Brian Howard

Brian Douglas Howard (March 23, 1944 – February 1, 2010) was one of the original members of the Macintosh development team at Apple Computer.

Early life
Howard was born in and grew up in, where his father Robert was a professor of physics at the  and his mother Jane was a classical pianist. He also had two sisters, Kathleen and Eileen.

Education
Brian received a and attended Stanford University, earning a B.S. in electrical engineering in 1967. He was also an accomplished musician and was a member of the Stanford Renaissance Wind Band and Stanford Early Music Singers. He married Lynne Toribara and had a stepdaughter Mariko.

Career
Brian Howard and Jef Raskin first collaborated through Bannister and Crun, a two-person technical consulting firm, where they were contracted to produce a manual for Steve Wozniak's Integer BASIC at Apple Computer.

Apple Computer
Apple was pleased with the results of Raskin and Howard's work and hired them in January 1978 as employees #31 and #32, respectively, to form the company's new publications department. In 1979, Raskin submitted a proposal for an information appliance computer. Upon approval, Howard was the first staff member to join Raskin's new Macintosh team. By 1981, Howard and Dan Kottke hand assembled the first clear Macintosh prototype with an Apple II floppy drive. His signature is among those molded into the case of the original Macintosh 128K.



Though Raskin and Apple co-founder Steve Jobs both left the Macintosh division and the company, Howard remained at Apple Computer and later joined the portable computing division. Andy Hertzfeld credited Howard and Bob Bailey with engineering the best of the Macintosh models. Howard was recognized as a Distinguished Engineer, Scientist or Technologist (DEST) for his work.

By the time Howard passed away from cancer in February 2010, he had become one of the longest continuously-serving employees of Apple, surpassed only by Chris Espinosa.

Articles

 * Friends gather to remember a member of the original Macintosh team by Mike Cassidy, San Jose Mercury News. 2010-02-18.
 * Macintosh’s Other Designers by John Markoff and Ezra Shapiro, Byte p.347-356. 1984-08.