin himself, for example, came to the idea of ​​Wysiwyg editing mode, which would look exactly the same as the final result at the end of the X, before this idea was independently implemented by the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in the mid -seventies. On the other hand, in the Macintosh team, the entire period of its existence, both during the time of Raskin and under the leadership of Jobs, there were many former Xerox employees who confirm: although LISA and MAC were required by PARC development, they were still independent and innovative systems.

Having borrowed the general principle of the graphic interface, with the icons and the control of the “mouse”, the developers from Apple provided it with such important elements of the GUI and all modern operating systems as a menu line, the DRAG-And-Drop, file manager and the availability of files of different types, control panels and much more-not to mention the purely “iron” innovations like monoblock the design of the case, serial ports or drives with automatic extraction.

At the same time, he does not stop cooperation with an apple company with a ready -made Macintosh - especially with a fuss, who has always highly appreciated his contribution to the development of a computer interface. Raskin founds his own company - Information Appliance, where he is trying to realize his plans unrealized in Macintosh. Under the “information device”, he just understood his ideal of a computer - similar to PDA rather than to a desktop PC, and not so much universal as subordinate to the solution of one specific human problem.

The first product of the company Raskin is SwyftCard, the expansion board for Apple II: a text editor with advanced functionality at the hardware level - as a single working space that allows not only to create texts, but also control files, conduct mathematical calculations, check mail, etc. The kit even included stickers for renaming the keyboard keyboards; The new LEAP “Jump” key played a special role: if it was pressed and typed any text, the search was held in real time-files were displayed whose name began with the scores or numbers, which is familiar and understandable to today's user, unlike the early eighties.

Jeff Raskin with one of the prototypes of his PC Swyft in the middle of the X and yet the dream of Raskin was the creation of his own PC - the implementation of all ideas not only in the program, but also in the "gland". Several prototypes of a portable computer called SWYFT were manufactured, but this was not the case - the Information Appliance did not go their own funds for launching full -fledged production.

I was advised to look out to look for support in large corporations, which he did by signing the contract with Canon, which agreed to license the design of SWYFT and release it under its own brand.So twenty -five years ago, in July, Canon Cat appeared - the closest to the ideal, the embodiment of Jeff Prakin’s ideas about what the public personal computer of that time should be.

All applications, including a text editor, communication programs, spelling dictionary of 90 thousand of the external ports “Cat” could boast of only two telephone connectors and single serial and parallel. All this weighed about 7.7 kg and was offered for dollars. Canon Cat in the flesh. Two red buttons under the gap - “jumping” left and right at first glance, the novelty reminiscent of an electronic printing machine rather - for a PC of that time, the technical characteristics looked more obsolete, and the price - high.

But the innovative interface still attracts the attention of researchers: although the entire environment was implemented as a text editor with management only with the keyboard, the “cat” provided such opportunities for creating macros, programming and mathematical calculations, which could be created both databases and electric tables. Alas, despite all his innovative features, PC Raskin was on sale for no more than six months: only about 20 thousand copies of the device were sold.

One of the reasons for the failure was the failed marketing solution of Canon, which for some reason positioned the “cat”, with its enormous opportunities in the field of programming and text editing, like ... a computer for a secretary. The latter, in turn, could not evaluate the functionality of an unusual PC and were lost in the situation of the “invisible” interface, well, casual games for Canon Cat, of course, were absent as a class.

Although Raskin himself accused the failure of the same Steve Jobs, who, according to rumors, demanded that the project of his old rival was closing as a condition for cooperation with Canon of his own new company NEXT. Jef Raskin did not try to create an original computer on the Canon Cat screen, but in the field of improvement of the computer interface, its approach to human needs, continued to work until its death.

In the year, he published on this subject a book under the title “Human Interface” in the Russian edition, the word “human” was, however, removed from the name, and in the text was translated as “human oriented”. Then he also launches the project The Human Environment the, later renamed Archy and dedicated to the creation of a “human” environment for programming and communicating with a computer.

Another prototypes of the portable PC Jeff Rakkin so far, only a very small number of these ideas have come true - and not only in Canon Cat, but also in Ubiquity, a small addition to the Firefox browser, developed by Jeff Azu Razkin, after the Archy project was sickening and partially joined in Mozilla Labs. Jeff Rakkin was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer - according to the cruel irony of fate, almost simultaneously with his old opponent, Steve Jobs.

But he was destined to live after that - the outstanding researcher of interfaces was gone on February 26. And although many grandiose plans of Raskina are still unrealized, he would probably be glad of the appearance and popularity of devices such as iPad and Android tablets. Perhaps the “humanization” of the computers themselves and the way that people interact with them, approaching the program and user environment to the level of everyday human communication - only begins.