TECH HISTORY

Apple’s LaserWriter Changed Everything

The time Steve Jobs and John Warnock dented the universe.

Apple LaserWriter Select 360 | Image courtesy of author

The passing of Dr. John Warnock, co-founder of Adobe Systems Inc. and co-inventor of Interpress, PostScript, and the PDF file format has generated inspiring tributes from news organizations all over the world. As one of the countless people who benefited from Dr. Warnock’s efforts, I’d like to share the story of how his work contributed to the creation of the Apple LaserWriter.

John Warnock, Inventor of the PDF, Dies at 82

The impetus for this story was John Gruber’s tribute to Dr. Warnock on his Daring Fireball technology blog:

Warnock and Geschke understood what Steve Jobs often preached: technology alone was not enough. PostScript was — and remains! — excellent technology. But it was not a product. The LaserWriter was a product. You hooked it up, went to File → Print in any 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…