Jef Raskin Archive
Jef Raskin (1943–2005) was an American human-computer interface expert who started the Macintosh project at Apple in 1979. He is best known for conceiving and starting the original Macintosh computer project, and for his book The Humane Interface (2000), which laid out principles for designing computer interfaces that work with human cognition.
Published Works
Unpublished Essays
Pictures & Photography
Humor
Biography
About Jef Raskin
Raskin began the Macintosh project at Apple Computer in 1979, envisioning an affordable, easy-to-use computer for everyday people. After leaving Apple, he designed the Canon Cat, founded Information Appliance Inc., authored The Humane Interface, and established the Raskin Center for Humane Interfaces. Beyond computing, he was an accomplished musician, pilot, photographer, and instrument builder.
By Jef Raskin
This paper extends Raskin’s investigations into the physics of flight, examining the design principles behind airfoil shapes and their aerodynamic properties.
Background
Raskin’s interest in aerodynamics was both professional and personal. As a licensed pilot, model aircraft builder, and rigorous mathematical thinker, he brought a unique perspective to questions about how wings work. His widely cited paper on the Coanda effect challenged conventional explanations of lift; this companion work on airfoil design explored the practical implications of those theoretical insights.
Raskin’s Aviation Photography
Jef Raskin’s love of flight was one of the defining threads of his life. As a licensed pilot, model aircraft builder, and aerodynamics researcher, he spent decades engaged with aviation in both theory and practice. These photographs document that engagement.
Full-Scale Aircraft
Raskin flew various aircraft throughout his life and photographed planes that captured his interest — from classic trainers like the Piper Cub to more unusual designs. His photographs reflect a pilot’s eye: attention to the lines of an airframe, the geometry of wings, and the way light plays across fuselage surfaces.
The Canon Cat’s interface was built around a small set of powerful, consistent commands. Unlike contemporary computers that relied on menus and mouse navigation, the Cat used keyboard-driven commands centered on its innovative Leap keys.
The Leap Keys
The Cat’s most distinctive feature was its pair of Leap keys, positioned where modern keyboards place the space bar’s flanking keys. Pressing a Leap key followed by typing any characters would instantly jump the cursor to the next occurrence of that text — forward (right Leap) or backward (left Leap).
By Jef Raskin (1994)
Ask a pilot how a wing generates lift. Ask a physics teacher. Ask the author of an aeronautics textbook. You will likely get some version of the same story: air traveling over the curved upper surface of a wing moves faster than air below, creating lower pressure on top, and this pressure difference pushes the wing upward.
That story is, at best, incomplete. At worst, the version taught in most classrooms is demonstrably wrong.
The Estey Harmonium
Among the keyboard instruments in Jef Raskin’s collection was an Estey harmonium, a type of reed organ manufactured by the Estey Organ Company of Brattleboro, Vermont.
What Is a Harmonium?
A harmonium produces sound by forcing air over metal reeds using foot-operated bellows. Unlike a pipe organ, which uses pipes of different lengths and materials, a harmonium relies on vibrating reeds similar to those in a harmonica or accordion. The result is a warm, intimate sound quite different from the grand tones of a pipe organ. Harmoniums were popular in homes, churches, and schools from the mid-nineteenth century through the early twentieth century.
The Green Flash
The green flash is a rare atmospheric optical phenomenon that occurs briefly at sunset (and occasionally sunrise) when conditions are right. For a second or two, a vivid green spot appears at the very top of the sun’s disk as it slips below a clear ocean horizon. Many people spend years watching sunsets without ever seeing one.
Raskin’s Observations
Living in Pacifica, California, with its unobstructed Pacific Ocean views, Raskin was well-positioned to observe and photograph the green flash. He documented multiple occurrences with the patience and precision that characterized all his work. Capturing the green flash on film requires anticipation, proper equipment, and a willingness to watch many sunsets that produce no result.
By Jef Raskin (unpublished)
This unpublished piece explored the design and physics of rigid sails — solid wing-like structures used in place of traditional fabric sails on watercraft.
Rigid Sails and Aerodynamics
Unlike conventional soft sails that rely on fabric tension and wind pressure to form their shape, rigid sails maintain a fixed aerodynamic profile similar to an airplane wing. This allows for more precise control of lift and drag, and in many conditions, significantly better performance than cloth sails.
By Jef Raskin
When a product becomes famous enough, its origin story gets simplified. Then it gets mythologized. Then the mythology becomes, for most purposes, the official history. Jef Raskin wrote this essay to address the mythology around the Macintosh — specifically the systematic omission of his role in creating it, and the corresponding inflation of others'.
This is not a small matter of personal credit. When the history of a technology is wrong, we lose the ability to learn from it accurately. Understanding what the Macintosh was, where it came from, and what problems it was designed to solve requires understanding who actually designed it and why.
By Jef Raskin
In this satirical essay, Raskin applied his talent for finding absurdity in systems to the perpetually contentious topic of health care costs.
The Satirical Approach
Rather than writing a earnest policy proposal, Raskin took a Swiftian approach, offering deliberately absurd solutions to the problem of rising health care costs. By pushing certain lines of reasoning to their logical — and ridiculous — conclusions, he exposed the flawed assumptions underlying many real proposals.
By Jef Raskin
As a licensed pilot and lifelong aviation enthusiast, Raskin was a dedicated reader of aircraft reviews in aviation magazines. This humorous essay turned that experience into comedy.
The Genre
Aviation magazines regularly publish flight reviews of new and classic aircraft, written by pilot-journalists who take a plane up for a few hours and report their impressions. Like car reviews, restaurant reviews, and technology reviews, airplane reviews have their own conventions, cliches, and predictable patterns — ripe material for satire.
By Jef Raskin
In this piece, Raskin turned his analytical mind to one of the most commonly taught rules in English spelling: the mnemonic “i before e, except after c.”
The Investigation
Most English speakers learn this rule in elementary school and carry it through life as a reliable guide. Raskin, characteristically, decided to test the claim rather than accept it on authority. By systematically examining the English lexicon, he assessed how often the rule actually held true and how often it failed.
Jef Raskin was many things: computer scientist, cognitive researcher, pilot, musician, mathematician, and relentless critic of bad interface design. He is best known as the person who created the Macintosh project at Apple Computer — who named it, wrote its design specifications, hired its first team, and articulated the vision that a personal computer could be used by people who had never used a computer before.
He died on February 26, 2005, of pancreatic cancer, at the age of 61.
Mechanical Jef
These photographs capture Jef Raskin in his element — working with tools, machines, and mechanical projects. They reveal a side of Raskin that his published writing only hints at: the hands-on engineer who built things with his own hands throughout his life.
The Workshop
Raskin maintained a well-equipped workshop where he pursued projects ranging from musical instrument construction to model aircraft building to experimental devices. He was not content to design things on paper; he needed to build, test, and refine physical objects. This direct engagement with materials and mechanisms informed his understanding of how things work at a level that purely theoretical study cannot achieve.
In this essay, Jef Raskin addressed the fundamental disconnect between how computers are designed and how humans actually think and work. Despite decades of improvements in processing power, storage, and graphics, Raskin observed that millions of computer users remained frustrated by interfaces that ignored basic principles of human cognition.
The Problem
Raskin identified several persistent sources of user frustration:
- Modal errors — performing an action in the wrong mode, producing unintended and sometimes destructive results
- Lost work — crashes, failed saves, and the burden of manually preserving work
- Unnecessary complexity — features that serve developers’ or marketers’ interests rather than users’ needs
- Inconsistency — different applications using different conventions for the same operations
The Cause
The root cause, Raskin argued, was not a lack of engineering talent but a lack of scientific rigor in interface design. Most interfaces were designed by intuition, by copying competitors, or by committee — rather than by measuring and optimizing for human cognitive performance.
By Jef Raskin
Raskin’s writing on music education drew from deep personal experience. He studied music formally, conducted chamber ensembles and orchestras, built musical instruments, and taught music at the university level before transitioning to computing.
A Musician’s Credentials
Raskin was not a casual hobbyist. He held a degree in music, directed the UCSD chamber orchestra, and was an accomplished recorder player and visual artist. His engagement with music was rigorous and sustained throughout his life, even as his career shifted toward computer science and interface design.
By Jef Raskin (unpublished)
This unpublished essay challenged the widespread assumption that progress is inevitable — that each generation will necessarily enjoy better circumstances than the last.
The Premise
Raskin observed that people tend to assume the future will be an improvement on the present. When something goes wrong — a failed policy, a flawed technology, a social setback — the common response is reassurance that things will be better next time. Raskin questioned this optimism, arguing that it can breed a dangerous complacency.
By Jef Raskin
In this essay, Raskin offered a pointed critique of the field of information design, arguing that many practitioners focus on aesthetics and visual complexity at the expense of genuine clarity.
The Problem
Information design, at its best, makes complex data understandable. But Raskin observed that much real-world information design achieves the opposite: it adds visual noise, imposes unnecessary structure, and prioritizes the designer’s creativity over the viewer’s comprehension. Charts that are harder to read than raw numbers, signage that confuses rather than directs, and interfaces that bury essential information under decorative elements all exemplify this failure.
In this interdisciplinary essay, Jef Raskin drew unexpected parallels between nursing theory and interface design. Both fields, he argued, share a fundamental concern with understanding and responding to the needs of the person being served — the patient in nursing, the user in computing.
The Connection
Nursing theory emphasizes the importance of understanding the whole patient — their physical condition, mental state, emotional needs, and environment. Similarly, Raskin argued that interface design must account for the whole user: their cognitive limitations, their goals, their level of expertise, and the context in which they work.
By Jef Raskin (unpublished)
“Slipstick” is engineer’s slang for the slide rule, and in this essay Raskin reflected on the elegant analog computing tool that served generations of scientists and engineers before electronic calculators made it obsolete.
The Slide Rule Era
For much of the twentieth century, the slide rule was the essential calculating instrument for anyone working in science, engineering, or mathematics. By sliding logarithmic scales against each other, users could quickly perform multiplication, division, trigonometry, and other operations. Every engineer carried one, and proficiency with a slide rule was a mark of technical competence.
By Jef Raskin
In this essay, Raskin reflected on Fred Rogers — the beloved host of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood — and what his approach to communication reveals about effective teaching and design.
Rogers as Communicator
Fred Rogers possessed a rare ability to connect with his audience through simplicity, sincerity, and respect. He never talked down to children, never relied on flashy production techniques, and never sacrificed clarity for entertainment. Raskin saw in Rogers a kindred spirit: someone who understood that the audience’s needs, not the medium’s capabilities, should drive communication.
By Jef Raskin
In this essay, Raskin addressed the ethical arguments surrounding the use of torture, bringing the same analytical clarity to moral philosophy that he applied to interface design and physics.
The Argument
Raskin examined the various justifications offered for the use of torture — national security, the so-called “ticking bomb” scenario, and claims of necessity — and subjected each to rigorous logical analysis. He considered both consequentialist and deontological perspectives, assessing whether any coherent ethical framework could justify the practice.
By Jef Raskin
Pacifica, California — the small coastal town south of San Francisco where Raskin lived — served as both home and inspiration for this personal essay.
The Setting
Pacifica sits along a dramatic stretch of Pacific coastline where fog rolls in from the ocean, cliffs drop to rocky beaches, and the light changes constantly with weather and season. For Raskin, who was a visual artist as well as a technologist, the town’s natural beauty provided a rich subject for observation and reflection.
Raskin’s Pipe Organ
Among Jef Raskin’s most impressive personal projects was the construction of a pipe organ. Building a pipe organ is one of the most demanding undertakings in musical instrument craftsmanship, requiring expertise in woodworking, metalworking, acoustics, pneumatics, and music.
The Instrument
A pipe organ produces sound by forcing air through tuned pipes of varying sizes, materials, and shapes. Each pipe is voiced — carefully adjusted — to produce a specific tone and volume. The organ builder must design and construct the wind supply system, the keyboard mechanism (action), the pipe ranks, and the case, integrating all these components into a coherent musical instrument.
By Jef Raskin (unpublished)
The Piper J-3 Cub is one of the most iconic aircraft in aviation history — a simple, reliable, affordable airplane that taught more people to fly than perhaps any other design. In this essay, Raskin wrote about the Cub with the affection and knowledge of an experienced pilot.
Raskin and Aviation
Raskin was a licensed pilot who flew throughout his adult life. He was also an avid builder and flyer of model aircraft, and his aerodynamics research — including his widely cited work on the Coanda effect — grew directly from his passion for flight. The Piper Cub held a special place in his aviation experience.
By Jef Raskin
This article documents Raskin’s work with radio transmitter design, an area where his engineering skill and passion for understanding fundamental principles converged.
Raskin and Electronics
Before he became known for the Macintosh project, Raskin was deeply involved in electronics and radio technology. His technical interests were broad and hands-on — he did not merely study circuits in theory but built and tested them. This transmitter article reflects that practical orientation.
Solar System
These images document Jef Raskin’s work creating a solar system model, reflecting his interest in astronomy, scientific visualization, and the challenge of representing vast scales in comprehensible form.
The Scale Problem
One of the most challenging aspects of depicting the solar system is the enormous disparity between planetary sizes and the distances between them. Most models and illustrations cheat by compressing distances or exaggerating planet sizes, which gives a fundamentally misleading impression of the solar system’s structure. Raskin, with his commitment to accurate representation, grappled directly with this problem.
By Jef Raskin
In this essay, Raskin explored the anthropic principle — the philosophical observation that the universe’s fundamental physical constants appear to be precisely calibrated to permit the existence of life and conscious observers.
The Question
The anthropic principle arises from a striking fact: if certain physical constants — the strength of gravity, the charge of the electron, the mass of the proton — were even slightly different, stars, planets, chemistry, and life as we know it could not exist. Why do we find ourselves in a universe so apparently hospitable?
The Canon Cat was a dedicated word processing computer released by Canon in 1987, designed by Jef Raskin. It was his most complete commercial implementation of the interface principles he had been developing since the Macintosh project — and in several respects a more faithful realization of those principles than the Macintosh had been.
The Canon Cat was sold for approximately $1500 and discontinued after six months on the market, reportedly due to internal Canon corporate decisions rather than any failure of the product itself. It has since become a significant object in the history of alternative computing — studied by interface designers and historians as evidence that a radically different approach to personal computing was commercially viable.
An unpublished essay by Jef Raskin
In 1960, the physicist Eugene Wigner published an essay titled “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences.” The question Wigner posed was simple and unanswerable: why does abstract mathematics — developed by mathematicians for purely internal reasons, with no reference to the physical world — turn out to describe the physical world so precisely?
Maxwell’s equations for electromagnetism were developed as mathematical structures. They turned out to predict the existence of radio waves before radio waves were discovered. The non-Euclidean geometry developed in the nineteenth century as a purely abstract exercise turned out to be exactly the geometry of spacetime in general relativity. Group theory, developed by mathematicians pursuing questions in abstract algebra, turned out to be the precise language for describing quantum mechanical symmetries.
“The Humane Interface: New Directions for Designing Interactive Systems” by Jef Raskin (Addison-Wesley, 2000)
Jef Raskin spent decades thinking about the relationship between computers and the humans who use them. The Humane Interface is the distillation of those decades — a systematic argument for why most computer interfaces fail users at a fundamental level, and a framework for designing interfaces that do not.
The book is not a style guide or a collection of usability tips. It is a theoretical account of how human cognition works and what that implies for interface design. Raskin was a cognitive scientist before he was a computer scientist, and it shows. The principles in this book derive from research in psychology and human factors, not from design intuition or aesthetic preference.
By Jef Raskin (unpublished)
This unpublished piece showcased the musical side of Raskin’s polymathic life — his experiences as a performer, conductor, and builder of musical instruments.
Raskin as Musician
Music was not a sideline for Raskin; it was a central part of his identity. He held a degree in music, directed the chamber orchestra at the University of California San Diego, played recorder at a professional level, and built instruments including a harpsichord and a pipe organ. His musical life was as serious and disciplined as his work in computing.
By Jef Raskin (unpublished)
This essay examined the widely circulated claim that humans can read text even when the interior letters of each word are scrambled, as long as the first and last letters remain in place.
The Phenomenon
A well-known internet meme demonstrated that most people can read passages where words like “according” are rendered as “aoccdrnig” with surprising ease. The claim was that the human brain reads words as whole units rather than letter-by-letter, making internal letter order less important than commonly assumed.
Jef Raskin was interviewed for Ubiquity, the ACM magazine devoted to technology and computing. The interview covered the arc of his career, his thinking on interface design, and his views on where computing was headed.
Background: Who Is Jef Raskin?
Jef Raskin joined Apple Computer in 1978 and within a year was writing internal memos proposing what would become the Macintosh project. He named it. He hired its first engineers. He articulated its design philosophy: a computer so easy to use that people who had never touched a computer could use it without instruction.
An unpublished essay by Jef Raskin
Software releases have a problem that product managers rarely discuss and marketing departments actively encourage: each new version of an application tends to have more interface elements than the previous one. More buttons. More panels. More toolbar icons. More menu items. More preference settings. More options dialogs with more tabs containing more checkboxes.
This proliferation is presented as progress. In Raskin’s analysis, it is frequently the opposite.
By Jef Raskin
This humorous essay showcased Raskin’s comedic sensibility — a quality well known to his friends and colleagues but less visible in his technical publications.
Raskin’s Humor
Jef Raskin was widely regarded as a witty and engaging conversationalist. His humor was intellectual but never cold — he delighted in wordplay, absurdity, and the comic potential of everyday situations. Friends recalled that he could make a room laugh while simultaneously making a serious point, and his writing often carried an undercurrent of amusement even when addressing weighty topics.