The computer is more personal than ever, the user experience almost infinitely customisable. Larry Tesler, who died at 74 last week, was the icon behind the icon and deserves more than a little credit for the simplicity with which computing has become so personal and intimate a part of our lives.
Tesler, who has worked with Xerox, Apple and Amazon, among other tech giants, had a simple philosophy — “no modes”. In the early history of computing, modes allowed users to switch from one function to another (like, say, a caps lock key). This increased mode or function errors (like, say, leaving the caps lock key on) and more importantly, made computing a specialists’ game. Tesler was staunchly against modes, running against the current of the IT industry in the 1960s and ‘70s. His most famous innovations — “cut-copy-paste” and “find-and-replace”. Steve Jobs hired Tesler for Apple when he saw the latter use a mouse to point and click at icons on a prototype — earlier, every action/function had to turn into a laborious typing exercise.
