After graduating from Brown University with a computer science degree in 1975, Hertzfeld attended graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1978, he bought an Apple II computer and soon began developing software for it. He went on to write for Call A.P.P.L.E. and Dr. Dobb's and soon came to the attention of Apple Computer. He was hired by Apple Computer as a systems programmer in 1979 and developed the Apple SilenType printer firmware and wrote the firmware for the Sup'R'Terminal, the first 80-column card for the Apple II. In the early 1980s, he invited his high school friend, artist Susan Kare, to join Apple in order to help design what would become standard Macintosh icons. With the first Macintosh, Hertzfeld wrote an icon editor and font editor so that Susan Kare could design the symbols used in the operating system. Hertzfeld was a member of the Apple Macintosh design team. After a shakeup in the Apple II team and at Hertzfeld's request, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs added him to the nearly two-year-old Macintosh team in February 1981. Working for Bud Tribble alongside Bill Atkinson and Burrell Smith, Hertzfeld became a primary software architect of the Macintosh Operating System, which was considered revolutionary in its use of the graphical user interface where Jef Raskin also made contributions. Hertzfeld's business card at Apple listed his title as Software Wizard. He wrote large portions of the Macintosh's original system software, including much of the ROM code, the User Interface Toolbox, and a number of innovative components now standard in many graphic user interfaces, like the Control Panel and Scrapbook. Hertzfeld's book Revolution in the Valley: The Insanely Great Story of How the Mac Was Made chronicles the development of the Macintosh and its launch.
After Apple (1984–present)
Since leaving Apple in 1984, Hertzfeld has co-founded three new companies – Radius, General Magic, and Eazel. At Eazel, he helped to create the Nautilus file manager for Linux's GNOME desktop. He volunteered for the Open Source Applications Foundation in 2002 and 2003, writing early prototypes of Chandler, their information manager. In 1996, Hertzfeld was interviewed by Robert Cringelyon the television documentary Triumph of the Nerds, and was again interviewed by Cringely on NerdTV in 2005. In early 2004, he started , a Web site devoted to collective storytelling that contains dozens of anecdotes about the development of the original Macintosh. The stories have been collected in an O'Reilly book, Revolution in the Valley, published in December 2004. In August 2005, Hertzfeld joined Google. On June 28, 2011, Google announced Google+, its latest attempt at social networking. Hertzfeld was the key designer of the Google+ Circles component user interface, but not the entire project as has been mistakenly claimed. He also worked on Picasa, and Gmail's profile image selector. He retired from Google in July 2013. As of October 2018, he is an investor of the startup Spatial.
Portrayals
Hertzfeld was portrayed by Elden Henson in the 2013 film Jobs,. He was later played by actor Michael Stuhlbarg in the 2015 film Steve Jobs. Hertzfeld stated "almost nothing in it is like it really happened" about the Steve Jobs film, but ultimately said the film wasn't aiming for realism.
