Andy Hertzfeld Biography

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Andy Hertzfeld is one of the many people who helped make the original Macintosh computer a reality, and later, Co-founded companies such as Radius (1986), General Magic (1990) and currently a software and UX designer at Google (working on Google plus). Andy Hertzfeld was born and raised in Philadelphia till he was 18 years of age. Hertzfeld’s experience with computers stems back to his days in high school, programming a TTY (teletypewriter) connected through a phone line to a GE time-sharing service in Valley Forge. Andy learned to program said machine in the coding languages BASIC and FORTRAN in 1969. Later in his life he left his childhood home in favor for the California lifestyle, or more specifically to go to grad school at UC Berkeley …show more content…

He explored the market’s front runners such as the Altairs and the IMSAIs but neither had his attention quite like the newest branch of the computer industry, The Apple 2. Andy was fascinated by the device exploring the strange new machine with almost religious zeal going as far as to change his current course of education to that of an assembly line rich programmer selling programs he created, that is when he first met Steve Jobs. Seeing the talent that Andy had, Jobs tried to recruit him. A year later in August of 1979, ten years after his first computer, Hertzfeld was working for …show more content…

However his greatest obstacle during this time was in December of 1981 when fellow employee Tribble left the team to finish medical school. This left Andy in charge of the team on top of his normal workload. According to Steve Capps (who joined in towards the beginning of 1983) Hertzfeld kept the software team focused despite the mounting pressure. He goes as far as to say that he was “…incredibly lucky to be in the right place at the right time to play a significant role in the development of a world changing product, redefining personal computing and delivering it to the rest of us. It was exciting to watch it take root and transform businesses and lives. And of course the best part of participating in designing the Mac was getting a great computer to use for the last 30 years.”
This did not last sadly as Andy left the Apple team in April of 1984 only five years after joining. Citing his reason for leaving being His manager at the time saying: “He took me for a walk to give me a verbal review. For the period of time I'd written most of the Macintosh system software he gave me a bad review because I was insubordinate to him. That disillusioned me. That took place in

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