Farewell, Jef

Jef Raskin passed away this weekend. He was the person who initially started the Macintosh project at Apple - though the project was ultimately wrestled away from him by Steve Jobs, the initial vision behind it was Jef's. His other major computing achievement was the Canon Cat - a late '80s text-based computer that was pretty faithful to Raskin's ideas.

The irony in this is that Raskin was very bitter about how his role in the Macintosh was glossed over and how Jobs pushed him aside, and he had very poor things to say about it over the years. And it turns out that Raskin died of pancreatic cancer - which is what Jobs had last year as well. Except Jobs had the more easily cured variety, and Raskin did not. It kind of sums up the whole way history has treated the two of them.