English Original
Jef Raskin wasn't the typical tech industry power broker. He was never a celebrity CEO, never a Midas-touch venture capitalist, and never conspicuously wealthy (although he was wealthy). Yet until his Feb. 26 death at 61, the creator of the Macintosh led the rallying cry for easy-to-use computers, leaving an indelible mark on Silicon Valley and helping to revolutionize the computer industry.
The tech world won't know the final impact of Raskin's work until several more months, perhaps years. At the time of his death, he was working on what he hoped would be his biggest mark yet: a new type of operating system called Archy. Friends and co-workers describe it as his longtime vision of easy-to-use computing brought to life.
Last December, funding from an unnamed international company came through at almost the same time his pancreatic cancer was discovered, and Raskin threw himself into completing the framework of the system in his final months.
Raskin was programming up until he could no longer type, about a week ago, says his 21-year-old son, Aza Raskin, who worked with him on Archy for six years. "Jef largely ignored being sick," he says. "He thought it was more important to keep his work going."
The first, and most famous, was his role in developing the Macintosh. Raskin was employee No. 31 at Apple before the launch of the Macintosh, iMac, iPod, or any of the other ubiquitous brands that have made the company famous. He headed the Macintosh project back when it consisted of just four or five people. Raskin's vision: to build an affordable computer designed for nontechy consumers -- a radical idea at a time when using a computer required memorizing complex codes and commands. Raskin's credits include "drag and drop" capability and introducing Apple's founders to much of the work at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center, which made such innovations as the mouse and the basic structure for the windows and folders still prevalent on operating systems today. And Raskin bestowed the project with the name Macintosh, after his favorite kind of apple.
Raskin then took time to do what he loved most: teaching and thinking. He studied how people used computers for 10 years, writing the book The Humane Interface.
About four years ago, still disgusted by the difficulty of computer use, he decided to give his vision another try. He founded the Raskin Center for Humane Interfaces, a nonprofit that's developing Archy.
Raskin had many passions: his family, music, art, and archery among them. But making computers simpler to use dominated his creative time. Friends quote words of wisdom he would use over and over again. He liked to say, "How much work does a user get done on a desktop?" The answer is none, that it's wasted time trying to find an application or file -- a problem he was trying to solve with Archy.
Raskin is survived by his children, Aza, Aviva, Aenea, and Rebecca, and his wife of 23 years, Linda Blum. The family hasn't announced a memorial service yet. No doubt he'll be missed, but his contributions to the Information Age will not be forgotten.
中文翻译
杰夫·拉斯金并非典型的科技行业权力掮客。他从未是明星CEO，也非点石成金的风险投资家，更不曾显赫地富有（尽管他确实富有）。然而，直到他于2月26日因胰腺癌去世，享年61岁，这位Macintosh的创造者始终倡导易用电脑的理念，在硅谷留下了不可磨灭的印记，并帮助彻底改变了计算机行业。
科技界或许需要数月甚至数年才能完全了解拉斯金工作的最终影响。在他去世时，他正致力于一个他希望成为其最大成就的项目：一个名为Archy的新型操作系统。朋友和同事将其描述为他长久以来易用计算愿景的实现。
去年12月，就在他被诊断出胰腺癌的同时，一家未具名的国际公司的资金到位，拉斯金在生命的最后几个月里全身心投入到完成该系统的框架设计中。
据与他共同开发Archy六年的21岁儿子阿扎·拉斯金说，拉斯金直到大约一周前无法打字时仍在编程。“杰夫很大程度上忽略了生病这件事，”他说，“他认为继续工作更重要。”
他第一个也是最著名的成就，是他在开发Macintosh中的角色。在Macintosh、iMac、iPod或任何其他使苹果公司闻名遐迩的品牌推出之前，拉斯金是苹果公司的第31号员工。他领导Macintosh项目时，团队只有四到五人。拉斯金的愿景是：为不懂技术的消费者设计一款价格实惠的电脑——在当时使用电脑需要记忆复杂代码和命令的时代，这是一个激进的想法。拉斯金的贡献包括“拖放”功能，并向苹果创始人介绍了施乐帕洛阿尔托研究中心的许多工作，该中心发明了鼠标以及至今仍在操作系统中普遍使用的窗口和文件夹基本结构。拉斯金还以他最喜欢的苹果品种为该项目命名为Macintosh。
此后，拉斯金花时间做他最喜欢的事：教学和思考。他花了10年时间研究人们如何使用电脑，并撰写了《人本界面》一书。
大约四年前，仍然对电脑使用的困难感到不满，他决定再次尝试实现他的愿景。他创立了非营利性的“拉斯金人本界面中心”，致力于开发Archy。
拉斯金有许多热爱的事物：他的家庭、音乐、艺术和射箭等等。但让电脑更易于使用占据了他大部分的创作时间。朋友们引用他反复说的一句智慧之言。他喜欢问：“用户在桌面上完成了多少实际工作？”答案是零，寻找应用程序或文件是浪费时间——这正是他试图通过Archy解决的问题。
拉斯金身后留下了他的孩子们——阿扎、阿维娃、阿涅亚和丽贝卡，以及结婚23年的妻子琳达·布卢姆。家人尚未宣布追悼会安排。毫无疑问，人们会怀念他，但他对信息时代的贡献将不会被遗忘。