Photo: Tony Wills / CC BY-SA 3.0 (source: Wikimedia Commons)
My Take
Andy Hertzfeld sits at the headwaters of the screens we now touch without thinking. He bought an Apple II in 1978, walked into Apple, and became one of the engineers who wrote the original Macintosh system software. We treat the graphical interface as natural, but someone had to invent it line by line, and he was in that room. I am especially grateful he later documented those early days at folklore.org, an act of generosity rare among engineers. Jobs gets the legend, but I refuse to forget the hands that actually built the thing, and Hertzfeld's were among the most important.
Overview
Andrew Jay Hertzfeld (born April 6, 1953) is an American software engineer who was a member of Apple Computer's original 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 designer for the Macintosh system software.
Summary adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
1. Profile
- Name (English)
- Andy Hertzfeld
- Name (Japanese)
- アンディ・ハーツフェルド
- Reading
- あんでぃ・はーつふぇるど
- Born
- April 6, 1953 (age 73)
- Zodiac / Chinese zodiac
- Aries / Snake
- Origin
- Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
- Blood type
- Private
- Height
- Private
- Agency
- Private
- Occupation
- computer engineer / software developer
2. Background
- Elementary school
- Private
- Junior high
- Private
- High school
- Harriton High School
- University
- Brown University
3. Relationships
- Spouse
- Private
- Children
- Private
- Parents
- Private
- Siblings
- Private
4. Personality
Motto
Private
6. Links
More people from United States →
7. About this entry
Tags
- Last updated
- 2026-06-02
Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public items are marked "Private / Unknown". English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.