Andy Hertzfeld
Andy Hertzfeld
Andy Hertzfeldis an American computer scientist and inventor 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...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionInventor
Date of Birth6 April 1953
CountryUnited States of America
Working long hours being single helps because your time is yours. Once you have a family your time isn't all yours anymore. Most of the Mac team, we were in our mid-20's, most of us were single, and we were able to essentially devote our lives to it.
I started focusing all my time on being an Apple II hobbyist, dropped out of grad school to go to work for Apple in August of '79.
I left General Magic in 1996 to become an Internet hobbyist - got a T-1 line to my house. At one point I had all four food banks of the Bay Area hosted from this house here.
I knew the Apple II was great when I bought it, but as I dug into the details it just completely blew me away the creative artistic approach that the designers had taken.
But typically for a project like the Mac, the size we had was pretty good. And it has different stages. The team grows as you have to write manuals and do testing... though the Mac had no formal testing.
I did some products for the Apple II, most notably the first small low cost thermal printer, the Silent Type.
I developed some unique software to public it on the web that I call the Folklore Project.
As you know, Microsoft eventually kind of grabbed the gold ring out of Apple's hands, I guess.
Apple was our benefactor at starting General Magic, but about a year later decided they would rather BE General Magic and tried to make us blink out of existence... which we eventually did, but it took a few years.
A lot of people thought Steve Jobs was a CEO of Apple but he never was until he came back to Apple in 1997.
People who work on the user interface side need to have empathy as a key characteristic. But if you are writing device drivers you don't really need to understand humans so well.
But I think Steve's main contribution besides just the pure leadership is his passion for excellence. He's a perfectionist. Good enough isn't good enough. And also his creative spirit. You know he really, really wants to do something great.
I started working at Apple about 18 months after I bought my Apple II
I was a grad student at UC Berkeley when I bought my Apple II and it suddenly because a lot more interesting than school