Andy Hertzfeld
Encyclopedia
Andy Hertzfeld is a computer scientist who was a member of the original Apple Macintosh development team during the 1980s. After buying an Apple II in January 1978, he went to work for Apple Computer
from August 1979 until March 1984, where he was a designer for the Macintosh
system software. Since leaving Apple, he has co-founded three companies: Radius
in 1986, General Magic
in 1990 and Eazel
in 1999. In 2002, he helped Mitch Kapor
promote open source
software with the Open Source Applications Foundation
. Hertzfeld joined Google
in 2005, and in 2011 was the key designer of the Circles user interface in Google+
.
with a Computer Science
degree in 1975, Hertzfeld attended graduate school
at the University of California, Berkeley
. In 1978, he bought an Apple II
computer and soon began developing software for it. He was hired by Apple Computer as a systems programmer in 1979 and developed the Apple SilenType
printer firmware
and the first 80-column card for the Apple II. In the early 1980s, he invited his high school friend, artist Susan Kare
, to join Apple in order to help design what would become standard Macintosh icons.
Hertzfeld's business card at Apple listed his title as Software Wizard. He wrote large portions of the Macintosh's original system software including much of the burned-in ROM
code, the User Interface Toolbox, and a number of innovative components now standard in many graphic user interfaces, like the Control Panel
and Scrapbook
.
After a shakeup in the Apple II team and at Hertzfeld's request, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs
added him to the nearly two-year-old Macintosh team in February 1981. Working for Bud Tribble
alongside Bill Atkinson
and Burrell Smith
, Hertzfeld became a primary software architect of the Macintosh Operating System
, which was considered revolutionary in its use of the graphical user interface
(GUI) where Jef Raskin
also made contributions.
(1986), General Magic
(1990) and Eazel
(1999). At Eazel, he helped to create the Nautilus file manager for Linux's
GNOME
desktop. He volunteered for OSAF in 2002 and 2003, writing early prototypes of Chandler
, their information manager. In 1996, Hertzfeld was interviewed by Robert Cringely on the television documentary Triumph of the Nerds
, and was again interviewed by Cringely on NerdTV in 2005.
In early 2004, he started folklore.org, a web site devoted to collective storytelling that contains dozens of anecdote
s about the development of the original Macintosh. The stories have been collected in an O'Reilly
book, Revolution in the Valley, published in December 2004. In August 2005, Hertzfeld joined Google
.
On June 28, 2011 Google
announced Google+
, its latest attempt at social networking. Hertzfeld was the key designer of the Google+
Circles component user interface, but not the entire project as has been mistakenly attributed.
Apple Computer
Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation that designs and markets consumer electronics, computer software, and personal computers. The company's best-known hardware products include the Macintosh line of computers, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad...
from August 1979 until March 1984, where he was a designer for the Macintosh
Macintosh
The Macintosh , or Mac, is a series of several lines of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. The first Macintosh was introduced by Apple's then-chairman Steve Jobs on January 24, 1984; it was the first commercially successful personal computer to feature a mouse and a...
system software. Since leaving Apple, he has co-founded three companies: Radius
Radius (computer)
Radius was an American computer hardware firm founded in May 1986 by Burrell Smith, Andy Hertzfeld, Mike Boich, Matt Carter, Alain Rossmann and other members of the original Mac team specializing in Macintosh equipment....
in 1986, General Magic
General Magic
General Magic was a company co-founded by Bill Atkinson, Andy Hertzfeld and Marc Porat that developed a new kind of handheld communications device they called a "personal intelligent communicator", which was a PDA precursor that stressed communications....
in 1990 and Eazel
Eazel
Eazel was a software company based in Mountain View, California from 1999 to 2001.The enterprise was staffed with former employees of Apple Computer, Netscape, Be Inc., Linuxcare, Microsoft, Red Hat and Sun Microsystems, among others. Mike Boich was CEO; Bud Tribble was VP of Engineering; Andy...
in 1999. In 2002, he helped Mitch Kapor
Mitch Kapor
Mitchell David Kapor is the founder of Lotus Development Corporation and the designer of Lotus 1-2-3. He is also a co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and was the first chair of the Mozilla Foundation...
promote open source
Open source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
software with the Open Source Applications Foundation
Open Source Applications Foundation
The Open Source Applications Foundation is a non-profit organization founded in 2002 by Mitch Kapor whose purpose is to effect widespread adoption of free software/open-source software.-OSAF Mission:The mission of the OSAF is stated this way:...
. Hertzfeld joined Google
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
in 2005, and in 2011 was the key designer of the Circles user interface in Google+
Google+
Google+ is a social networking and identity service, operated by Google Inc.The service was launched on June 28, 2011, in an invite-only "field testing" phase. The following day, existing users were allowed to invite friends who were over 18 years of age to the service to create their own accounts....
.
Apple Computer (1979–1984)
After graduating from Brown UniversityBrown University
Brown University is a private, Ivy League university located in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. Founded in 1764 prior to American independence from the British Empire as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations early in the reign of King George III ,...
with a Computer Science
Computer science
Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...
degree in 1975, Hertzfeld attended graduate school
Graduate school
A graduate school is a school that awards advanced academic degrees with the general requirement that students must have earned a previous undergraduate degree...
at the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
. In 1978, he bought an Apple II
Apple II
The Apple II is an 8-bit home computer, one of the first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products, designed primarily by Steve Wozniak, manufactured by Apple Computer and introduced in 1977...
computer and soon began developing software for it. He was hired by Apple Computer as a systems programmer in 1979 and developed the Apple SilenType
Apple SilenType
The Apple Silentype was Apple's first printer, announced in 1979 and released in March, 1980 US$599 , shortly after the Apple II Plus. The Silentype's firmware was written by Andy Hertzfeld, who later worked on the Apple Macintosh. The Silentype is a thermal printer, which uses a special paper and...
printer firmware
Firmware
In electronic systems and computing, firmware is a term often used to denote the fixed, usually rather small, programs and/or data structures that internally control various electronic devices...
and the first 80-column card for the Apple II. In the early 1980s, he invited his high school friend, artist Susan Kare
Susan Kare
Susan Kare is an artist and graphic designer who created many of the interface elements for the Apple Macintosh in the 1980s. She was also one of the original employees of NeXT , working as the Creative Director.-Background:Kare was born in Ithaca, New York and is the sister of aerospace engineer...
, to join Apple in order to help design what would become standard Macintosh icons.
Hertzfeld's business card at Apple listed his title as Software Wizard. He wrote large portions of the Macintosh's original system software including much of the burned-in ROM
Read-only memory
Read-only memory is a class of storage medium used in computers and other electronic devices. Data stored in ROM cannot be modified, or can be modified only slowly or with difficulty, so it is mainly used to distribute firmware .In its strictest sense, ROM refers only...
code, the User Interface Toolbox, and a number of innovative components now standard in many graphic user interfaces, like the Control Panel
Control panel (Mac OS)
Under Mac OS 9 and earlier, a control panel is a small application which enabled the user to modify software and hardware settings such as the sound volume and desktop pattern. Control panels differ from extensions in that they allow the user to specify options, whereas extensions provide the user...
and Scrapbook
Scrapbook (Mac OS)
Scrapbook under the Mac OS is a small Desk Accessory which enables users to store images, text and sound clippings. It was included in the original Macintosh system software in 1984 with the Macintosh 128k, and was included throughout every Mac OS revision until Mac OS 9.Starting in Scrapbook...
.
After a shakeup in the Apple II team and at Hertzfeld's request, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs
Steven Paul Jobs was an American businessman and inventor widely recognized as a charismatic pioneer of the personal computer revolution. He was co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Apple Inc...
added him to the nearly two-year-old Macintosh team in February 1981. Working for Bud Tribble
Bud Tribble
Guy L. "Bud" Tribble, MD, PhD, is Vice President of Software Technology at Apple Inc. Tribble served as the manager of the original Macintosh software development team where he helped to design the Mac OS and user interface. He was among the founders of NeXT, Inc., serving as NeXT's vice...
alongside Bill Atkinson
Bill Atkinson
Bill Atkinson is an American computer engineer and photographer. Atkinson worked at Apple Computer from 1978 to 1990. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of California, San Diego, where Apple Macintosh developer Jef Raskin was one of his professors...
and Burrell Smith
Burrell Smith
Burrell Carver Smith is an American engineer who, while working at Apple Computer, designed the motherboard for the original Macintosh. He was Apple employee #282, and was hired in February, 1979, initially as an Apple II service technician...
, Hertzfeld became a primary software architect of the Macintosh Operating System
Mac OS
Mac OS is a series of graphical user interface-based operating systems developed by Apple Inc. for their Macintosh line of computer systems. The Macintosh user experience is credited with popularizing the graphical user interface...
, which was considered revolutionary in its use of the graphical user interface
Graphical user interface
In computing, a graphical user interface is a type of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices with images rather than text commands. GUIs can be used in computers, hand-held devices such as MP3 players, portable media players or gaming devices, household appliances and...
(GUI) where Jef Raskin
Jef Raskin
Jef Raskin was an American human-computer interface expert best known for starting the Macintosh project for Apple in the late 1970s.-Early years and education:...
also made contributions.
After Apple (1984–present)
Since leaving Apple in 1984, Hertzfeld has co-founded three new companies — RadiusRadius (computer)
Radius was an American computer hardware firm founded in May 1986 by Burrell Smith, Andy Hertzfeld, Mike Boich, Matt Carter, Alain Rossmann and other members of the original Mac team specializing in Macintosh equipment....
(1986), General Magic
General Magic
General Magic was a company co-founded by Bill Atkinson, Andy Hertzfeld and Marc Porat that developed a new kind of handheld communications device they called a "personal intelligent communicator", which was a PDA precursor that stressed communications....
(1990) and Eazel
Eazel
Eazel was a software company based in Mountain View, California from 1999 to 2001.The enterprise was staffed with former employees of Apple Computer, Netscape, Be Inc., Linuxcare, Microsoft, Red Hat and Sun Microsystems, among others. Mike Boich was CEO; Bud Tribble was VP of Engineering; Andy...
(1999). At Eazel, he helped to create the Nautilus file manager for Linux's
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
GNOME
GNOME
GNOME is a desktop environment and graphical user interface that runs on top of a computer operating system. It is composed entirely of free and open source software...
desktop. He volunteered for OSAF in 2002 and 2003, writing early prototypes of Chandler
Chandler (PIM)
Chandler is a personal information management software suite described by its developers as a "Note-to-Self Organizer" designed for personal and small-group task management and calendaring. It is free software, previously released under the GNU General Public License, and now released under the...
, their information manager. In 1996, Hertzfeld was interviewed by Robert Cringely on the television documentary Triumph of the Nerds
Triumph of the Nerds
Triumph of the Nerds: The Rise of Accidental Empires is a documentary film written and hosted by Robert X. Cringely and produced for British television by Oregon Public Broadcasting. The title refers to the 1984 film, Revenge of the Nerds, and the documentary itself is based on Cringely's book...
, and was again interviewed by Cringely on NerdTV in 2005.
In early 2004, he started folklore.org, a web site devoted to collective storytelling that contains dozens of anecdote
Anecdote
An anecdote is a short and amusing or interesting story about a real incident or person. It may be as brief as the setting and provocation of a bon mot. An anecdote is always presented as based on a real incident involving actual persons, whether famous or not, usually in an identifiable place...
s about the development of the original Macintosh. The stories have been collected in an O'Reilly
O'Reilly Media
O'Reilly Media is an American media company established by Tim O'Reilly that publishes books and Web sites and produces conferences on computer technology topics...
book, Revolution in the Valley, published in December 2004. In August 2005, Hertzfeld joined Google
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
.
On June 28, 2011 Google
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
announced Google+
Google+
Google+ is a social networking and identity service, operated by Google Inc.The service was launched on June 28, 2011, in an invite-only "field testing" phase. The following day, existing users were allowed to invite friends who were over 18 years of age to the service to create their own accounts....
, its latest attempt at social networking. Hertzfeld was the key designer of the Google+
Google+
Google+ is a social networking and identity service, operated by Google Inc.The service was launched on June 28, 2011, in an invite-only "field testing" phase. The following day, existing users were allowed to invite friends who were over 18 years of age to the service to create their own accounts....
Circles component user interface, but not the entire project as has been mistakenly attributed.
Additional references
- Deutschman, Alan (2000). The Second Coming of Steve Jobs. Broadway Books. ISBN 0-7679-0433-8.
External links
- Differnet.com — Andy Hertzfeld's personal homepage; a collection of websites designed and/or hosted by him
- Revolution in the Valley Andy Hertzfeld's book about the development of the Macintosh.
- NerdTV interview (September 2005) with Hertzfeld by PBS's Robert X. CringelyRobert X. CringelyRobert X. Cringely is the pen name of both technology journalist Mark Stephens and a string of writers for a column in InfoWorld, the one-time weekly computer trade newspaper published by IDG.- Biography :...
, available in audio, video, and text transcript - ITConversations Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with Andy Hertzfeld