Andy Hertzfeld | |
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.jpg) Hertzfeld in 1985 | |
| Born | Andrew Jay Hertzfeld (1953-04-06)April 6, 1953 (age 72) Philadelphia,Pennsylvania, U.S. |
| Alma mater | |
| Occupation | Software engineer |
| Known for | co-creation of originalMacintosh computer |
| Spouse | |
Andrew Jay Hertzfeld (born April 6, 1953) is an Americansoftware engineer who was a member ofApple Computer'soriginal Macintosh development team during the 1980s. After buying anApple II in January 1978, he went to work for Apple Computer from August 1979 until March 1984, where he was adesigner for the Macintosh system software.
Since leaving Apple, Hertzfeld has co-founded three companies:Radius in 1986,General Magic in 1990, andEazel in 1999. In 2002, he helpedMitch Kapor promoteopen-source software with theOpen Source Applications Foundation.
Hertzfeld worked atGoogle from 2005 to 2013, where, in 2011, he was the key designer of the Circlesuser interface inGoogle+.
After graduating fromBrown University with acomputer science degree in 1975, Hertzfeld attendedgraduate school at theUniversity of California, Berkeley. In 1978, he bought anApple II computer and soon began developing software for it. He went on to write forCall-A.P.P.L.E. andDr. Dobb's Journal and soon came to the attention of Apple Computer.[1]
He was hired by Apple Computer as a systems programmer in 1979 and developed theApple Silentype printerfirmware and wrote the firmware[2] for theSup'R'Terminal, the first 80-column card for the Apple II. In the early 1980s, he invited his high school friend, artistSusan Kare, to join Apple in order to help design what would become standard Macintosh icons.[3]
With the first Macintosh, Hertzfeld wrote an icon editor and font editor so that Susan Kare could design the symbols used in the operating system.[4]
Hertzfeld was a member of the design team for theApple Macintosh, which was conceived byhuman–computer interface expertJef Raskin.[5][6] After a shakeup in the Apple II team and Apple co-founderSteve Wozniak's brief departure from the company due to a plane crash,[7] co-founderSteve Jobs took control of the nearly two-year-old Macintosh team in February 1981 and added Hertzfeld to it at his request. Working forBud Tribble alongsideBill Atkinson andBurrell Smith, Hertzfeld became a primarysoftware architect of theMacintosh Operating System, which was considered revolutionary in its use of thegraphical user interface (GUI) where Raskin also made contributions.
Hertzfeld's business card at Apple listed his title asSoftware Wizard.[8] He wrote large portions of the Macintosh's original system software, including much of theROM code, the User Interface Toolbox, and a number of innovative components now standard in many graphic user interfaces, like theControl Panel andScrapbook.[1][9]
After leaving Apple in 1984, Hertzfeld co-founded three new companies:Radius (1986),General Magic (1990), andEazel (1999).[9] At Eazel, he helped to create theNautilus file manager forLinux'sGNOME desktop.[10] He volunteered for theOpen Source Applications Foundation in 2002 and 2003, writing early prototypes ofChandler, their information manager. In 1996, Hertzfeld was interviewed byRobert X. Cringely on the television documentaryTriumph of the Nerds,[11] and was again interviewed by Cringely on NerdTV in 2005.[12]
In early 2004, he startedfolklore.org, a Web site devoted to collective storytelling that contains dozens of anecdotes about the development of theoriginal Macintosh. The stories have been collected in anO'Reilly book,Revolution in the Valley, published in December 2004.[1]
In August 2005, Hertzfeld joinedGoogle.[13] On June 28, 2011,Google announcedGoogle+, its latest attempt at social networking. Hertzfeld was the key designer of the Google+ Circles interface.[14][15] He also worked onPicasa, and Gmail's profile image selector. He retired from Google in July 2013.[16]
As of October 2018, he is an investor of the startup Spatial.[17]
Hertzfeld was portrayed byElden Henson in the 2013 filmJobs.[18] He was later played by actorMichael Stuhlbarg in the 2015 filmSteve Jobs.[19] Hertzfeld stated "almost nothing in it is how it really happened" about theSteve Jobs film, and that the film ultimately was not aiming for realism.[20]
Hertzfeld born into aJewish family and attendedHarriton High School.[21] He and his wife live inPalo Alto, California.[20]
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