![]() “Don’t worry about price, just specify the computer’s abilities,” Jobs told him. At one point in the fall of 1979 Jobs told him instead to focus on building what he repeatedly called an “insanely great” product. “Jobs was enthralled by Raskin’s vision, but not by his willingness to make compromises to keep down the cost,” writes Isaacson. The Apple co-founder liked the concept of a cheap machine for the mass market, but he didn’t like Raskin’s design. So, Jobs left the Lisa project – and looked at Jef Raskin’s baby. ![]() In addition, Scott did not think him capable of a major management role and thus planned to assign him the less important role of a company spokesman and promoter in advance of Apple’s initial public offering on December 12th, 1980. With his capricious and at times fairly aggressive management style, Jobs had snubbed many developers. Yet in the summer of 1980, a serious conflict between Jobs and Apple’s president Mike Scott was brewing as Scott intended to edge Jobs out of the concrete development of the new Lisa. Steve Jobs and Jef RaskinĪt that time, Steve Jobs had not taken particular interest in the Macintosh project – and due to some dim apprehension, Raskin tried everything to exclude the Apple co-founder. In return, the Macintosh should only be equipped with a tiny five inch display, a cheap CPU (6809) and a main memory calculated extremely tight at 64 kilobytes. Raskin’s first draft envisioned a closed computer including monitor, keyboard and printer able to work without any external wires – and all that for 500 dollars. The expression of the “Person in the Street” formed by Raskin became a dictum at Apple – abbreviated as PITS. The academic computer scientist, who had kept secret his diploma from the Apple founders at the time of his appointment (as Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs approached academics extremely distrustfully), wanted to design a computer for the normal person in the street – which of course could not to be unattainable. Raskin had chosen a completely new approach, because until then, the “technically feasible” is what defined a computer’s design. ![]() The essay was not published until 1982 in the SIGPC Newsletter, Vol. Markkula insisted on the report to be treated as a confidential internal report. In fall 1979, Raskin wrote his article “ Computers by the Millions“, in which he drafted his version of a computer for the masses. “However, there was this thing that I’d been dreaming about – it was it would be designed from a human factors perspective, which at that time was totally incomprehensible.” “I told him it was a fine project, but I wasn’t terribly interested in a 500-dollar game machine,” Raskin later remembered. Raskin had been responsible for Apple’s publications, particularly manuals, and actually was to more intensely oversee the developers writing the applications for the Apple II. San Diego argued that computers should have graphical rather than text-based interfaces. Raskin had studied computer science, taught music and visual arts, conducted a chamber opera company, and organized guerrilla theater. Raskin was a “philosophical guy who could be both playful and ponderous”, writes Walter Isaacson in his book “Steve Jobs”. Markkula then charged Jef Raskin with the secret “Annie” project. Five years earlier, in spring 1979, Apple chairman Mike Markkula wondered whether his company should bring a 500 dollar computer to market. It had been a long way until the day of the official introduction of the Macintosh on January 24th, 1984. It All Began with “Annie” – The Vision of a Computer for the Masses
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