在离开苹果公司后，拉斯金自己创办了一家名为Information Appliance的公司，并与佳能公司联手推出另一款小型电脑产品Canon Cat。此款产品中整合的搜索功能甚至还要高于现在Windows中整合的搜索功能。然而因为商业运作方面的失误，拉斯金先生品尝到了失败的痛苦。不过也有人将产品的失败归咎于佳能公司市场推广方面的失职。最终的结果是Canon Cat仅仅卖出了不到2万台，并且在不久之后就淡出了消费者的视线。
2000年，拉斯金出版了一本名为《人本界面》（Humane Interface）的著作，书中阐述了界面设计的基本原理。这本书还被翻译成多种文字出版发行。另外，拉斯金还建立了一个名为“拉斯金中心”的非盈利性用户界面理论研究中心，上文提到的Archy就是研究中心最新的一个项目。
有很多事情可以让拉斯金激情澎湃，他的家庭、音乐、艺术等等……然而，致力于让电脑更容易使用的工作占据了他大部分时间。用户总是在寻找应用程序以及相关文件上耗费大量的精力。而拉斯金先生感到自己有义务帮助世界上成千上万的电脑用户节省大量不必要浪费的时间。
现在这位传奇性的苹果天才已经离开了人间，他的理想何时才能得以实现？
（国际在线 李远）
Jef Raskin wasn't the typical tech industry power broker. He was never a celebrity CEO, never a Midas-touch venture capitalist, and never conspicuously wealthy (although he was wealthy). Yet until his Feb. 26 death at 61, the creator of the Macintosh led the rallying cry for easy-to-use computers, leaving an indelible mark on Silicon Valley and helping to revolutionize the computer industry.
The tech world won't know the final impact of Raskin's work until several more months, perhaps years. At the time of his death, he was working on what he hoped would be his biggest mark yet: a new type of operating system called Archy. Friends and co-workers describe it as his longtime vision of easy-to-use computing brought to life.
Last December, funding from an unnamed international company came through at almost the same time his pancreatic cancer was discovered, and Raskin threw himself into completing the framework of the system in his final months, says David Burstein, who's making a film about Raskin's life and did dozens of interviews with him late last year and early this year.
Raskin was programming up until he could no longer type, about a week ago, says his 21-year-old son, Aza Raskin, who worked with him on Archy for six years. "Jef largely ignored being sick," he says. "He thought it was more important to keep his work going. The only thing that happened was he worked harder if that's possible." Raskin's death came as the last in a series of untimely exits that circumstances forced Raskin to make just as he was hitting his stride on a project. He had several bittersweet successes. liuxuepaper.com