Canon Cat
Storia Informatica1 HN recommenders · 2016–2024
17K views · demo · evergreen · Uploaded 2014-03-03
A short Italian-language clip about the Canon Cat, a text-oriented personal computer from Canon designed by Jef Raskin, who started the Macintosh project. It shows the machine in use.
HN uses it as a quick look at what using a Canon Cat was actually like, in threads on Raskin, command interfaces and early Macintosh history.
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4 comments from Hacker News
Jef Raskin was passionate about user interface design, but had a completely different approach. The realization of Raskin's thinking is the Canon Cat.[1] Video demo: [2] It's a machine for text editing with the minimal number of keystrokes. There are special "Leap" keys, and a "Front" shift for extra characters on keytop fronts. There's no pointing device. It's an elegant concept, but nothing one would think of as a GUI today. It's more like something that would appeal to Markdown enthusiasts. [1] [LINK] [2] [VIDEO]
More on the Canon Cat: [VIDEO] [LINK] There are also a few previous HN discussions on this machine. EDIT: I just have to post this lovely scene from the original video separately. This is about human-computer interaction after all, isn't it! [LINK] Aren't we actually approaching an age where this kind of (almost-)single-purpose machines might be making a comeback? The focus this model seems to allow or enforce on the user feels kind of... healthy.
Right, The Humane Environment, following on his work with the Canon Cat and the Macintosh, before Steve Jobs took over the project and made it into a better Lisa. Later they renamed THE to the more googlable "Archy", a pun on RCHI, the Raskin Center for the Humane Interface, shortly before Jef's surprising death from pancreatic cancer. Jef's son Aza unfortunately hasn't kept Jef's stuff online, and he also invented infinite scroll websites. Nice guy though. LEAP was Emacs incremental-search, but on the Cat the idea was to use it to replace all cursor movement except "creep" left and right arrows. Thanks for the video! I had never seen it. YT suggested [VIDEO] , another Cat video. [LINK] shows a brief clip of the Forth interpreter.
Wow, of course.. didn't think of video. That video is great, a VCR tape collection of corporate demos by Jef Raskin's company, apparently for investors and resellers. YouTube suggested a short, informal demo posted only 10 years ago, about 6 minutes: [VIDEO] A bit less familiar with it so a quick and dirty video I suppose but a great demonstration of what it would be like to use one now. Essential history! Thanks!