What is the source of these quotes? If it's an original interview, you should say so. If from somewhere else, you should say where and link to it.

These basic designs pretty much stayed the course all the way through OS 9, and some even in OS X. It's gotta be surreal to think something she designed is on millions of devices. Reminds me of someone I met who wrote video drivers for Intel. It's something small you don't think about, a tiny piece that is essential in bringing the whole thing together.

Too often we think about the captains of the ships, the Gates and Bezos and Musks of this world. People attribute so much to them, when all they really did is convince other people with actual skill to make the things they wanted. I doubt Elon could design the engine of a rocket. There are no Tony Starks outside of the movies. There are 60 ~ 150 engineers who carefully design and check each others work.

It's like when we see Columbus discovering the new world, even though so many other civilizations had discovered it before him, ignoring all the ships and crews that got him there, and the fact that the new world was named after Amerigo Vespucci, the cartographer who actually mapped it out.

There are hundreds or thousands of engineers and designers like this one, who are the people who really make these products real.

Articles tend to pigeonhole her as an Apple designer, but that sells her influence short; Kare also designed the icons for Windows 3.x and the cards for Solitaire.

For those who wonder, the uncredited cartoon strip

"When you look at a photo or see a realistic face, you see it as the face of another; but when you enter the world of cartoon, you see yourself"

is from Scott McCloud's excellent "The Invisible Art" [1].

Cannot recommend it strongly enough; it contains a rich and enlightening analysis of cartoons, and through that of the way we human perceive and communicate using graphics.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Comics-Invisible-Scott-...

For the lazy: the symbol (⌘) has apparently been used at Swedish campgrounds and parks for decades. It's used to denote interesting features, both natural and man-made. It was inspired by the way Swedish castles look from above (a central building with a turret at each corner).

My mother keeps calling the feature symbol "zolbia" for its resemblance to the middle eastern pastry, so whenever I have to help her over the phone I have to tell her to press zolbia-so-and-so instead of command-so-and-so.

> Kare also developed the icons, such as the trash can for discarding files, that helped define graphical interfaces. She and Jobs hit it off because they shared an instinct for simplicity along with a desire to make the Mac whimsical. “He usually came in at the end of every day,” she said. “He’d always want to know what was new, and he’s always had good taste and a good sense for visual details.” Sometimes he came in on Sunday morning, so Kare made it a point to be there working. Every now and then, she would run into a problem. He rejected one of her renderings of a rabbit, an icon for speeding up the mouse-click rate, saying that the furry creature looked “too gay.”

We couldn’t afford a Mac when I was a kid, but Susan’s icons were one of the primary things that made it stand out as “special”. From the trash can to the fact that it booted up with a smiling Mac icon, instead of the typical stream of bios logs on every other machine of the day.

I hope she got disgustingly rich from her time at Apple. Her designs were an integral part of making the Mac what it was and is today.

I wonder if graphical user interfaces will become less relevant as natural language, both voice and text, become more capable via A.I. No need then to learn icons.

Thanks for introducing me to Milanote

It's seen on Swedish road signs because it was copied from Swedish road signs. Did anyone really think it might be the other way round?