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Andy Hertzfeld (born April 6, 1953) was a key member of the original Apple Macintosh development team during the 80s. He worked at Apple Computer from 1979 until 1984, and is a pioneer among software engineers. Since Apple, he co- founded three companies; Radius in 1986, General Magic in 1990 and Eazel in 1999. Hertzfeld joined Google in 2005 and has been working there since. From his early days at Apple, through the design, development and promotion of open source software with the Open Source Applications Foundation, his key contribution has been making computers easier and more fun to use.
Career
Apple Computer (1979—1984)
After graduating from Brown University 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.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 recently formed Macintosh team in February, 1981. Working for Bud Tribble alongside Bill Atkinson and Burrell Smith, Hertzfeld became one of the primary software architects of the Macintosh Operating System, which was considered revolutionary in its use of the graphical user interface (GUI).
After Apple (1984—Present)
Since leaving Apple in 1984, he has co-founded three new companies—Radius (1986), General Magic (1990) and Eazel (1999), where he helped to create the Nautilus file manager for the GNOME desktop on Linux. Now, with the Open Source Applications Foundation, Hertzfeld's work is directed toward promoting innovation and ease of use on the Linux platform. In 1996, Hertzfeld was interviewed by Robert Cringely on the television show Triumph of the Nerds, he 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 anecdotes 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. * (Site requires registration)
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 either designed and/or hosted by him
- Folklore.org — A collection of first-hand accounts of the early days of the Macintosh
- NerdTV interview (September 2005) with Hertzfeld by PBS's Robert X. Cringely, available in audio, video, and text transcript
- ITConversations - Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with Andy Hertzfeld
- NNDB - Andy Hertzfeld
Apple employees | Computer pioneers | Computer programmers | 1953 births | Living people | Google employees
"Andy Hertzfeld"