10 of the most important people behind the Mac
Who were and are the people who made the computer for the rest of us what it was and is today? In many ways, this is a who’s who of not just Apple, but also the computer industry itself.
Why? Because the Macintosh was the first commercially successful personal computer to offer a graphical interface and pioneered “what you see is what you get” (WYSIWYG) desktop publishing.
Without further ado, here’s the list:
10. Jonathan Ive—Designer of the iPod, iMac, Cube, etc.
9. Steven Paul Jobs
8. Stephen S Kahng—Led legendary Mac cloner Power Computing.
7. Susan Kare—Created the with the instantly understandable visual metaphors used by original Mac.
6. Guy Kawasaki—The original Mac evangelist.
Of course any computer’s real value is based on what you can do with it. For the first 100 days, Apple is including two valuable programs, MacPaint and MacWrite free with the machine. MacWrite has most basic word processing features with one outstanding addition. It can vary the size and style of your type on the screen and on paper, when used with Apple’s new $495 Image Writer printer. This computer/printer/software combination produces the first truly “what you see is what you get” word processing system on a moderately priced [Ed—$2,495] microcomputer—Larry Magid’s 1984 review of the original Macintosh.
See also:
—Fortune’s Jan. 1984: How critics reviewed the Mac
—Andy Hertzfeld’s Folklore.org
5. Jeffrey Frank Raskin—Father of Macintosh.
4. John Sculley—Fired Jobs, but was also instrumental in making the Mac a success and Apple into a multi-billion company.
3. Burrell Smith—Responsible for much of the original Mac’s hardware wizardry.
2. Avadis Tevanian Jr, PhD—Father of the modern Mac OS.
1. Bruce Tognazzini (pictured at the top of this article)—responsible for much of the Mac’s user interface design, ease of use. Founded the Apple Human Interface Group.
Kawasaki more important than Jobs? Well, this listing was created by Macworld UK, which has created Top 20 listing that includes many of the names not mentioned here. Also, though Woz (Steve Wozniak) wasn’t part of the Mac team, he was instrumental in creating many of the technologies that eventually went into the original 128K Macintosh.
What additions and/or change would you make to the list?
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January 23rd, 2009
You should have noticed that the list is in alphabetical order, not in order of contributions!
January 23rd, 2009
Oops, I was focussed on the numbers!
January 23rd, 2009
And besides not mentioning the alphabetical order, you actually screwed up the numbering, too. And who the hell does alphabetical ordering with numbering that is backward? Nicely done, dumbass.
January 23rd, 2009
And besides not mentioning the alphabetical order, you actually screwed up the numbering, too. And who the hell does alphabetical ordering with numbering that is backward? Nicely done, dum*ass.