Apple’s LaserWriter Changed Everything

<p>The passing of&nbsp;<strong>Dr. John Warnock</strong>, co-founder of&nbsp;<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Systems_Inc." rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">Adobe Systems Inc.</a>&nbsp;and co-inventor of&nbsp;<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpress" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">Interpress</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PostScript" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">PostScript</a>, and the&nbsp;<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDF" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">PDF file format</a>&nbsp;has generated inspiring tributes from news organizations all over the world. As one of the countless people who benefited from Dr. Warnock&rsquo;s efforts, I&rsquo;d like to share the story of how his work contributed to the creation of the Apple LaserWriter.</p> <h2><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/24/technology/john-warnock-dead.html?source=post_page-----694a6c42e608--------------------------------" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">John Warnock, Inventor of the PDF, Dies at 82</a></h2> <h3><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/24/technology/john-warnock-dead.html?source=post_page-----694a6c42e608--------------------------------" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">As a founder of Adobe Systems, he oversaw the development of software and systems that made modern personal computing&hellip;</a></h3> <p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/24/technology/john-warnock-dead.html?source=post_page-----694a6c42e608--------------------------------" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">www.nytimes.com</a></p> <p>The impetus for this story was&nbsp;<strong>John Gruber</strong>&rsquo;s tribute to Dr. Warnock on his&nbsp;<a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2023/08/26/john-warnock-rip" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">Daring Fireball</a>&nbsp;technology blog:</p> <blockquote> <p>Warnock and Geschke understood what Steve Jobs often preached: technology alone was not enough. PostScript was &mdash;&nbsp;<a href="https://www.adobe.com/products/postscript.html" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">and remains</a>! &mdash; excellent technology. But it was not a product. The LaserWriter was a product. You hooked it up, went to File &rarr; Print in&nbsp;<em>any</em>&nbsp;application, and you got professional-grade 300 DPI output with no technical expertise necessary. It was as easy to print high-quality output on a LaserPrinter as it was to print junk output on a slow, noisy dot-matrix printer.&nbsp;<em>That</em>&nbsp;was a product.</p> </blockquote> <p>While Warnock&rsquo;s PostScript technology was key to the success of the LaserWriter it was Jobs who turned Warnock&rsquo;s tech into a breakthrough product.&nbsp;<a href="https://creativepro.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/default/files/story_images/120302_InsidePubRev_Jobs.pdf" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">A fact made clear</a>&nbsp;in tech journalist Pamela Pfiffner&rsquo;s book&nbsp;<em>Inside the Publishing Revolution: The Adobe Story&nbsp;</em>(published by Adobe Press):</p> <p><a href="https://medium.com/macoclock/apples-laserwriter-changed-everything-694a6c42e608"><strong>Learn More</strong></a></p>