Abstract :
This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Apple Macintosh, the first widely used personal computer with a graphical user interface. Less well known is that the Mac was designed from the start as much for communicating as computing. In fact, in 1979, four years before the adoption of the Internet protocol, Jef Raskin, the man who designed the Macintosh, anticipated almost all of the contemporary uses of the Internet. He even proposed that Apple build an "Internet" of its own. However, Apple failed to capitalize on his vision and instead chose to implement a simpler network protocol suitable for connecting only a few dozen office computers and printers. IEEE Spectrum asked Raskin about the path not taken.
