Jef Raskin Quotes

I have always liked Steve personally, but I have found it impossible to work for him and retain much enjoyment in my work.

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.

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.

While Mr. Jobs's stated positions on management techniques are all quite noble and worthy, in practice he is a dreadful manager.

By choosing to focus on computers rather than the tasks we wanted done, we inherited much of the baggage that had accumulated around earlier generations of computers. It is more a matter of style and operating systems that need elaborate user interfaces to support huge application programs. These structures demand ever larger memories and complex peripherals. It's as if we had asked for a bit of part-time help and were given a bureaucracy.

Users do not care about what is inside the box, as long as the box does what they need done.

Right now, computers, which are supposed to be our servant, are oppressing us.

He is a prime example of a manager who takes the credit for his optimistic schedules and then blames the workers when deadlines are not met.

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.

Jobs regularly misses appointments. This is so well-known as to be almost a running joke. It's not funny, hurts Apple's image when he does it to outsiders, and wastes our time and energy when it is done to another employee.

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.

He does not give credit where due. This is an especially damaging trait in a company that depends on innovation for its surival.

A computer shall not waste your time or require you to do more work than is strictly necessary.

Very often, when told of a new idea, he will immediately attack it and say that it is worthless or even stupid, and tell you that it was a waste of time to work on it. This alone is bad management, but if the idea was a good one he will soon be telling people about it as though it was his own.

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.