Jef Raskin Quotes (29 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

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The Humane Interface

Jef Raskin

Jef Raskin: 29 quotes 2 likes

Famous Jef Raskin Quotes

“I was very much amused by the recent Newsweek article where he [Jobs] said, "I have a few good designs in me still." He never had any designs. He has not designed a single product. Woz (Steve Wozniak) designed the Apple II. Ken Rothmuller and others designed Lisa. My team and I designed the Macintosh. Wendell Sanders designed the Apple III. What did Jobs design? Nothing.”

Jef Raskin

Programmers At Work (1986)

“Users do not care about what is inside the box, as long as the box does what they need done.”

Jef Raskin book The Humane Interface

The Humane Interface (2001)

“Now there is little difference, except packaging, between a Mac and a Windows machine. Not no difference, but at home we have — along with six Macs (one for everybody plus my travelling iBook) — three PCs and one Linux box, and I can move from one to the other without having to think about it much. What used to be a night-and-day difference in usability has become a small increment in Apple's favor”

Jef Raskin

or favour for you Brits
MacUser interview (2004)

“MacUser: Which person do you most admire?
Jef Raskin: For what attribute? Once again you ask a question that linearises a complex matter. I can name many. Let's start with people named George: George Cantor for moving infinity out of philosophy into mathematics, George Washington for showing how a leader should relinquish power, and George Bernard Shaw for his humanity… Or we can do it by subject and admire Aristotle, Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein for their pulling from nature comprehensible laws; or Euclid, Gauss and Gödel for their contributions to mathematics; or people who have influenced me very directly, in which case I'd mention my very admirable parents and the teacher who taught me to be intellectually independent, L R Genise; or how about Claude Shannon without whose work on information theory I would have been lost.”

Jef Raskin

MacUser interview (2004)

“Right now, computers, which are supposed to be our servant, are oppressing us.”

Jef Raskin

On the potential to improve human-computer interaction, in interview with Berkeley Groks http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~frank/BerkeleyGroks_Raskin.htm (3 March 2004)

“Jobs took over. He simply came in and said, "I'm taking over Macintosh hardware; you can have software and publications." … And then a few months later Jobs said, "I'm taking over software; you can have publications." So I said, "You can have publications too," and left. That was in May of 1982. He and Markkula said, "Please don't leave. Give us another month and we'll make you an offer you can't refuse."”

Jef Raskin

So I gave Apple a month; they made me an offer, and I refused.
Programmers At Work (1986)

Jef Raskin Quotes about people

“I'm developing cross platform now, and I'm as interested in helping as many people as possible to have a better experience when using computers. Morality demands that I write for Wintel machines first (Linux comes along free), and port to Macs when there is time.”

Jef Raskin

MacUser interview (2004)

“To not have people assume you can rank every-thing one dimensionally. Or have everybody realise that killing people is not a way to solve problems.”

Jef Raskin

MacUser interview (2004)
Context: MacUser: If you could change one thing, what would it be?
Jef Raskin: To not have people assume you can rank every-thing one dimensionally. Or have everybody realise that killing people is not a way to solve problems.

“If books were sold as software and online recordings are, they would have this legalese up front:
The content of this book is distributed on an 'as is' basis, without warranty as to accuracy of content, quality of writing, punctuation, usefulness of the ideas presented, merchantability, correctness or readability of formulae, charts, and figures, or correspondence of (a) the table of contents with the actual contents, (2) page references in the index (if any) with the actual page numbering (if present), and (iii) any illustration with its adjacent caption. Illustrations may have been printed reversed or inverted, the publisher accepts no responsibility for orientation or chirality. Any resemblance of the author or his or her likeness or name to any person, living or dead, or their heirs or assigns, is coincidental; all references to people, places, or events have been or should have been fictionalized and may or may not have any factual basis, even if reported as factual. Similarities to existing works of art, literature, song, or television or movie scripts is pure happenstance. References have been chosen at random from our own catalog. Neither the author(s) nor the publisher shall have any liability whatever to any person, corporation, animal whether feral or domesticated, or other corporeal or incorporeal entity with respect to any loss, damage, misunderstanding, or death from choking with laughter or apoplexy at or due to, respectively, the contents; that is caused or is alleged to be caused by any party, whether directly or indirectly due to the information or lack of information that may or may not be found in this alleged work. No representation is made as to the correctness of the ISBN or date of publication as our typist isn't good with numbers and errors of spelling and usage are attributable solely to bugs in the spelling and grammar checker in Microsoft Word. If sold without a cover, this book will be thinner than those sold with a cover. You do not own this book, but have acquired only a revocable non-exclusive license to read the material contained herein. You may not read it aloud to any third party. This disclaimer is a copyrighted work of Jef Raskin, first published in 2004, and is distributed 'as is', without warranty as to quality of humor, incisiveness of commentary, sharpness of taunt, or aptness of jibe.”

Jef Raskin

"If Books Were Sold as Software" http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&dateissued=20040818#11200, NewsScan.com (18 August 2004)
If Books Were Sold as Software (2004)

“It's absolutely ugly, but unfortunately quite true of the world today; the more money you make, the more people tend to listen to you. If you're not quoted in Fortune or Forbes or the Wall Street Journal, then nobody listens. If you say something that makes a lot of money, whether what you said is true or not, people listen.”

Jef Raskin

Programmers At Work (1986)

“We have a whole valley full of people talking UNIX versus MS-DOS. What do you need any of that for? Just throw it all out; get rid of all that nonsense. Maybe you need it for computer scientists, but for people who want to get something done, no. Do you need an operating system? No.”

Jef Raskin

Programmers At Work (1986)