Jef Raskin founded the Macintosh project at Apple, which led to the development of the Apple Mac and the popularisation of the graphical user-interface. He was Apple employee #31 and left the Macintosh team in mid-1981 after Steve Jobs took over the project. Jason Walsh: Before the Mac you were a professor of music. As a musician you presumably appreciate complex but specific tools for use by virtuosos. Your major contribution to computing, the Macintosh , seems to point in the other direction – simplicity of use. How do you square these facts? Jef Raskin: I was never a professor of music. I was, however, a music graduate student and later a professional musician. I’d love to simplify musical instruments; we can do better than the present awkward keyboard arrangement on pianos, for example. And I did design software that allowed me to compose and edit printed music much more easily than doing it by hand.…