Andy Hertzfeld Biography
Andy Hertzfeld is a software engineer and innovator from the United States who was a member of the original Apple Macintosh development team in the 1980s. He helped Mitch Kapor promote open-source software by co-founding three companies: Radius, General Magic, and Eazel. From 2005 to 2013, he worked at Google, where he was a key designer of the Circles user interface in Google+.
How old is Andy Hertzfeld? – Age
He is 69 years old as of 6 April 2022. He was born in 1953 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. His real name is Andrew Jay Hertzfeld.
Andy Hertzfeld Education
Hertzfeld attended graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley after graduating from Brown University with a computer science degree in 1975.
Andy Hertzfeld Wife
He is married to Joyce McClure. The couple married in 1998. Hertzfeld and his wife are residents of Palo Alto, California.
How rich is Andy Hertzfeld? – Net Worth
He has an estimated net worth of $50 Million.
Andy Hertzfeld Book
In early 2004, he launched folklore.org, a Web site dedicated to collective storytelling that includes dozens of anecdotes about the creation of the original Macintosh. The stories were collected in an O’Reilly book called Revolution in the Valley, which was released in December 2004.
Andy Hertzfeld Interview
Hertzfeld was interviewed by Robert Cringely for the television documentary Triumph of the Nerds in 1996, and again for NerdTV in 2005.
Andy Hertzfeld Apple
He purchased an Apple II computer in 1978 and quickly began developing software for it. He went on to write for Call-A.P.P.L.E. and Dr. Dobb’s Journal, and he was soon noticed by Apple Computer.
In 1979, he was hired as a systems programmer by Apple Computer, where he developed the Apple Silentype printer firmware and wrote the firmware for the Sup’R’Terminal, the first 80-column card for the Apple II. He invited his high school friend, artist Susan Kare, to join Apple in the early 1980s to help design what would become standard Macintosh icons. Hertzfeld wrote an icon editor and font editor for the first Macintosh so that Susan Kare could design the operating system’s symbols.
Hertzfeld worked on Apple’s Macintosh design team. Following a reorganization of the Apple II team and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak’s brief departure from the company due to a plane crash, co-founder Steve Jobs took over the nearly two-year-old Macintosh team in February 1981 and added Hertzfeld at his request. Working for Bud Tribble alongside Bill Atkinson and Burrell Smith, Hertzfeld became a primary software architect of the Macintosh Operating System, which was regarded as revolutionary in its use of the graphical user interface (GUI), and to which Jef Raskin also contributed.
Hertzfeld’s title on his Apple business card was Software Wizard. He wrote much of the original system software for the Macintosh, including much of the ROM code, the User Interface Toolbox, and a number of innovative components that are now standard in many graphic user interfaces, such as the Control Panel and Scrapbook.
Andy Hertzfeld Google
Hertzfeld joined Google in August 2005. Google+, the company’s latest attempt at social networking, was announced on June 28, 2011. Hertzfeld was a key contributor to the Google+ Circles interface. He also contributed to Picasa and the Gmail profile image selector. He left Google in July of 2013. He is an investor in the startup Spatial as of October 2018.
Andy Hertzfeld General Magic
He is the co founder of General Magic. The company, based in Mountain View, California, pioneered “USB, software modems, small touchscreens, touchscreen controller ICs, ASICs, multimedia email, networked games, streaming TV, and early e-commerce concepts.” Magic Cap, the operating system used by the Motorola Envoy and Sony’s Magic Link PDA in 1994, was General Magic’s main product. It also debuted Telescript, a programming language. Following its announcement in 2002 that it would cease operations, it was liquidated in 2004 with Paul Allen purchasing the majority of its patents.
The Paradigm project began in 1989 at Apple Computer, when Marc Porat persuaded John Sculley that the next generation of computing would necessitate collaboration among computer, communications, and consumer electronics companies. Marc Porat, Andy Hertzfeld, and Bill Atkinson founded General Magic in Mountain View, California, in 1990, with Apple taking a minority stake. Susan Kare, Joanna Hoffman, hardware pioneer Dr. Wendell Sander, Walt Broedner and Megan Smith, and the majority of Apple’s System 7 team soon joined Porat, Hertzfeld, and Atkinson at General Magic. Porat sent Sculley a note requesting that the product be beautiful and provide the kind of personal satisfaction that a fine piece of jewelry does.