In almost every history of the Macintosh -- particularly brief ones -- Jef Raskin is mentioned as the machine's creator. While he came up with the name, for which we will be forever grateful, the man's original vision isn't realized in the Mac at all. For that, check out a Canon Cat, a text-based Mac predecessor that is much more of an information appliance than a general-purpose computer. What defined the original Mac? Was it the case? That was based on a design by Jerry Oyama, Jerry Mannock and Steve Jobs, who micromanaged its revisions. The hardware? Burrell Smith. The software? Bud Tribble, Andy Hertzfeld, Bill Atkinson and Bruce Horn. The mouse-driven GUI? Jobs, Susan Kare, Horn, Hertzfeld and Atkinson. When Jobs took over the Mac, its ambitions and vision changed entirely. The only trace of Raskin in the Mac is his signature on the inside of the case molding. Tragically, Raskin died in 2005, just before Archy, the multiplatform version of his humane interface, got out of alpha testing. Raskin was a visionary, but his ideas are yet to be fully implemented.

Photo: AP/Aza Raskin