raskincenter.org is an editorial reference dedicated to providing commentary on the published work, unpublished writings, and intellectual legacy of Jef Raskin (1943–2005), the computer scientist who conceived the Macintosh project at Apple, designed the Canon Cat, and spent his career developing a rigorous theory of humane interface design.

This site is not affiliated with Apple Inc., the Raskin family, or any successor organization to the Raskin Center for Humane Interfaces. It exists because Raskin’s ideas deserve a stable, well-maintained home on the web — and because the historical record of his contributions to computing has been distorted, simplified, and sometimes erased by the interests of the institutions he worked with and against.

Our editorial approach is editorial and corrective. Where the record is accurate, we summarize it. Where it has been distorted, we document what the primary sources actually say — citing those sources rather than reproducing them. Raskin kept extensive notes, wrote prolifically, and was precise about credit and causality. We take that precision seriously.

The site covers the full range of Raskin’s interests: not just his computing work, but his parallel careers in music, aviation, mathematics, and environmental writing. He was a figure whose intellectual range is poorly served by reducing him to “the guy who named the Mac.”

Editorial scope

New editorial work is published rarely and deliberately. The site publishes at most one new article per month, and only on topics that fall within the Raskin–Apple–humane-interfaces thread: Macintosh-project history, Raskin’s published and unpublished writing, the Raskin Center for Humane Interfaces, the Canon Cat, ZUIs and modeless computing, and the application of Raskin’s principles to contemporary interface design. The site does not cover general Apple news, general HCI commentary disconnected from Raskin’s work, or topics outside the documented historical record.

The bulk of the site’s value is in providing stable editorial commentary at the URLs the historical record points to, linking out to authoritative external sources that hold the primary-source material. The editorial cadence is intentionally low.