Andy Hertzfeld

Steve Wozniak and Andy Hertzfeld (right) at the Apple Computer Users Group Meeting (1985)

Andy Hertzfeld (born April 6, 1953 in Philadelphia , Pennsylvania ) is an American software developer . As a leading member of the original Apple development teams he has since the dawn of Apple Computer , both in the design and development through support of open source - software in the Open Source Applications Foundation participated, one of the computer easier and better to use .

Hertzfeld's Apple business card was called "Software Wizard," and he wrote much of the Macintosh system software, including most of the ROM code, the User Interface Toolbox, and a number of innovative components that are found in many today GUIs are standard, for example the control panel.

Life

Apple Silentype thermal printer; opened with paper roll

After graduating from Brown University in 1975 in Computer Science, Hertzfeld attended graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley . In 1978 he bought an Apple II computer and soon after began developing software. He was employed by Apple in 1979 as a system programmer and developed the silent type printer and the first 80-character card for the Apple II.

After the Apple II team had been redesigned, Hertzfeld was asked to join the newly founded Macintosh team in February 1981 by Apple co-founder Steve Jobs . There he worked for Bud Tribble and side by side with Bill Atkinson and Burrell Smith . Hertzfeld became one of the leading software architects of the Mac OS , which was considered revolutionary because of its graphical user interface .

Since leaving Apple in 1984, he has co-founded three new companies: Radius (1986), General Magic (1990) and Eazel (1999), where he helped develop the Nautilus file manager for the GNOME environment on Linux . Innovation and ease of use are also important to him under Linux.

In early 2004, he opened folklore.org , a website that contains dozens of anecdotes about the development of the first Macintosh. The stories were published in December 2004 under the title Revolution in the Valley .

Hertzfeld has been working for Google since August 2005 , where he is primarily responsible for the Google+ user interface .

Fonts

• Revolution in the Valley - The Insanely Great Story of How the Mac Was Made . O'Reilly Associates 2004. ISBN 0-596-00719-1

Web links

• Differet.com - Andy Hertzfeld's personal homepage, a collection of websites that he either designed or hosted
• Folklore.org - A collection of first hand stories about the early days of the Macintosh .
• macnotes.de - German interview with Andy Hertzfeld on the 25th anniversary of the Macintosh .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Andy Hertzfeld: Software Wizard. Retrieved February 15, 2016 . 
2. ^ Rene Pickhardt: First Impressions of Google+ Usability Reminding of Apple. (No longer available online.) June 30, 2011, archived from the original on July 4, 2011 ; accessed on June 30, 2011 (English). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.