The Apple Core

Jason D. O'Grady & David Morgenstern

The most mysterious man in the world? Kai Krause

By Jason D. O'Grady | August 25, 2010, 5:52am PDT

Summary: Kai Krause is one of the most influencial GUI designers ever. Most early Macheads will remember the crazy interfaces he built for Kai’s Power Tools (KPT) — a series of Photoshop plug-ins.

Kai Krause is one of the most influencial GUI designers ever. He changed it all. From his bio on Edge.org:

The real success of the software was in pioneering revolutionary interfaces, deeper concepts of realtime interaction, and aethetic designs of organic shapes, rounded edges, soft shadows and layers which are now many years later standard parts of OSX and XP.

Most early Macheads will remember the crazy interfaces he built for Kai’s Power Tools (KPT) — a series of effect plug-ins for Photoshop. Here’s KPT convolver as an example:

Pretty advanced for 1992.

He has basically vanished for five years. Totally disappeared. Hidden in a towering castle in Germany working on a “mysterious project.”

His website, ByteBurg.de is pretty much bare, except for two doors. When you click on the door with the American flag, there’s a small passage of text that reads:

Clicking on the German door yields a lot more information. Check in out in Google translate. (thanks to Ad Astra in the TalkBack).

I wonder what he’s been up too, and can’t wait to find out.

Tip: Ed Potter

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Web, Web Site, Web Site Development, Apple Mac OS X, Web Technology, Channel Management, Internet, Operating Systems, Software, Apple Mac OS, Marketing, Jason D. O'Grady

Jason O'Grady is a journalist and author specializing in mobile technology. He has published six books on Apple and mobile gadgets and his PowerPage blog has been publishing for over 15 years.

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RE: The most mysterious man in the world? Kai Krause

I'm pretty sure the success of the software was actually its functionality. The UI's were generally impossible to learn/use, and that's why you don't see UI's like that anymore.
AdamzP
25th Aug 2010
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RE: The most mysterious man in the world? Kai Krause

@AdamzP
I completely agree about the UI from Kai's Power Tools and Kai's Power Goo. I found the UI layout to be awkward and button labels/icons were unintuitive. The actual tech behind the tools was quite impressive, however.

As you can see in the main article's sample image, a lot of screen (over half!) is dominated by the UI and white space. When I do graphic work, I want to see MORE of my image and less of assorted menus, toolbars, and buttons.

Most frustrating, and an issue I still have with a number of current mainstream applications (eg Windows Media Player, MS Office (can't quickly think of any Mac examples (much as I seem to fight with iMovie, I feel its a functionality problem and not the UI))), are programs that eschew the operating system's established UI conventions. Instead of something that feels integrated and has menus/buttons that are consistent with other applications, the user has to learn yet another UI in order to be efficiently productive. (How I loathed those early GUI days when every application had its own open/save/copy/cut/paste icons...)
R_Connelie@...
25th Aug 2010
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RE: The most mysterious man in the world? Kai Krause

If you run the German side through Google Translate, you'll learn a lot more.
Ad Astra
25th Aug 2010
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Research before reporting

I agree. If one wants to be a reported then research the topic before start writing!
Bjarne-Winkler
25th Aug 2010
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RE: The most mysterious man in the world? Kai Krause

His mega-rich, lives in a castle on the Rhein river that he calls Byteburg, enjoys time with his friends, and likes his privacy. What else is there to know?
Hopefully he's enjoying himself.
Agnostic_OS
25th Aug 2010
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Seriously?

This article is like a teaser trailer for a movie that lost its funding half way through. We are not likely going to see a complete anything and if and when we do it will probably be outdated and outmoded.
kwabinalars
25th Aug 2010
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Do you think....

@kwabinalars you could hold Kai's jockstrap?
godsfault
26th Aug 2010
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RE: The most mysterious man in the world? Kai Krause

Kai Krause products (function) nd their interfaces were amazing. I used to beg my big software company clients to hire him to try to explain why his interfaces could make big, complex software products more accessible.

I can't wait to see what he's coming up with.
amywohl
25th Aug 2010
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RE: The most mysterious man in the world? Kai Krause

I worked with Kai during those years... and I must agree, there were those who found our style of interface to be annoying or difficult... but honestly, to paraphrase Dr. Frank-N-Furter from Rocky Horror, we didn't make it for them

Rather, there was a huge, untapped demographic of people for whom computers and interfaces had not yet spoken a language that made sense - and those folks were giddy with enthusiasm and support for what we were doing.

We knew we were breaking some eggs, and tipping some sacred cows, but we were also, as Kai used to say, "pushing the bell curve a little to the right," bringing new users into the fold, and importantly, having a hell of a lot of fun doing it
Phil Clevenger
25th Aug 2010
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RE: The most mysterious man in the world? Kai Krause

@Phil Clevenger

Sounds like the typical babble of deconstructionists.

The first paragraph pretty much admits that Kai interfaces were not for people actually trying to achieve anything purposeful with the tools that utilized them.

What's sad is there are still some PhotoShop plugins (and stand alone apps) that operate the same, and they are still next to impossible to achieve anything consistent and useful with them.

Great for generating eye-candy, but not much else.
JonA_z
25th Aug 2010
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RE: The most mysterious man in the world? Kai Krause

@JonA_z

"The first paragraph pretty much admits that Kai interfaces were not for people actually trying to achieve anything purposeful with the tools that utilized them."

You might want to try rereading that paragraph. While I am agnostic on the topic in general, the first paragraph simply said nothing of the kind.
It is YOUR narrow focus and bias that is causing you to assign all members of the category "people actually trying to achieve anything purposeful" to the category of "those who found our style of interface to be annoying or difficult."

There is NO logical reason to do so. Certainly, from the posts here, it can be seen that a number of people who had purposeful work to do (at least from their perspective) did NOT fall into the category of people who found the interface troubling, but instead were empowered by it.

This is either a matter of a simple failure in English comprehension, or (or possibly and) a bias so deeply ingrained that you can't manage to see your way around it.
DeusXMachina
26th Aug 2010
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More than "bringing new users into the fold"

@Phil Clevenger Power Tool and the other Kai products removed the constraints that limited, or perhaps inhibited, a lot of existing users. Yeah, maybe the pre-press guys or the hard-core image manipulators hated it, but a lot of creative and artistic types were suddenly able to do incredible things with Photoshop, not because the functionality wasn't there but because they now had a tool they "got" and was more conducive to their "artist" brain. During my brief foray at design school I saw classmates who couldn't get anything out of vanilla PS suddenly blow everyone away with inventive and, to me at least, almost unimaginable stuff once they had Power Tools installed. To me that is the true power of a UI.
matthew_maurice
26th Aug 2010
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RE: The most mysterious man in the world? Kai Krause

I used to use Kais power tools back in the day and my feelings were at that time there was alot of "discovery" with this new found tech. I think his interfaces promoted discovery and happy accidents which for me as an artist is very important. There is too much stagnation right now as everything looks the same...much like the music business!
steev7
25th Aug 2010
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I don't miss the ulgy UI's

Glad the 90's are done with. UI's were ugly as hell back then.
Cylon Centurion
25th Aug 2010
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RE: The most mysterious man in the world? Kai Krause

Kai's tools/GUI's were in fact very functional, so much so that specific effects could be achieved, at the time, in no other way. JonA_z, R_Connelie@, AdamzP you have your collective minds closed to what you do not understand. It really is a simple concept; what is treasure to one, is trash to another. Remember, Mr. Krause is a philosopher, applying that discipline to our world of graphical user interfaces...it's no small wonder some just don't "get it".
Peace
PixelPup
25th Aug 2010
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