Andy Hertzfeld (born April 6, 1953) was a key member of the original Apple Macintosh development team during the 1980s. After buying an Apple II in January 1978, he went to work for Apple Computer from August 1979 until March 1984, where he was a key designer of the Macintosh system software. Since leaving Apple, he has co-founded three companies: Radius in 1986, General Magic in 1990 and Eazel in 1999. Hertzfeld joined Google in 2005 and has been working there since. From his early days at Apple, through the design, development and promotion of open source software with the Open Source Applications Foundation, his key contribution has been making computers easier and more fun to use.

Career

Apple Computer (1979–1984)

Part of the original Macintosh design team, as seen on the cover of Revolution in the Valley.Left to right: George Crow, Joanna Hoffman, Burrell Smith, Andy Hertzfeld, Bill Atkinson, Jerry Manock.

After graduating from Brown University with a Computer Science degree in 1975, Hertzfeld attended graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1978, he bought an Apple II computer and soon began developing software for it. He was hired by Apple Computer as a systems programmer in 1979 and developed the Apple SilenType printer firmware and the first 80-column card for the Apple II. In the early 1980s, he invited his high school friend, artist Susan Kare, to join Apple in order to help design what would become standard Macintosh icons.

Hertzfeld's business card at Apple listed his title as Software Wizard. He wrote large portions of the Macintosh's original system software including much of the burned-in ROM code, the User Interface Toolbox, and a number of innovative components now standard in many graphic user interfaces, like the Control Panel and Scrapbook.

After a shakeup in the Apple II team and at Hertzfeld's request, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs added him to the newly formed Macintosh team in February, 1981. Working for Bud Tribble alongside Bill Atkinson and Burrell Smith, Hertzfeld became a primary software architect of the Macintosh Operating System, which was considered revolutionary in its use of the graphical user interface (GUI) where Jef Raskin also made significant contributions.

After Apple (1984–present)

Since leaving Apple in 1984, Hertzfeld has co-founded three new companies - Radius (1986), General Magic (1990) and Eazel (1999). At Eazel, he helped to create the Nautilus file manager for Linux's GNOME desktop. He volunteered for OSAF in 2002 and 2003, writing early prototypes of their information manager. In 1996, Hertzfeld was interviewed by Robert Cringely on the television show Triumph of the Nerds, and was again interviewed by Cringely on NerdTV in 2005.

In early 2004, he started folklore.org, a web site devoted to collective storytelling that contains dozens of anecdotes about the development of the original Macintosh. The stories have been collected in an O'Reilly book, Revolution in the Valley, published in December 2004. In August 2005, Hertzfeld joined Google.