Andy Hertzfeld helped Burrell Smith start Radius in 1986, which made monitors, graphics accelerators and CPU upgrade boards for the Macintosh. He also continued to make improvements to Apple’s Macintosh OS which he would sell back to Apple. Hertzfeld then joined Hartmut Esslinger (frog design founder) at Frox, a digital stereo startup. In 1990 he cofounded General Magic with Bill Atkinson and Marc Porat, an Apple spin-off building a handheld mobile platform. In 1999 he cofounded Eazel with Mike Boich and Bart Decrem to build Nautilus, a GNOME-based Linux GUI, with system-management as a subscription service. Eazel’s funding dried up with the dot-com crash, and folded. In 2005 Hertzfeld joined Google, where for 8 years he worked on projects including Google Photos, Google News, Google Plus, and Google Glass.
Interviewed by Hansen Hsu on 2025-09-24
© Computer History Museum
Note: Transcripts represent what was said in the interview. However, to enhance meaning or add clarification, interviewees have the opportunity to modify this text afterward. This may result in discrepancies between the transcript and the video. Please refer to the transcript for further information – http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/300000221
Catalog number: 300000222
Acquisition number: 2025.0173
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