Jef Raskin is the human-computer interface expert who began the Macintosh project for Apple Computer and is the author of The Humane Interface, which in large part builds on his earlier work with the Canon Cat. Raskin received a B.S. Mathematics and B.A. in Philosophy from the State University of New York and an M.S. in Computer Science from the Pennsylvania State University. As an assistant professor at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), he taught classes ranging from computer science to photography.

Raskin joined Apple in January 1978 as the 31st employee. He later hired his former student Bill Atkinson from UCSD to work at Apple, and began the Macintosh project.

At the beginning of the new millenium Raskin undertook the building of a system incarnating his concepts of the humane interface, by using Open source elements within his rendition of a ZUI or Zooming User Interface.

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