Founders Who Made Complex Technology Easier to Use

A computer you could just plug in. Wozniak designed the Apple I and then the Apple II of 1977, a home computer that came in a case with a keyboard, colour graphics and BASIC built in, so buyers did not need to assemble or solder anything. His elegant circuit design kept the parts count low and the price within reach. He co-founded Apple with Steve Jobs, who handled the business, and left full-time work there in 1985.

The Macintosh idea. Raskin, a human-interface specialist, started Apple's Macintosh project in 1979 with the goal of a cheap computer anyone could use without a manual. Jobs later took over and redirected it towards the graphical interface inspired by Xerox PARC, but Raskin's insistence on consistency and ease of learning shaped it. He later founded Information Appliance and wrote The Humane Interface. He died in 2005.

Editing out the controls. Jobs pushed the Macintosh team to build a mouse-driven graphical computer for ordinary buyers in 1984, and on his return to Apple oversaw the iPod's click wheel and the iPhone's multi-touch screen in 2007, each removing buttons and settings most people never used. His contribution was product judgement more than engineering, relying on teams led by people such as Tony Fadell and Jony Ive. The price was a closed system controlled by Apple. He died in 2011.

Getting families online. Case helped build America Online from a gaming service into the friendliest way to get online in the early 1990s, posting installation discs to millions of homes and bundling dial-up access, email, chat rooms and news behind one simple menu. It hid modems, servers and settings from new users. The walled garden also kept many people inside AOL's own content rather than the open web, and the 2000 Time Warner merger was a famous failure.

The graphical web browser. Andreessen, as a student at the University of Illinois's NCSA, co-wrote Mosaic with Eric Bina in 1993, which showed images alongside text and ran easily on ordinary computers, making Tim Berners-Lee's web approachable. In 1994 he co-founded Netscape with Jim Clark, whose Navigator brought the web to millions before Microsoft's bundled Internet Explorer overwhelmed it. He later became a prominent venture investor.

The handheld that worked. Hawkins, who carried a block of wood in his pocket to test the size, designed the PalmPilot of 1996 to do a few things fast: diary, contacts and notes, synced to a computer at the press of a button. Where earlier handhelds tried to read normal handwriting and failed, Palm's Graffiti alphabet asked users to learn simplified letters. He co-founded Palm and Handspring with chief executive Donna Dubinsky.

Publishing without HTML. Williams co-founded Pyra Labs in 1999, whose Blogger let anyone publish a dated, frequently updated web page by typing into a box, at a time when making a website meant writing HTML and uploading files. Google bought it in 2003. He went on to co-found Twitter and then Medium, each a further simplification of publishing, with all the moderation problems that easy publishing brings.

Websites for everyone, openly licensed. Mullenweg co-created WordPress with Mike Little in 2003 by forking an abandoned blogging tool, b2, and kept it free and open source, with one-click installs and themes that let non-programmers run full websites. It came to power a large share of the web. He founded Automattic to run WordPress.com, and his 2024 legal fight with hosting firm WP Engine raised questions about one person's influence over an open project.

Thermostats people could actually set. Fadell, who led Apple's iPod engineering, co-founded Nest Labs in 2010 with Matt Rogers to replace confusing programmable thermostats with one that learned household routines and could be adjusted by turning a ring or from a phone. Google bought Nest in 2014. The convenience came with data collection about home life and dependence on the company's servers, as some owners found when older Nest devices lost support.

Messaging without accounts or fees. Koum, who emigrated from Ukraine as a teenager, co-founded WhatsApp with Brian Acton in 2009, using a phone number as the identity so there was no username or password, and sending messages over data rather than paid texts. A tiny team kept it reliable on cheap phones worldwide, and in 2016 it added end-to-end encryption. Both founders left Facebook, which had bought it in 2014, partly over plans to make money from it.

Video calls that just join. Yuan, an engineer who had worked on Cisco's WebEx, founded Zoom in 2011 after WebEx would not rebuild its product, aiming for video meetings that start with one click and stay stable on poor connections. During the 2020 lockdowns it became a household word. Its rapid growth exposed security and privacy weaknesses, such as uninvited intruders in meetings, which the company then had to fix. He remains chief executive.

Design without design software training. Perkins, teaching students in Perth how to use desktop design programs, saw how long it took them to learn the basics, and in 2013 co-founded Canva with Cliff Obrecht and Cameron Adams, a browser tool built on drag-and-drop templates. It let teachers, small businesses and charities make presentable posters and slides. Professional designers note it trades fine control for speed.