Andy Hertzfeld was a key member of the original Apple Macintosh development team, and some would consider him a pioneer among software engineers. From the early days of Apple Computer, 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.

Hertzfeld's Apple Computer business cards listed his title as "Software Wizard", and he wrote large portions of the computer'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 Control Panel and Scrapbook (or clipboard).

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 Silentype printer and the first 80-column card for the Apple II.

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 and 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).

Since leaving Apple in 1984, he has co-founded three new companies—Radius (1986), General Magic (1990) and Eazel (1999), where he created 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.

His latest project is 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.

Reference

• Andy Hertzfeld (2004). Revolution in The Valley. O'Reilly. ISBN 0596007191

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.