Jef Raskin Quotes
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I hate mice. The mouse involves you in arm motions that slow you down. I didn't want it on the Macintosh, but Jobs insisted. In those days, what he said went, good idea or not.
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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.
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A computer shall not waste your time or require you to do more work than is strictly necessary.
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Once the product's task is known, design the interface first; then implement to the interface design.
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What I proposed was a computer that would be easy to use, mix text and graphics, and sell for about $1,000. Steve Jobs said that it was a crazy idea, that it would never sell, and we didn't want anything like it. He tried to shoot the project down.
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Icons, windows, mice, big operating systems, huge programs, integrated packages.... I would like to remind the world that just because two things are on the same menu doesn't mean they taste good together.
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I've moved on, grown and learned in the years since then, and am designing interfaces that make the Mac's GUI feel as clumsy to use as the Mac made the old DOS-based systems feel primitive.
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Imagine if every Thursday your shoes exploded if you tied them the usual way. This happens to us all the time with computers, and nobody thinks of complaining.
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An unlimited-length file name is a file. The content of a file is its own best name.
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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.
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A computer shall not harm your work or, through inaction, allow your work to come to harm.
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Have you ever noticed that there are no Maytag user groups? Nobody needs a mutual support group to run a washing machine.
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As far as the customer is concerned, the interface is the product.
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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.
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If I am correct, the use of a product based on modelessness and monoty would soon become so habitual as to be nearly addictive, leading to a user population devoted to and loyal to the product.
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When you have to choose among methods, your locus of attention is drawn from the task and temporarily becomes the decision itself.
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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.
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Users do not care about what is inside the box, as long as the box does what they need done.
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Right now, computers, which are supposed to be our servant, are oppressing us.
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An interface is humane if it is responsive to human needs and considerate of human frailties.