CHI Conversations has posted a talk by Jef Raskin, designer of the first Macintosh, entitled Macintosh: Lessons Learned, Lessons Lost. The talk was recorded in 2004, about a year before Raskin’s death. Much of the talk is devoted to Macintosh history and how inaccurately it has been reported.
Toward the end of the talk, around 55 minutes in, Raskin compares Mac and Windows.
The Mac has gotten harder to use over the years. In fact, Windows has gotten easier. Now I can move back and forth, I can hardly notice the difference. Mac is just epsilon easier to use.
Raskin complains that software bloat has outpaced Moore’s Law, a contention that was verified here.
Jef Raskin. Photo by his son Aza.
I’ve been railing about software bloat for 10+ years. Developers have gotten sloppy with the massive amount of CPU and RAM available to them these days. I can remember running my mac off of the same 800k floppy. I booted from it, kept my apps and data on it! I realize that modern apps are much better and do much more, but I think it’s still pretty bad.