Cordell Ratzlaff is the man who designed OS X’s interface for Steve Jobs.
Back in 1997, just after Jobs had returned to the ailing company, he saw some mockups for a new operating system interface Ratzlaff and his designers had cooked up.
Jobs was so impressed, he said it was the “first sign of double-digit intelligence†he’d seen since returning to Apple – Jobs’s idea of a complement.
At the time, computer interfaces were dark and gloomy. They were boxy, with hard corners, square windows and gloomy, grey colors. Apple was working on the first iMac, the world’s first fruity-colored computer that had a unique teardrop shape and lots of rounded corners.
Taking the iMac as their cue, Ratzlaff and his designers cooked up an interface to complement it. The result was “Aqua,†an interface inspired by water, as its name suggests, which was bright and blue, with plenty of droplets, translucent menus and reflection effects.
“We made the buttons on the screen look so good you’ll want to lick them,†said Jobs when introducing it at Macworld.
Now Ratzlaff has designed the interface for a new web-based investing tool called Kapitall.
Launching later this summer, Kapitall attempts to make investing simple and fun by blending elements of gaming with traditional investing – plus a Mac-like, drag-and-drop interface.
“Cordell has taken a complex and tedious subject – investing — and applied the sleek and easy Mac user interface to make it exciting and interesting,†said Kapitall spokeswoman Victoria Alexander.
The heart of the app — currently in private beat, but you can sign up — is an interactive workspace called “The Playground,” which is populated with the companies you are watching or investing in.
After seeing a demo, CNet’s Josh Lowensohn said: “It seems like a total data overload at first, but Ratzlaff managed to create and organize portfolios as if he were moving around picture files on a desktop PC. It actually looked kind of fun.â€
Click through the screenshots to see how it works.
Populate the Playground
The Playground is an interactive, customizable workspace that investors can use to organize their investments. The drag and drop functionality makes it easy to access and compare sets of data.
Leander Kahney is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac.
Leander is a longtime technology reporter and the author of six acclaimed books about Apple, including two New York Times bestsellers: Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products and Inside Steve’s Brain, a biography of Steve Jobs.
He’s also written a top-selling biography of Apple CEO Tim Cook and authored Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod, which both won prestigious design awards. Most recently, he was co-author of Cult of Mac, 2nd Edition.
Leander has been reporting about Apple and technology for nearly 30 years.
Before founding Cult of Mac as an independent publication, Leander was news editor at Wired.com, where he was responsible for the day-to-day running of the Wired.com website. He headed up a team of six section editors, a dozen reporters and a large pool of freelancers. Together the team produced a daily digest of stories about the impact of science and technology, and won several awards, including several Webby Awards, 2X Knight-Batten Awards for Innovation in Journalism and the 2010 MIN (Magazine Industry Newsletter) award for best blog, among others.
Before being promoted to news editor, Leander was Wired.com’s senior reporter, primarily covering Apple. During that time, Leander published a ton of scoops, including the first in-depth report about the development of the iPod. Leander attended almost every keynote speech and special product launch presented by Steve Jobs, including the historic launches of the iPhone and iPad. He also reported from almost every Macworld Expo in the late ’90s and early ‘2000s, including, sadly, the last shows in Boston, San Francisco and Tokyo. His reporting for Wired.com formed the basis of the first Cult of Mac book, and subsequently this website.
Before joining Wired, Leander was a senior reporter at the legendary MacWeek, the storied and long-running weekly that documented Apple and its community in the 1980s and ’90s.
Leander has written for Wired magazine (including the Issue 16.04 cover story about Steve Jobs’ leadership at Apple, entitled Evil/Genius), Scientific American, The Guardian, The Observer, The San Francisco Chronicle and many other publications.
Leander is an expert on:
Apple and Apple history
Steve Jobs, Jony Ive, Tim Cook and Apple leadership
Apple community
iPhone and iOS
iPad and iPadOS
Mac and macOS
Apple Watch and watchOS
Apple TV and tvOS
AirPods
Leander has a postgrad diploma in artificial intelligence from the University of Aberdeen, and a BSc (Hons) in experimental psychology from the University of Sussex.
He has a diploma in journalism from the UK’s National Council for the Training of Journalists.
Leander lives in San Francisco, California, and is married with four children. He’s an avid biker and has ridden in many long-distance bike events, including California’s legendary Death Ride.
You can find out more about Leander on LinkedIn and Facebook. You can follow him on X at @lkahney or Instagram.
