that song stuck in your head

Also not a joke, this is my second best bedtime story. 

Jef Raskin was the human interface expert who lead the Macintosh project until Steve Jobs sacrificed him to the computer trolls. During his time at Apple, Raskin worked on a user interface idea called the “information appliance.”

In Raskin’s head, an information appliance would be a computing device with one single purpose—like a toaster makes toast, and a microwave oven heats up food. This gadget would be so easy to use that anyone would be able to use it right away, without any training whatsoever. It would have the right number of buttons, in the right position, with the right software. In fact, an information appliance—which was always networked—would be so easy to use that it would become invisible to the user, just part of his or her daily life.

Sound familiar? Not yet? Well, now consider this. Later in his life, Raskin realized that, while his idea was good, people couldn’t carry around one perfectly designed information appliance for every single task they can think of. Most people were already carrying a phone, a camera, a music player, a GPS and a computer. They weren’t going to carry any more gadgets with them.

He saw touch interfaces, however, and realized that maybe, if the buttons and information display were all in the software, he could create a morphing information appliance. Something that could do every single task imaginable perfectly, changing mode according to your objectives. Want to make a call? The whole screen would change to a phone, and buttons will appear to dial or select a contact. Want a music player or a GPS or a guitar tuner or a drawing pad or a camera or a calendar or a sound recorder or whatever task you can come up with? No problem: Just redraw the perfect interface on the screen, specially tailored for any of those tasks. So easy that people would instantly get it.

And that my dear, is how Jef Raskin and Steve Jobs did the dirty in 1981 and conceived the iPhone. And after 26 years of gestation, Steve Jobs birthed a cell phone and took all the credit for himself. 

THE END

If this story sounds familiar to you, you probably read it somewhere else. Like Steve Jobs, I also have a masters in plagiarosophy.