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There are a lot of misconceptions about the early days of Apple. I would like to clarify some of them.

- The recent attention on Steve Jobs is only partially warranted. Yes, it's true that without Jobs there would be no Apple. However, the movies imply that Jobs' role was to make Woz realize the potential of the personal computer. That is false. Woz knew the potential: he just didn't particularly care. Woz was only interested in making one for himself, and if anyone else cared then he happily shared the schematics. Jobs deserves every bit of credit for convincing Woz to quit HP and go all-in at Apple, and also for making Apple a commercial success, but let's not insult Wozniak. He "got it". But "it" wasn't his priority.

- Apple's debut was not at the 1977 West Coast Computer Faire. Apple debuted the year prior at the Personal Computing '76 conference in Atlantic City, New Jersey. This is well documented. Woz himself , PC '76 founder John Dilks (>a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8P_I5H_9uvU">video), and Stan Viet have all discussed it.

- The Apple 1 was far from being "the first personal computer". What made the Apple 1 special was its packaging. There were many other single-board computers at the time including plenty also using the MOS 6502 processor. There were also plenty of other microcomputers at the time which got input from QWERTY keyboards and displayed output on CRTs. However, most other SBCs only had hexadecimal keypads for input and LEDs for output, while most of the computers with full keyboards and CRTs back then cost five figures and were intended as engineering workstations. What did Woz do that was special? He found ways to put the engineering workstation technology into the hobbyist/SBC price point. The packaging, not the technology itself, was the important breakthrough.

- Woz built the Apple 1 and all the commercial Apple 1s in Jobs' parent's garage. False and false. Woz designed the computer mostly in his cubicle at Hewlett Packard, Jobs outsourced the board manufacturing, and Woz usually only stopped by the Jobs household when there were glitches with the boards that the first few employees couldn't solve. Woz was still employed full-time at HP.

From Woz's blog: "Steve didn't ever code. He wasn't an engineer and he didn't do any original design, but he was technical enough to alter and change and add to other designs. I did all of the Apple I and Apple ][ myself, including the feature choices. I did all of the BASIC myself (it's in handwriting as I couldn't afford an assembler). The only person who helped write some of the Apple ][ code was Allen Baum, who helped with the 'monitor' program."

I once had a co-worker who had a very simple phone number. Something like 555-545-4544 (or had only 2-3 unique digits).
He amused us once by playing back a message that some random young child had left on his voicemail over the weekend, presumably after mashing keys on the phone. The interesting part was that it wasn't the first such voicemail he had, but it was generally from different random children.

Did you work with Woz?

I never quit Apple. That suggestion was based on an incorrect Wall Street Journal that said I was leaving Apple because I didn't like things there. Actually, I had told the Wall Street Journal writer that I wasn't leaving Apple because of things that I didn't like and that I wasn't even leaving, keeping my small salary forever as a loyal employee. I just wanted a small startup experience and a chance to design a smaller product again, a universal remote control.

--Steve Wozniak

Steve is that you?

I never quit Apple. That suggestion was based on an incorrect Wall Street Journal that said I was leaving Apple because I didn't like things there. Actually, I had told the Wall Street Journal writer that I wasn't leaving Apple because of things that I didn't like and that I wasn't even leaving, keeping my small salary forever as a loyal employee. I just wanted a small startup experience and a chance to design a smaller product again, a universal remote control.

--Steve Wozniak

For that matter, Woz doesn't work at Apple anymore. So Microsoft isn't even a competitor.

He doesn't work there, but does draw a salary from them. And I assume he has a share or three of stock.

Clearly, they need to hire this guy.

He:
* has top-notch understanding of what it takes to build a PC
* has a prior relationship to HP
* co-founded a highly successful technology company
* is not a complete power-hungry jerk
* knows better than anyone else how to identify "Steve Jobs types"

Of course, there's one problem: He has way too much sense to take the job.

This guy is so far above influential in everything that he did, such a tribute to American creativity. I was just thinking that it is just a shame that there seems to be no one who's on his level. I mean, this guy brought ideas about graphical user interfaces to reality. His visions shaped the courses of his competition. He's the Walt Disney of our era. I never really found Apple products useful enough for me personally to own, but I enjoy the fringe benefits of touch screen phones, simplified user interface (think why Windows 7 looks like it does), and of course films from Pixar and Disney. Who's going to fill the void?

Yes, he realized the GUI, invented touchscreens and was the vision behind Pixar. He did found Apple all by himself after all. Jobs is clearly very good at making businesses successful based on others' ideas. That's not inherently bad, but he's often given way too much credit for the ideas themselves.

You should probably be using a Modern Difference Engine:

http://acarol.woz.org/difference_engine.html

So If I didn't pay you a small sum of money—money I never said I'd pay you—and then invested said money in a company which gave you a job doing exactly what you always wanted to do, which you worked at for five years and retired at 30 a multi-millionaire, I'd be screwing you over?

Oh, and if you'd rather hear from Woz himself:

Comment from E-mail:
According to the site, you resigned from Apple. Is this true? And was you actually cheated by Jobs for $5000?

Woz:
No, I never resigned from Apple, and I still receive a small paycheck because I want to be an employee forever. The press constantly tries to make it out that Steve and I are enemies but we are not and have not been. You'll find virtually no negative words and definitely not a single person who ever saw us argue or fight. It's just something that the press likes to say. The Wall Street Journal once printed that I was leaving Apple because I was disgusted, even though I'd told the reporter that was not the case. If it were true, it's hard to imagine me staying on the payroll with employee agreements in effect. Every book from then on printed that story and it became history.

I'm sorry that the story about Steve cheating me ever got out. First, it concerns something from long ago and even our memories are suspect. Second, it's good to forgive small things. Third, I would have gladly split money the way it was if he just said that he needed it. We were both like that. For example, around that time Steve went to India and ran into someone who had lost their plane ticket home. Steve actually gave that person his own ticket. Steve had no money but trusted the person to replace it, and sure enough the replacement was mailed to him and he got home.

I got a great excuse to design a video game for Atari and that was worth more than any money to me. If I'd gotten more money, I might have wound up buying a computer kit or constructing a different kind. Many good things about the Apple I and Apple ][ came from not being able to afford expensive parts.

Jobs did steal, he pocketed cash that was meant for Steve Wozniak.

http://www.woz.org/letters/general/91.html

The Woz seems to be doing alright:

http://www.woz.org/

He was one of my personal heroes in the ol' GS days.

-Stor

This has as much to do with the Antikythera mechanism as a software simulation. The mechanism has no differential gears, which are used on this lego construct because its creator played with them during his experiments with Babbage's Difference Engine.

Nope, the main reason for using differential gears is that with normal Lego gear pieces only certain ratios are achievable... which unfortunately do not include those needed by the Antikythera mechanism. So they had to obtain those by averaging two obtainable rations. And, in order to perform this "averaging" you need differential gears.

So this is a mechanism achieving the same purpose as Antikythera, but implemented using a completely different way due to different constraints.

See Building complex machines using lego pieces, and then scroll to "The Practical Considerations" (hey, never heard of an <a name=""> tag?)

it's an implementation of the same math that that the Antikythera mechanism does but it's done in a completely different fashion.

Woz explains the device on his own page as well as the math behind it: http://acarol.woz.org/antikythera_mechanism.html
There is also an article about his LEGO device: http://www.fastcodesign.com/1662831/how-one-engineer-redesigned-an-ancient-greek-mechanical-computer-out-of-legos

more information about the Antikythera mechanism can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism

Built by Andrew Carol who is an engineer for Apple.
He had a website about his building complex lego machines at: http://acarol.woz.org/
And specifically information about this one at: http://acarol.woz.org/antikythera_mechanism.html

Unfortunately, the site seems to be down but Google still has a good cache:
http://google.com/search?q=cache:acarol.woz.org/antikythera_mechanism.html
http://google.com/search?q=cache:acarol.woz.org/acarol.woz.org

Built by Andrew Carol who is an engineer for Apple.
He had a website about his building complex lego machines at: http://acarol.woz.org/
And specifically information about this one at: http://acarol.woz.org/antikythera_mechanism.html

Unfortunately, the site seems to be down but Google still has a good cache:
http://google.com/search?q=cache:acarol.woz.org/antikythera_mechanism.html
http://google.com/search?q=cache:acarol.woz.org/acarol.woz.org

Andrew Carol is the designer. His website has more information - http://acarol.woz.org/antikythera_mechanism.html If the site is down, try the Google cache

Oh, and as for the money, Woz's own take on it is kinda maybe interesting: http://www.woz.org/letters/general/91.html

Are you not going to have any product consistency across your stores. Pricing? Dress Codes? Starting pay for employees? Product Placement? Vendor preferences? A return policy?

A bureaucracy isn't needed for that. All that's needed is standard company wide policies.

Regardless of how many producers there are mass production requires a consistency of supply and that requires a bureaucracy to set a minimum standards for components.

Let me rephrase the question, how many things need to mass produced? I already gave one example, semi-conductors. What are these components you're talking about? And can't any standards be approved by consensus? No bureaucracy needed. When IBM came out with the PC, it had used already available components and standards. When the Woz, Steve Wozniak, built his Apple he didn't need a bureaucracy. Neither did the hackers in MIT's Tech Model Railroad Club. When they hacked a nifty program they placed a copy on a bulletin board, such as Spacewar!. Anyone could take it and make improvements, those improvements would then be posted too.

Falcon

Woz still technically works for Apple. Even still gets a paycheck.

http://www.woz.org/letters/general/53.html

I'm pretty sure Woz came to terms with that realization decades ago. He hasn't had a say in any of Apple's higher level decisions since his plane crash in 1981, and he hasn't worked for them at all since 1987.

While he probably doesn't do any work for Apple, he is still an employee and still receives a token paycheck.
http://www.woz.org/letters/general/53.html

(It wouldn't surprise me if he asked for $1.01 per year, just to be able to say he makes more money than the CEO.)

Jobs is not a geek per se but he talks our language, that's how he got involved with Woz.

And by "got involved" you mean befriended, used and stabbed in the back?

I didn't get that impression when I read iWoz (Woz' autobiography.) He says Jobs was his best friend and was hurt when he later found out Jobs (allegedly) didn't fairly split their first earnings but there didn't seem to be bad blood between them. In fact it sounded rather Peter Pan-esque, as if Woz was an idealistic big kid and he stayed true to his hippy ideals while Jobs went off into the grown up world and they grew apart. On his website he does say he cried tears of joy when Jobs returned to Apple : "Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak was spotted walking over to the exhibit hall after the speech. "I cried," said Wozniak, in reaction to Jobs' decision. "It felt just like the old days, with Steve making announcements that shook my world."
[...]
Woz: Well, I did actually cry at two places. The imovie with the kids was so good, and then when Steve announced his CEO plans it felt like yesterday's dreams had returned. "
So they're not exactly sworn enemies.

Steve Wozniak doesn't wonder around in private jets or live in million dollar houses not because the evil Steve stole all his money, he simply doesn't care that much about money or luxury living.

He spends money&time to educating children http://www.woz.org/education/index.html

f it is Bill's or Steve's DNA I think we should burn the lab to the ground! Get your torches and pitchforks!?!?

Which Steve? Ballmer? Jobs? Or the Woz?

Falcon

That was Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. Watch the film, it's really good. Then read Woz's notes on it.

Also, check Triumph of the Nerds, as it tells some things a bit differently. For example, in PotSV, IBM simply bought DOS from Microsoft; in TotN, Microsoft pointed IBM to Gary Kildall, but that failed because the Digital Research people refused to sign a non-disclosure agreement

Ah but we don't live in reality we live in the land of "Perception" and the perception was that Apple tanked without Steve2 (having already gotten rid of the GOOD Steve1), and the perception is what everyone will be on about.

Are you talking about The Woz as Steve #1?

Falcon

Steve Wozniak (the other founder of Apple) used to keep a special book of US$2.00 bills that he had made from bills that hadn't been cut. He then had them perforated so that he could tear them out like checks for payment.

You can read the full story in his words here: http://woz.org/letters/general/78.html

What a sad, sad story. Check out Woz's site for more $2 idiocracy.

http://www.woz.org/letters/general/78.html

The Apple photo says "circa 1975". But, the style looks later and the keyboard case looks like an Apple II, which was at least 76 if not later.

That's correct. Even if you can argue that 1976 is "circa 1975," Woz said they didn't start developing the Apple II until summer of '76.
http://www.woz.org/letters/general/94.html

That they found 700 techies who were kidding themselves about where the economy is going and what their place in it was. Fish, meet barrel.

I think that some advice from The Woz needs to be brought in here:

"f my son wants to be a pimp when he grows up, that's fine with me. I hope he's a good one and enjoys it and doesn't get caught. I'll support him in this. But if he wants to be a network administrator, he's out of the house and not part of my family."

That they found 700 techies who were kidding themselves about where the economy is going and what their place in it was. Fish, meet barrel.

I think that some advice from The Woz needs to be brought in here:

"f my son wants to be a pimp when he grows up, that's fine with me. I hope he's a good one and enjoys it and doesn't get caught. I'll support him in this. But if he wants to be a network administrator, he's out of the house and not part of my family."

Back in the early days of home computing a number of companies started up by selling vaporware, collecting the money, and using it to fund the development. (I don't recall if Apple was one of the companies that started up that way. But Woz and Jobs were pretty hard up for cash back at the start.)

The Woz already had a working Apple before offering one for sale. He was showing it to meetings of the Homebrew Computer Club, of which the Two Steves were members of. At the tyme the Woz was working for HP as an engineer and asked them if the company wanted to make the Apple, management turned him down. Jobs was able to find a store that would place a large order but in order to fulfill it the Woz had to quit working at HP. In order to fund the company the Woz sold an HP 65 calculator he owned for $500.

When you can make an difference engine out of LEGO, it really doesn't seem that impressive to build a five ton one. Babbage's analytical engine, however... that would be an interesting piece.

Lego Turing Machine

Lego Difference Engine :D

No, but I think you'd be in hella trouble for hacking their smart card system just because it was there.

Officer: What are you doing in a bio level 4 containment area?!
Hacker: Well, I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night. d(^_~)

Yeah, I don't think that's going to fly at all... but that's what hackers do. For the best of them, it's in their blood. That's why they're good at what they do. They don't color inside the lines for anyone. Most people would be scared shitless if the Secret Service wanted to have a little talk with them. Someone like Steve Wozniak on the other hand is the kind of person who hands the Secret Service an obviously fake id.

Babbage's engine was hard to make *then* because they didn't have good machining capabilities. Nowadays you can make a small difference engine out of LEGO blocks -- it doesn't get much more POTS than that. (notice the geek cred in the domain name, btw.)

It's surprisingly easy to draw wire. I've done lots of it. The original stuff was done without drawplates: they filed a notch in a plate, then put a second plate against it, clamped them firmly, and pulled, then used the next, smaller notch. You get a half-circle of wire that tends to curl but it's doable. Insulation is *much* harder -- making something that's flexible, tough, and has a reasonable dielectric, and getting it to stick to the wire, is *hard*. Drawing 30 gauge copper tubing is easy in comparison.

Voltaic piles are easier to make than Leyden jars. If you're bored, you can light an LED with a stack of small pieces of aluminum and pennies, separated by lemon-juice-soaked paper towels. It took me about 7 of each to get a red LED to light. If people had known what to do they could've made voltaic pile batteries in Egyptian times -- separate copper and silver chunks with spit- or saltwater-soaked papyrus sheets.

There were early relays made from glass tubes with wires and piles of steel filings. An electric charge on one wire attracted filings, which bridged to the other wire. You could use those to make primitive high-power diodes as well, by messing with the geometry of the wires -- again, stuff that any culture with some competence in glass could've done (and that's pretty old.) The problem was always one of basic research and not knowing what to try.

Let me also add why I think it is we have not, and are not going to, see OS X for non-Apple hardware: Steve's got a vision of providing everything, staying 100% in control, and as long as Steve is running the show, it's going to be done Steve's way. And Steve is running the show. That's my gut feeling after watching him for decades now.

True, Jobs has to have his own way. He even overrode The Woz, the other Steve, when it came to the Mac. Steve Wozniak was working on the Apple Lisa when Jobs decided he wanted to make the Macintosh. BTW I think it's kind of weird the only way to program the first Macs was by programming on the Lisa. There were no tools on Macs for programming it.

The Woz.

You can read about it on his website. It's a pretty funny story.

Most buisnesses exist and function soley so that they can take as much of your money as possible;

I disagree. Most businesses are started because the founder(s) have a vision of what's possible, as with technology. The WOZ didn't design and build the Apple I to make money, he wanted a computer he could use at home. Much like Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard he did the work in a garage. It's only later, usually after incorporation, that some turn to the idea of making money. But then they have shareholders they have to satisfy.

Read this article then...

http://www.woz.org/letters/general/78.html

This was also before I learned how Apple ganked it from Xerox

Apple didn't steal the GUI from Xerox PARC. In return for an investment in Apple Xerox invited Steve Jobs to Palo Alto Research Center, PARC, in 1979. There he saw some of the technology Xerox was working on there. Seeing the gui Xerox came up with he took the idea back to Apple where the Woz, Steve Wozniak, had a team work on the Lisa which became the Macintosh.

Now here I am 12 years later, typing on an AMD based computer running Windows XP, with my semi-new Mac Book Pro getting more and more use each day; I'm trying to "switch"(back). Much of this desire to switch is fueled by Microsoft's political moves, and not their technology. 2 examples...

For the past 10 years I've used Windows PCs 99%+ of the tyme however I too am switching because of Microsoft. Because of MS's policy of requiring Activation as well as WGA/WPA a few months ago I got a desktop PC with Linux preinstalled and hopefully rsn I'll be getting a Macbook Pro as my laptop.

In my perfect world, Microsoft, Apple, and a major Linux distribution each get 1/3 of the market share, with plenty of room for new up-and-coming OS's.

I'd add interoperability.

One, I don't want to be someone else's idea of a consumer, and more importantly I don't want anyone else tell me what I need, "down to the very last atom".

Wal-Mart, Target, and the rest of the big box discounters are already doing it

They may try but just as most people have to ability to, I exercise my freewill and don't buy into their advertizing. For instance, I am a member of two coops where I do a lot of grocery shopping. These coops support not just organics and fair trade but also local businesses and farmers.

just try to buy a computer built out of components from the United States anymore.

Admittedly it is a big box but within a few miles of where I am I can go into a store and pick up all of the parts I need to build my own pc. Having said that, I'll admit that today it's cheaper to buy a compleated computer than it is to build one yourself, unless you have specific hardware requirements, whereas yesteryear it was cheaper to build one. That's how some of the big corporations got started. Take Dell, after he built his own computer Micheal Dell started building computers for others while he was a college student. The Woz, Steve Wozniak, was an engineer working for HP when he came up with and built the Apple computer. He and his friend Steve Jobs, the Two Steves, then started building the Apple in his garage. Thus was Apple Computer Inc, now Apple Inc, born.

Also, I don't know much about your disability- but it seems to me that none of the technology Marshall Brain talks about is very far away- have you looked into the current state of cyber implants yet?

My disability is a Traumatic Brain Injury, TBI. As my memory is bad, having been destroyed because of the injury, I don't recall what or who the Marshall Brain is. I have however done some research into and have an interest in part because of my TBI, in neurogenesis. However not lately. Actually I've been hoping maybe stemcell research can help. Provided I were given all the possible ramifications, likelyhood of success, possible side effects and such, I'd be willing to a test subject for stemcell or transplantation research.

Interesting. So, in the past 5 years, what has changed at the NYT?

I find it odd that an organization the size of the Times would go from one extreme to another in just 5 years.

Maybe my tinfoil hat is a little tight, but I think something smells a little fishy here.

Those are boxes made from LEGO which happen to house modern computers.

This is a computing device MADE from LEGO... Three digits of mean hand cranked polynomial goodness. Only 105 turns of the crank per quadratic result!

http://acarol.woz.org/

Computing the way Babbage intended!
// Yes, this is a shameless plug for my own machine...

No no you misunderstand .. stuff you buy nowadays .. you dont really own. You're renting it for the warranty period.

Proof:

If you owned something you would be able to open it up, reverse engineer it, and find out how it works. Why? CAUSE YOU OWN IT.

Remember when you could do that? When TV's came with schematics?

The king of all Geeks.

Woz.

It was on Slashdot many moons ago. It's at http://acarol.woz.org/. I'm VERY close to having a significantly improved design posted. Enjoy...

What has the OS community brought into the mainstream?

What has the OS community brought to the mainstream? Let's see, much of the software that runs the net is or originates from OS software. We wouldn't have the PCs and other personal or business computers we have now if OS hardware and software hackers hadn't been there. A big hand is deserved for those hackers who were part of the Railroad club at MIT in the '60s and '70s. Amoung other things they inspired those like the Woz, Steve Wozniac to create the original Apple. If you really want to know some of what open source has been responsible for reading Steven Levy's "Hackers: Heros of the Computer Revolution" will give you an idea.

Drop out.

You don't need a degree to do incredible things.

Excessive schooling and socialization could be holding you back, at worst permanently infecting you with an inability to create and lead. A mind is a terrible thing to lose!