Excerpt characterizing Ruskin, Jeff

– I don’t know what the reasons are. But there are reasons!
Sonya sighed and shook her head in disbelief.
“If there were reasons...” she began. But Natasha, guessing her doubt, interrupted her in fear.
- Sonya, you can’t doubt him, you can’t, you can’t, do you understand? – she shouted.
– Does he love you?
- Does he love you? – Natasha repeated with a smile of regret about her friend’s lack of understanding. – You read the letter, did you see it?
- But what if he is an ignoble person?
– Is he!... an ignoble person? If only you knew! - Natasha said.
“If he is a noble man, then he must either declare his intention or stop seeing you; and if you don’t want to do this, then I will do it, I will write to him, I will tell dad,” Sonya said decisively.
- Yes, I can’t live without him! - Natasha screamed.
- Natasha, I don’t understand you. And what are you saying! Remember your father, Nicolas.
“I don’t need anyone, I don’t love anyone but him.” How dare you say that he is ignoble? Don't you know that I love him? – Natasha shouted. “Sonya, go away, I don’t want to quarrel with you, go away, for God’s sake go away: you see how I’m suffering,” Natasha shouted angrily in a restrained, irritated and desperate voice. Sonya burst into tears and ran out of the room.
Natasha went to the table and, without thinking for a minute, wrote that answer to Princess Marya, which she could not write the whole morning. In this letter, she briefly wrote to Princess Marya that all their misunderstandings were over, that, taking advantage of the generosity of Prince Andrei, who, when leaving, gave her freedom, she asks her to forget everything and forgive her if she is guilty before her, but that she cannot be his wife . It all seemed so easy, simple and clear to her at that moment.

On Friday the Rostovs were supposed to go to the village, and on Wednesday the count went with the buyer to his village near Moscow.
On the day of the count's departure, Sonya and Natasha were invited to a big dinner with the Karagins, and Marya Dmitrievna took them. At this dinner, Natasha again met with Anatole, and Sonya noticed that Natasha was saying something to him, wanting not to be heard, and throughout the dinner she was even more excited than before. When they returned home, Natasha was the first to begin with Sonya the explanation that her friend was waiting for.
“You, Sonya, said all sorts of stupid things about him,” Natasha began in a meek voice, the voice that children use when they want to be praised. - We explained it to him today.
- Well, what, what? Well, what did he say? Natasha, how glad I am that you are not angry with me. Tell me everything, the whole truth. What did he say?
Natasha thought about it.
- Oh Sonya, if only you knew him like I do! He said... He asked me about how I promised Bolkonsky. He was glad that it was up to me to refuse him.
Sonya sighed sadly.
“But you didn’t refuse Bolkonsky,” she said.
– Or maybe I refused! Maybe it's all over with Bolkonsky. Why do you think so badly of me?
- I don’t think anything, I just don’t understand it...

WITH 1989

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Jeff Raskin is a computer interface specialist, author of articles on usability and the book “The Human Interface”, employee No. 31 of Apple Computer, best known as the initiator of the Macintosh project in the late 70s.

WITH 1989 years until the end of his life - independent consultant, journalist. Clients include Intel, Matias Corp., XOFamily, HP, IBM, Motorola, NCR, Xerox, Ricoh, Kraft Systems, Bayer, Agensys, AT&T, McKesson, Technicon, Baan, Kammand Corporation, Toyama Musical Instrument Co., Enlighten Software, Teknowledge, Fujitsu and many others, including the USDA; regular contributor to Forbes, Wired, Mac Home Journal, Pacifica Tribune, Model Airplane News and so on...

He took the “first law of robotics,” coined by Isaac Asimov for artistic purposes (that a robot must not harm a human being or through inaction, allow harm to come to him), quite seriously, rewording it for his own needs: “No system shall harm the content or through inaction, allow the content to be harmed.”

From this postulate comes the famous friendliness of the Apple interface, and many other conveniences of this company’s products, and, perhaps, even the well-known arrogance of its fans. By the way, it was Jeff Raskin who invented the one-button “mouse” as opposed to the first-born of the “mouse” tribe from Xerox, which had three buttons.

One button is always easier than three, isn't it?

What can I say, the origin of the very name Macintosh, which was also invented by Ruskin, reveals in him a dreamer and a romantic - but with a practical head. McIntosh is the name of Jeff's favorite apple variety; but he deliberately changed the spelling of this word slightly so that there would be no copyright problems.

Jeff Raskin left Apple back in 1982 year - to found Information Appliance Inc. This company had only one task - to make the computer become a common tool for solving everyday household problems; after all, Jeff believed that the only task of computers was to make life easier for people.

At the same time, Ruskin began to study the psychology of cognition - and to the beginning 1990 -x provided a scientific basis for the design of friendly computer interfaces, after which it became simply impolite to make them any difficult to understand and master.

TO 2000 year, his knowledge and experience were embodied in the best-selling book “The Humane Interface”. Jeff introduced the concept of “ergonomics of the mind” and correctly and consistently described the terms and procedure for creating interfaces, after which this previously creative discipline became firmly established and acquired clear rules. The book has served as the basis for hundreds of computer courses around the world; it has been translated into a dozen languages, including Russian.

The logical consequence of Jeff Raskin’s work to maximally humanize the relationship with the computer was the establishment of a center called the Raskin Center for Humane Interfaces, where work is underway on the Archy project, the goal of which the creators declare is “reconstruction of the basic principles of machine computing” and “a fundamentally new paradigm of human-computer relations.” . Now Jeff’s son, Aza Raskin, is working on the project.

It’s a pity that Jeff Raskin will no longer see the public presentation of the first working model of Archy.

Ruskin died quietly on February 26 2005 year in his home, surrounded by relatives and friends, two weeks before turning 62 years old. He was the 31st employee at Apple, but it was to him that the company owed the Macintosh computers. Raskin was killed by pancreatic cancer.

Jeff Raskin did not at all correspond to the usual image of a computer guru, and not only because he was a versatile and enthusiastic person. He was not just a programmer, but a thinker and always felt morally responsible for the codes he wrote.

Raskin believed that computer interface designers belonged to the same ethical group as surgeons, and their main goal was to do no harm.

Today we will talk about a man who put a lot of effort into combating imperfect user interfaces, which, one might say, led to the creation Apple Macintosh and not only - many more interesting and useful devices were created (although not all of them became popular).

Usually when they hear the word (company name) Apple , everyone thinks it's about Steve Jobs. We will also have a separate conversation about it, but a little later (maybe in a month). And today I propose to talk about a man who is sometimes called an unrecognized genius - Jef Raskin.

Jef Raskin was born on March 26, 1943. Since childhood, he became interested in computer technology. In 1964-1965 he graduated from the University of New York with a bachelor's degree in mathematics and philosophy. In 1967, he received a master's degree in computer engineering from the University of Pennsylvania. During these same years, he organized several of his own businesses - for example, sales of aircraft modeling kits, a consulting firm and some others (by the way, Jeff was quite keen on aircraft modeling and made many famous models).

At Apple Raskin came in 1978. He became the thirty-first employee of this company. Immediately after joining the company, Raskin proposed to management his idea of ​​​​creating a simple computer for ordinary people. The managers did not like this idea, but gave Raskin permission to pursue this matter.

At the very beginning of the development of this project, Jeff Raskin worked alone. He gave the name to his project Macintosh (misspelled word). After some time, some other fairly well-known people came to the project (for example, Stephen Wozniak), but still, the Macintosh was not the main development Apple.

At that time, Steven Jobs was working on projects Apple Lisa . But he was removed from this development - and he completely switched to the Macintosh, suddenly seeing many positive features in it for the company.

After Steve Jobs joined the Macintosh team, the future computer began to look very much like a computer. Lisa . They included a mouse, which Jeff Raskin worked on a little - as already said, he wanted to make a simple computer, and for this he left only one button in the mouse. After Steve Jobs began to lead all work on the Macintosh (which, by that time, had become the company's flagship), Jef Raskin could not stand it and quit the company. This happened in 1982.

After his dismissal, Raskin decided to do his own thing. He created a company Information Appliance , which released (its first development) an expansion card for Apple II - SwyftCard . It was a text-based candy bar that had neither a graphical user interface nor a file system.

From this expansion card, Jeff Raskin wanted to make a real computer. He found investors (represented by the company Canon ) – and began to develop his own Canon Cat . The release of this computer took place in 1987. But many people adopted this computer as a word processor, and sold Canon Cat became bad. As a result, development and production were curtailed. As they say, the cat is dead.

After the computer became a very popular device in the nineties, Jeff Raskin began to think even more about program interfaces. As a result of all these thoughts, he published the book " The Humane Interface ", which was published in 2000. This book described the concept of the interface, which was implemented in the future - The Humane Environmen (THE).

A quarter of a century ago, in July 1987, a rather unusual computer was born - the Canon Cat. Its history, and especially the creative biography of its creator, the famous computer interface researcher Jeff Raskin, is associated with many interesting and little-known pages in the history of computer technology.

A native of New York, Jef Raskin (1943–2005) was an expert in a variety of fields at the same time. He received higher education and a bachelor's degree in two specialties at once - mathematics and philosophy, and became a master in the field of computer science, and his graduation project (1967) was a music program. Raskin was a rather serious musician and composer - he played the organ almost professionally and conducted the chamber orchestra of the San Francisco Amateur Opera Society. In addition, he was interested in painting, archery, cycling and aircraft modeling - and even received a patent for the invented design of a glider wing.

Jeff Raskin with a model of his “cat”

With such a variety of interests, Raskin made a living in a variety of ways: first he taught fine arts at the University of California, then he founded an independent center to develop a course for teaching programming to students of the humanities and arts, and then he created his own consulting firm. It was with the last enterprise that the beginning of the most interesting stage in his life was associated: in 1976, Raskin, taking into account his experience in explaining the latest computer technologies in simple human language, was hired by the newly created Apple company - for consultation in writing a user manual for the BASIC language for Apple II. And two years later, he became the full-time, 31st employee - the head of the publications department, who, in fact, was involved in writing various kinds of instructions and guides.

From left to right: Michael Scott (the first head of Apple), Steve Jobs, Jeff Raskin, Chris Espinoza (programmer, now the oldest employee of the company) and Steve Wozniak

This activity, as Raskin soon found out, was quite problematic: the Apple II turned out to be far from being a device whose operating principle could be clearly explained to the most untrained user. For example, the system behaved completely differently depending on optionally installed disk controllers, RAM expansions, the type of keyboard connected, etc. The researcher came to the conclusion that it was unrealistic to write sensible and intelligible instructions for existing Apple PCs: ideally, it was necessary to either make a dozen notes to describe each action, or even compose a whole separate manual for using... a standard user manual.

Jef Raskin did not even try to simplify or rebuild the architecture of the Apple II computers, but conceived the idea of ​​​​creating a completely new type of PC. He formulates the main ideas of his project as follows:

The machine should not have expansion slots so that the end user does not have access to the inside of the case (of course, external ports for connecting various peripherals remain in place);

The amount of RAM must be fixed, so that all programs are guaranteed to run on any PC;

The user should receive a fully equipped system - with a built-in keyboard, monitor and disk drives (and ideally also with a printer);

Based on all this, developers are able to determine exactly how any fonts and any graphics will look on the screen, and this not only simplifies the writing of software, but also - most importantly - makes it possible to quickly teach any non-specialist how to use this software.

Oddly enough, Apple management was initially hostile to these unusual ideas. Steve Jobs, for example, at that time set himself the goal of creating machines that were as powerful as possible - and therefore expensive, mainly for business users - rather than common, home-made and cheap. From now on, Raskin and Jobs will forever remain ideological and personal opponents and will speak of each other with obvious hostility. The first of them could not get used to the leadership methods of the second: “Jobs would have made a good king of France,” Raskin would later note, not without irony.

But other leaders, Steve Wozniak and Mike Markkula, although they expressed their doubts, still showed the necessary tolerance, and in 1979, Jeff Raskin was appointed head of a research project to develop a computer, as they said then, “for the man on the street.” The author of the idea gave his supposed brainchild the name "Macintosh", which simultaneously emphasized both the break with the Apple line and a kind of continuity: McIntosh was Ruskin's favorite apple variety, and the "incorrect" spelling was deliberate to avoid disputes about the trademark with the producers of the same name. apples of professional audio equipment.

Those same apples

True, the creation of a new computer at first progressed extremely slowly. The company did not attach any importance to it and financed it on a residual basis. Apart from Raskin, there were only three employees working on the project, and the Macintosh was in danger of being shut down several times. Everything changed radically in 1980, when Steve Jobs's own project, the Apple III, failed miserably on sale, both because of gross design errors and because the price of the proposed computers started at around five thousand dollars. For comparison: the Apple II, at the time of its release three years earlier, cost from $1,298 (model with 4 KB of RAM) to $2,638 for 48 KB; Jobs’ next “mega-project” – Lisa – will start with an astronomical sum of 10 thousand dollars (and will also turn out to be a failure); Well, Raskin was targeting a PC with a cost of, if not up to 500, then at least up to 1000 dollars.

In a crisis situation, management began to pay more attention to the Macintosh - and in 1981, Steve Jobs simply took over the management of the project, leaving Raskin only the software and documentation part. As a result, the new PC was transformed in appearance, becoming more like a mini version of the Lisa than the small portable computer that Raskin dreamed of creating - but the project was finally well-funded, and its original author had more opportunities to realize his vision ideal software environment. Raskin’s main idea was the priority of humans over electronic technologies, and more specifically, the primacy of any user actions in relation to the operation of the PC: the machine had to understand the operator’s intentions and switch programs on the fly. For example, if you just started typing text, the computer had to switch to text editor mode, and when numbers were typed on the keyboard, the calculator would automatically turn on. In general, Raskin saw the entire working system environment of the new PC as an integrated text and graphics editor - all other applications had to work in it as additional commands launched through the menu and editor interface.

Dummy: a personal computer according to Raskin - miniature, monoblock, even including a printer, and portable

However, by 1982, the tireless Jobs began to tailor the software component of the project to himself - he was a supporter of the latest graphical user interface and the “mouse” as the main controller. Jeff Raskin protested against both: in his opinion, it was all too expensive and only slowed down the operator’s work and distracted his attention - even if it ended up being much more spectacular. Nevertheless, Raskin managed to convince management to at least minimize the use of this harmful rodent: instead of the original three buttons a la Xerox Alto, the Macintosh mouse had only one left.

By the way, it was Raskin who at one time drew the attention of Steve Jobs and his other colleagues to the research that was carried out in the bowels of Xerox PARC, from where the Macintosh borrowed both the mouse and many of the ideas for its GUI. As you know, while working on the new PC, Jobs organized himself and his employees an introductory tour of the Xerox Alto computer development center, paying for it with the right to buy out Apple shares at preferential prices. However, the creators of the Macintosh cannot be accused of plagiarism. Raskin wrote an entire article on this subject, in which he argued that attributing the authorship of all new PC ideas from Apple to the team from Xerox PARC is doubly unfair, since this team also designed a lot of interesting things that were not and were not in the Macintosh, and the developers of the latter designed the lion's share of their creation from scratch. Raskin himself, for example, came up with the idea of ​​WYSIWYG (an editing mode that would look exactly like the final result) back in the late 1960s, before the idea was independently implemented by Xerox Palo Alto Research Center employees in the mid-seventies .

On the other hand, the Macintosh project team throughout the entire period of its existence, both during the time of Raskin and under the leadership of Jobs, included many former Xerox employees who confirm: although both Lisa and Mac owe some of their key features to the developments of PARC, they were still independent and innovative systems. Having borrowed the general principle of a graphical interface, with icons and mouse controls, Apple developers provided it with such important elements of the GUI and all modern operating systems as the menu bar, drag-and-drop control method, file manager and the presence of different types of files, control panels and much more - not to mention purely “hardware” innovations like monoblock case design, serial ports or automatic eject drives.

The finished Macintosh of 1984 didn't have much in common with Raskin's original vision, but the basic idea of ​​a simple and affordable all-in-one PC still came to fruition

Unfortunately, all this saw the light of day without Jeff Raskin - in 1982, having lost control of the Macintosh project and unable to withstand the fight with Jobs, he left Apple forever. Although he does not stop collaborating with the apple company - especially with Wozniak, who has always highly valued his contribution to the development of the computer interface. Raskin founds his own company, Information Appliance, where he tries to realize his ideas that were not realized in the Macintosh. By “information device” he precisely understood his ideal of a computer - more like a PDA than a desktop PC, and not so much universal as subordinate to solving one specific human problem.

The first product of Raskin's company is SwyftCard, an expansion card for Apple II: a text editor implemented at the hardware level with expanded functionality - as a single workspace that allows not only to create texts, but also to manage files, carry out mathematical calculations, check email, etc. The kit even included stickers to rename the keys on the standard keyboard; a special role was played by the new LEAP key ("jump"): if it was pressed and some text was typed, a search took place in real time - files whose names began with the letters or numbers typed were displayed (an idea that is familiar and understandable to today's PC user, unlike a man from the early eighties).

Jeff Raskin with one of the prototypes of his Swyft PC from the mid-1980s

And yet, Raskin’s dream remained to create his own PC - to implement all the ideas not only in the program, but also in the hardware. Several prototypes of a laptop computer called Swyft were made, but the matter did not go further - Information Appliance did not have its own funds to launch full-fledged production. Raskin was advised to seek support from large corporations, which he did, eventually signing an agreement with Canon, which agreed to license the Swyft design and release it under its own brand.

So twenty-five years ago, in July 1987, Canon Cat appeared - the closest to the ideal embodiment of Jeff Raskin’s ideas about what a publicly accessible personal computer of that time should be. A 9-inch black-and-white monitor, a 3.5-inch HDD drive and a keyboard with all Raskin’s signature unusual keys, including Leap, Undo, etc. were built into the monoblock case, as one would expect, including Leap, Undo, etc. Hidden inside was a 68000 CPU from Motorola (the same as the Macintosh) with a frequency of 5 MHz, 256 KB of RAM and a 300/1200 bps modem. All applications, including a word processor, communications programs, a 90,000-word spelling dictionary, and assembly and Forth programming environments, were stored in just 256 KB of ROM. Of the external ports, the “Cat” could boast only two telephone connectors and single serial and parallel ones. The whole thing weighed about 7.7kg and was offered for $1,495.

Canon Cat in the flesh. Two red buttons under the space bar – “jump” left and right

At first glance, the new product looked more like an electronic typewriter - for a PC of that time, the technical characteristics looked rather outdated, and the price was overpriced. But the innovative interface still attracts the attention of researchers: although the entire environment was implemented as a text editor controlled only from the keyboard, “Cat” provided such opportunities for creating macros, programming and mathematical calculations that it was possible to create both databases and spreadsheets.

Alas, despite all its innovative features, the Raskin PC 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 unsuccessful marketing decision of Canon, which for some reason positioned the “Cat”, with its enormous capabilities in the field of programming and text editing, as... a computer for secretaries. The latter, in turn, could not appreciate the functionality of an unusual PC and were lost in the situation of an “invisible” interface (well, casual games for Canon Cat, of course, were absent as a class). Although Raskin himself blamed the failure on the same Steve Jobs, who, according to rumors, demanded the closure of his old rival’s project as a condition for cooperation with Canon of his own new company, NeXT.

Workspace on the Canon Cat screen

Jeff Raskin did not try to create an original computer again, but he continued to work in the field of improving the computer interface, bringing it closer to human needs, until his death. In 2000, he published a book on this topic entitled “Human Interface” (in the Russian edition, the word “human” was, however, removed from the title, and translated in the text as “human-oriented”). At the same time, he launched the project The Human Environment (THE), later renamed Archy and dedicated to the creation of a “human” environment for programming and communication with a computer. Among the most interesting (but not uncontroversial) ideas of Ruskin are, for example, the following:

The widespread use of text is mandatory: although graphic icons are acceptable, without captions they only confuse users;

We need to get rid of “warning screens” that require the user to confirm their actions: anyway, out of habit, no one reads them. And in order to avoid unwanted results, it is necessary that any action can be canceled, preferably with a special key, and the document or application can be closed and reopened;

It's time to stop giving names to directories and files: the contents of the file or directory themselves are the best name for them;

The previous idea becomes realizable thanks to the use of a scalable user interface: for example, a small button, from which initially only an icon is visible, when approached, displays a whole text - say, instructions for using the corresponding program, and a graphical representation of the catalog, naturally, when scaled, reveals everything contained in it documentation.

Another of Jeff Raskin's portable PC prototypes

So far, only a very small number of these ideas have come to fruition - not just in Canon Cat, but also in Ubiquity, a small add-on to the Firefox browser developed by Jeff's son Aza Raskin after the Archy project was orphaned and partially merged into Mozilla Labs. Jef Raskin was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer - in a cruel twist of fate, almost simultaneously with his old opponent, Steve Jobs. But he was destined to live very little after that - the outstanding interface researcher died on February 26, 2005. And although many of Raskin’s grandiose plans still remain unrealized, he would probably be happy with the emergence and popularity of devices such as the iPad and Android tablets. Perhaps, the “humanization” of computers themselves and the way people interact with them, bringing the software and user environment closer to the level of everyday human communication is just beginning.

Jeff Raskin(Jef Raskin) (March 26, 1943 - February 26, 2005) - computer interface specialist, author of articles on usability and the book "The Human Interface", employee No. 31 of Apple Computer, best known as the initiator of the Macintosh project in the late 70s.

Raskin left Apple in 1982 and founded the company Information Appliance, Inc. to implement his own concepts excluded from the Mackintosh project. His first product was the SwyftCard, an expansion card for the Apple II computer that contained the SwyftWare software package. Information Applicane later supplied Swyft as a separate computer. Raskin entered into an agreement with Canon to produce a similar product under the name Canon Cat. The computer was released in 1987 and contained a number of innovative usability solutions, but was not a commercial success.

In 2000, Jeff Raskin’s book “The Human Interface” was published, dedicated to the problems of human-machine interaction and the development of an interface taking into account the principles of cognetics.

At the beginning of the 21st century, Raskin began The Human Environment (THE), a computer interface development project based on his thirty years of work and research in the field. In 2005, the project was renamed Archy. The work was continued by his son, Aza Raskin, at Humanized, which was founded shortly after Jef Raskin's death to preserve his legacy. Later, Humanized released Enso, a program dedicated to Jeff's memory and based on his work on the interface. Work on the Archy project was suspended in 2008, the developers switched to creating the Ubiquity plugin for Mozilla Firefox, embodying some interface concepts from the ideas of Jef Raskin.

Literature

• Raskin D., Interface: new directions in the design of computer systems. - Per. from English - St. Petersburg: Symbol-Plus, 2004. - 272 p., ill.

Links

• raskincenter.org (parts of the site preserved in archive.org)
• jefraskin.com

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