Items12The creator’s order
  1. 1Steve WozniakSteve WozniakBorn 11 Aug 1950A 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…0i
  2. 2Jef RaskinJef RaskinBorn 9 Mar 1943The 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…0i
  3. 3Steve JobsSteve JobsBorn 24 Feb 1955Editing 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…0i
  4. 4Steve CaseSteve CaseBorn 21 Aug 1958Getting 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…0i
  5. 5Marc AndreessenMarc AndreessenBorn 9 Jul 1971The 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…0i
  6. 6Jeff HawkinsJeff HawkinsBorn 1 Jun 1957The 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,…0i
  7. 7Evan Williams (Internet entrepreneur)Evan Williams (Internet entrepreneur)Born 31 Mar 1972Publishing 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…0i
  8. 8Matt MullenwegMatt MullenwegBorn 11 Jan 1984Websites 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…0i
  9. 9Tony FadellTony FadellBorn 22 Mar 1969Thermostats 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.…0i
  10. 10Jan KoumJan KoumBorn 24 Feb 1976Messaging 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…0i