Jef Raskin, the designer of the first Macintosh, has died today at the age of 61. He suffered from pancreatic cancer. Raskin was one of the people who believed that easy-to-use computer interfaces were a requirement for computers to become more widespread.
Raskin joined Apple in 1978 as employee number 31 and headed the company's Macintosh development team from its founding in 1982. He named the project after his favorite type of apple, changing the spelling for copyright reasons.