A Spiritual Heir to the Macintosh by Ezra Shapiro from the October 1987 issue of Byte The Canon Cat may be Jef Raskin’s long-sought “information appliance” Editor’s note: The following is a BYTE product preview. It is not a review. We provide an advance look at this new product because we feel it is significant. The Canon Cat is being advertised as a piece of office equipment-the next step beyond the memory typewriter-but there’s some real computer muscle under this feline’s skin.

from the November 1985 issue of MicroTimes magazine Jef Raskin believes that computers should be easy to use. How easy? Well, he calls his company Information Appliance, and favors computers as hassle-free as toasters. By contrast, Raskin says, the current state of the industry more closely resembles a scenario conjured up by Douglas Adams (of Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy fame). “Adams was describing some imaginary product of the future, and he said that people get such a sense of achievement from having mastered it that they forget how useless it is.