Wozniak Interview In Failure

Plastickiwi writes "The current issue of the online magazine Failure features an interview with Apple Computer co-founder Steve Wozniak. Woz waxes humble about his role in founding the microcomputer revolution, claims there's no bad blood between himself and Steve Jobs, and weighs in on the Microsoft antitrust trial." Tons of interesting stuff: he also talks about Pirates of the Silicon Valley and other bits. As always, Woz is a joy to read.

Comments

Re:why isn't he working?

[wltack]

But, their qualifications for the "power" club rest on their ability to make money. Why should greedy people be in charge of the world? Knowing how to make the world a better place and knowing how to become wealthy may not coincide at all.

I e-mailed Woz once

[Lxy]

I once e-mailed Steve after unearthing a Apple ][ a couple years back. I wanted to know if he had any programming reference material (specifically relating to Apple assembly) but he said he threw out his old Apple ][ info a few years before that. He seemed like a really nice guy. I wonder if I could e-mail Bill Gates and ask him for some documentation on x86 assembly and get a friendly response back within a day. Not likely :-)

Re:I e-mailed Woz once

[generic]

I found an apple IIe(?) with no power supply once. So I wired in a PC power supply. It never really ran quite right...but it did run. I couldnt hit a key and get just one character. It would spit out 4 or five depending on how fast I was. I suspect the keyboard controller was shot.

Re: Yay, Woz!

[William R. Dickson]

>The inside is horribly designed and painful to fiddle with.

You're not kidding. I don't know how many times I actually left blood from my hands inside my StarMax 5000. Ouch.

Re:Woz, NY Times, and Microsoft

[William R. Dickson]

>Can it really be true that if you are someone as rich and
>powerful as Microsoft, that you can buy favorable Op-Ed pieces

Why buy what you can get for free? Major media is constantly giving corporations a pass. If you follow the ownership high enough, they're all one big, happy family anyway (or at least, a few big happy families who happen to be particularly neighborly with each other).

Wrong take on the Vikings actually...

[Shadowmist]

Watched a PBS series on the Vikings recently. The Viking colony in "Vinland" was abandoned for a variety of reasons, including conflict with the natives whom the Vikings referred to as "Skraelings". The colony didn't pan out enough to cope with the hazards of living there, so the Vikings turned there attentions to developing a trade route with Constantinople and as an almost accidental side effect created the roots of Modern Russia. Check it out on www.pbs.org.

Re:Woz as an engineer

[Segfault 11]

These "I remember the good old days when we had to use spit and duct tape to make vacuum tubes" comments are a load.

Woz is/was a pioneer. He got there first, and he deserves a ton of credit for it, but no single man or woman could create a complete, modern PC system on their own. The market for PC technology has grown well beyond the hobbyist market, and with it has come competition to drive it much fasster and farther that it did 25 years ago.

Re:Geez, what a name

[angelo]

When I get bad data, I get really pissed off. Like yesterday. Damn ancient TI systems. They should have shot them years ago.

Re:Why isn't Woz a rich bazillionaire?

[Myrrh]

Uhm, ever heard of a challenge exam?

And the members of the Open-Source community .....

[Anonymous Coward]

wonder why they aren't taken seriously.

The report that the failuremag.com was running Microsoft software prompted several people to quickly comment that the server lag was Microsoft's fault. However, now that it turns out that the server is actually running Redhat 6.1, it's now not an OS problem, but rather a bandwidth problem. I don't disagree that it is INDEED a bandwidth problem, but the Linux community in GENERAL, has a nasty habit of blaming Microsoft for everything that goes wrong with the technology community, instead of first analyzing the problem. The community does not need an anti-hero to succeed. It needs clear-minded, OBJECTIVE, people who are driven to develop useful, user-friendly tools so that people can interact with their chosen CPU.

Moderate this post down if you want (Off-Topic, Flaim-bait, Troll), just take the time to really think about why your doing it. You can't look at the Open-source movement with rose colored glasses, or you'll miss all the important bits.

Riplakish

Woz as an engineer

[Veteran]

Anyone who today thinks that they are a hot shot digital designer is invited to try duplicating what Woz did back in the seventies.

What makes his work exceptional is that there were no simulators available for modeling computer behavior; he and the other designers of the era had to SIMULATE THE ENTIRE COMPUTER IN THEIR HEADS. That is a very rare talent.

While there are many people today who can do digital designs, the available tools are much better than they were just 25 years ago. To find out how good Woz was you would have to use the same tools he had - with the same low level TTL chips, a 'hock your calculator' R & D budget to work with, and do your work in a garage.

Great work Steve, thanks.

Re:Woz as an engineer

[a troll]

the available tools are much better than they were just 25 years ago

Hmm.. you tried Cypress' Warp lately? 'Nuf said.
---

Re:Woz as an engineer

[Veteran]

I do remember the video chips of that era, and there was nothing that was a "one chip system" I remember a 16 x 64 display design which used 2102 static ram and about 16 chips total. The company bragged about their low parts count for that.

Your friend must have used static ram for the main memory - the dynamic ram of that era was very tricky to use - super sensitive to timing violations, voltage undershoots, and pattern sensitivity due to ground bounce from the large switching transients. Bypassing it properly was very tricky, as was impedance matching of the line drivers; reflections from transient edges from the drivers were a major cause of memory errors. That was true even of the static chips of that time. I wonder how your friend got the termination of those drivers correct? I am impressed, proper grounding technique for the oscilloscope was critical to keep from getting false signals. I wonder if your friend used series or parallel termination on those drivers.

What sort of power supply did your friend use? There were almost no switchers at reasonable cost available in 1980. Did your friend design his own power supply, or did he use some sort of off the shelf component. Power supplies with adequate current to drive a static ram array and a 6809 cost around 150 (1980) dollars - not a small amount of money back then. If he built it himself I once again am impressed - I wonder how he handled the calculations for sizing the bypass capacitors - too large a value and the ESR of the electrolytics of 1980 would affect the stability of the regulator IC's , too small a value and ripple eats up the noise margin of the regulator. Of course grounding in a power supply is critical; mixing the high current grounds of the bulk filter caps with the low current precision ground of the regulator not only results in a noisy power supply but an unstable one.

I wonder where your friend bought his components?

What did your friend use for the equivalent of a bios, did he write the assembly language for the control program in his onboard EPROM? I didn't know of many machines that could have been used as a cross development system for a 6809 in 1980. I guess he could have used a CP/M machine debugger and produced the byte codes by hand without an assembler. I wonder how he burned that code into the EPROM? Did he go to some place like Hamilton Avnet to burn them, or did he have his own EPROM burner? Back then the only EPROM burners were either stand alone units or S-100 based CP/M units both were rather expensive.

Video monitors of that era were almost all NTSC - driving the signals for a composite monitor was a bit tricky, H-sync, V-sync, front porch, back porch, and the high frequency dot clock all had to be multiplexed onto a single drive line. To design such a circuit without copying a reference design was a substantial effort; it required an active pullup to the one volt positive rail; a resistor resulted in smearing of the pixels.

Are you sure he didn't use a serial port to talk to a terminal? That would have simplified the design significantly.

As I remember Steve Ciarcia of byte magazine was writing about his 6809 design at about that time. I wonder why he would have written about something that any subgenius high school kid could have done?

Re:Woz as an engineer

[Segfault 11]

There are two major products to come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX. We do not believe this to be a coincidence.
(don't know who this is attributed to)

Re:Woz as an engineer

[Reality Master 101]

Your friend must have used static ram for the main memory - the dynamic ram of that era was very tricky to use...

We never got into it that deeply. I only saw it once, I was over at his house and did kind of a "hey, that's neat". I had a TRS-80 at home, so the sight of this mess of components doing primitive stuff wasn't that impressive to me at the time.

What sort of power supply did your friend use?

I don't know, but it may not have required a switching power supply. I built an RCA CDP-1802 system from a kit (made famous in the Aug 1976 issue of Pop Elec.) and I just bolted a transformer to it, and that was it. Worked perfectly.

I wonder where your friend bought his components?

Here in So Cal, we had a lot of hobbyist electronics stores, so parts were less of a problem than you might think. Although, I think I had to mail-order a couple parts when I was building my '1802 mark 1 (my first attempt was to follow a schematic, my second attempt was to buy the kit -- that's why I became a software engineer. :) ).

did he write the assembly language for the control program in his onboard EPROM?

I would think he would have written a primitive control program in assembly, which wouldn't have been a huge deal (hacking in assembly was much more common back then). I'm not sure how he bootstrapped it, though. He may have used an EPROM, or he may have toggled it in. The 1802 had a mode whereby you could manually enter hex values directly into memory. I recall a lot of the very early computer kits had similar, toggle-switch-based systems. I'm speculating, but I doubt it was very sophisticated.

Video monitors of that era were almost all NTSC -

My 1802 kit used a television in 1977, so I wouldn't be surprised if it was something similar.

As I remember Steve Ciarcia of byte magazine was writing about his 6809 design at about that time.

For all I know, he used one of Ciarcia's designs. I doubt that he designed the whole thing himself. There where a lot of articles floating around about building your own computer (particularly in Pop Elec.), so it's not as if it was a total dark-art.

--

Re:Woz as an engineer

[Segfault 11]

How can you qualify the 'is' part of that? What's he done in the last ten years that qualifies him as a pioneer?

Well, I meant to say engineer, but I goofed. In any case, how long does he get to keep the title? Does he lose it when he quits? When he dies? Or does he keep it in perpetuity? Not everyone will agree -- I'm just covering my bases! :)

Re:Woz as an engineer

[Veteran]

There was a lot of difference between 1980, and 1974 or 75. When Wozniac started, the 6502 chip was brand new, there was very little documentation, and there were no support chips for it.

While modern chips operate at much higher clock speeds, the technology is much better and faster today. I agree that PC board layout is much more critical now than it was then; wires haven't gotten any faster since 75. However, PC board layout is much easier and faster now, than it was then.

Remember, in 1975 PC boards were laid out by hand using black tape on mylar - doing a complex board would literally take months.

Also please remember that it is one thing to take a VLSI subsection like a modern multifunction chip and glue it to a processor, and something entirely different to have to create those functions in TTL like Wozniac did with his GCR circuitry for the floppy drive on the Apple II.

By the way, your friend also had unusual talent, the proof of that would have been to walk around on the streets trying to find anyone else who could do what he could do. We tend to think that just because we knew someone who can do 'A' that everyone knows someone who can do 'A'. If Rembrandt were alive today, and you knew him - you wouldn't find it unusual; "Oh yeah, I know this guy who can paint real well"

Re:Woz as an engineer

[Reality Master 101]

With all due respect to The Woz, it wasn't that hard to homebrew your own computer. It wasn't that uncommon in the hardware hacker world. It seems like every issue of Popular Electronics had a "build your own microprocessor!" article. The 6502, Z80 and 6809 made it pretty easy to hook up support chips, and there was lots of documentation available. I had a friend back in 1980 who hacked together a simple 6809 system in a couple of weekends.

Remember, we're talking about 1-2 MHz microprocessors. What makes it a lot harder today are the high clock rates, which makes timing problems really hard to solve without modern test equipment.

--

Re:Woz as an engineer

[Reality Master 101]

Also please remember that it is one thing to take a VLSI subsection like a modern multifunction chip and glue it to a processor, and something entirely different to have to create those functions in TTL like Wozniac did with his GCR circuitry for the floppy drive on the Apple II.

I don't mean to minimize what Woz accomplished; clearly he did a lot of custom circuitry that wasn't "off the shelf". My only point is that the original poster made it sound like Woz built the whole processor out of TTL or something. There were a lot of hobbyists in those days building homebrew computers, and it really only took a handful of chips.

Still, going from a homebrew to a full-blown production unit is a big step, and I give the Woz all the props that are due.

By the way, your friend also had unusual talent, the proof of that would have been to walk around on the streets trying to find anyone else who could do what he could do.

He was only a high school student. He was certainly bright, but I wouldn't call him a genius. He basically took a 6809, bolted some ram to it (which barely (didn't?) required a memory controller), and I think a primitive video chip and keyboard chip. My memory is failing me, but I think he used either a proto-board or wirewrap. There really weren't that many chips involved.

--

Re:Woz as an engineer

[Mr. Slippery]

There are two major products to come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX. We do not believe this to be a coincidence. (don't know who this is attributed to)

I've seen it attributed to Jeremy S. Anderson.

Re:Why isn't Woz a rich bazillionaire?

[Golias]

Can we someday have a discussion about any inventor anywhere without some geek invoking the name of Nikola Tesla?

Okay, great, you know who Tesla was. We are all happy for you. Now never bother us with his sad story again.

Steering back onto the topic, I would say that Woz has achieved all the wealth and fame that he actually wanted, and if he wanted more he would have had it. On his own terms, he is a total and complete success. That is why he is not a bazillionaire; he never wanted to be anything more or less than a really great engineer and inventor.

(This message brought to you by a fan of Thomas Edison, the Wizard on Menlo Park. Deal with it, pink boy!)

Additional....

[yakfacts]

After 25 years, you can forgive him getting a bit confused., but AFAIK he has the story of the TRS-80 totally wrong. The TRS-80 Model I could be expanded and you could add a disk drive--even if it was a kludge. I'm also fairly certain that the development of the TRS-80 was about the same time as the Apple, not "much later" as portrayed by SW.

Re:why isn't he working?

[TopShelf]

One could easily spend $1 billion, given the desire and the mindset - and I'm not talking about merely blowing cash out the door, but really doing things on a massive scale (like Howard Hughes and that huge plane, the Spruce Goose, I believe?). Then you've got Richard Branson's ballooning adventures, and of course, there's always the fun of buying your own sports franchise.

No Bad Blood..

[Anonymous Coward]

IMO, the fact that he has no bad blood towards Steve Jobs is his only character flaw. Other than that, he seems like a really cool person. Woz should have ended his relationship with a punch to that fuckhead Jobs' pie hole after the Atari Breakout scam he pulled. That one punch may have significantly changed history. For one thing, Jobs may have not been the mega millionaire, hyper-egocentric, asshole, jerk, lying, car salesman type, work your employees to the brink of insanity while you collect the payoff, scam artist that he is today.

Re:No Bad Blood..

[cpt kangarooski]

However, the Woz would have remained at HP and never gone on to do anything with his microcomputer designs. On the whole, while I don't like Jobs either, I grew up on Apples.

Woz not famous???

[www.sorehands.com]

I thought everyone knew who Woz is.

Spruce Goose not blowing it out the window?

[ebbv]

yes it is :)

that's all equivallent to throwing it on a bonfire, in my mind. it's totally useless pursuits of fame.

i've thought the richard branson thing was fairly pathetic, really. rich, bored, old man throws money away on an imbecilic, life-risking, waste of time, energy and money, when he could donate all that cash towards helping victims of corporate politics ;) (or some real charity, anyway.)

but, that's just me..
...dave

Re:Spruce Goose not blowing it out the window?

[HeghmoH]

How about spending the money on pursuit of my own private space program? I think it's worthwhile, at least, and would help people in the long run. Not that I could do it NOW, with the fifteen bucks in my pocket.

Re:Spruce Goose not blowing it out the window?

[TopShelf]

and that's just me - to each his own.

Personally, I'd develop a foundation to boost the space program - get private and public partners together and start working on some big jobs, like manned expeditions to Mars and so on.

Of course, that's after I buy an NHL team and move them to Indianapolis.

Re:Yay, Woz!

[MsGeek]

...I just wish he'd designed something after the Apple ][...

Actually a lot of the original Mac has his fingerprints on it...the most long-lived Woz contribution to Mac survived up until Gossamer (the Beige G3). It's the SWIM chip, which is the floppy drive controller. SWIM stands for Super Woz Integrated Machine.

Woz is a class act. It would be nice if his supreme hardware hacking skillz could still be tapped, but he seems more than happy being a teacher and a dad and a man of leisure.

A wise man said "thou hast no right but to do thy Will" and dammit, Woz is doing exactly that. Rock on, Woz!

Einstein

[derfbeer]

Einstein's great theory was the "General Theory of Relativity". This theory is recognized by scholars as a peak accomplishment of a first-class mind. Brownian motion, the photo-electric effect, and special relativity were all incremental improvements on extant theories whereas general relativity was something very new and very original.

To draw the thread back to the Woz, who knows? His best effort might yet come. And best efforts aren't (in my limited experience) expressed in silicon.

Fred

Re:Woz

[Seumas]

Of course, now that everyone and their grandmother will be doing so (especially considering all the recent press he's had in the last couple months), it will take him until he's in his grave to process everything!

I once emailed Woz, just commenting on the mural on the Apple building on Infinity Loop. The last thing I expected was a reply from him -- I just thought he might get a kick out of what I had to say. But wouldn't you know it -- that same evening, not more than a couple hours later, there was a reply from him. Not a generic "thanks for the email", but an actual thought-out email.

I felt at once grateful that he would care so much about the people that care about him, to take a few minutes out of his life to send along a reply and embarassed for having wasted at least five minutes of his time (which is certainly more valuable than my own).

I hope that people will not take advantage of this and bombard his email account just to get a personal reply. If you have something you really want to tell him, perhaps it would be kind to wait a couple or so weeks before sending it? I hate to imagine him up at 2am, glazed eyed in front of the Woz-Cam trying to fight off wrist-pains pounding out responses to all of his admirers!
---
seumas.com

lost edge in the plane crash

[peter303]

That was pivital in Woz dominating the PC field. Maybe it was the emotional drive, a little bit of his mental capacity, or re-evalution of what was important in life. He never really pushed as hard after that.

However the core Woz- the good guy, the visionary- still remains to inspire us.

Re:And don't forget Edison, the Bill Gates of the

[Golias]

I think he may be confused with Bell, who did some work in Canada.

That could be. However, Bell was born and raised in Scotland. Yet another place which is not Canada.

Bell and Edison: Two men who were not Canadian and invented lots of stuff that Nikola Tesla didn't.

Re:why isn't he working?

[cactopus]

Why does everyone assume Steve Wozniak is rich. I don't know how much money he has, nor do I really care if he is technically rich, but he has always made it a point to adjust his salary to that of an engineer while at Apple.

Re:Failure Looks Promising

[carlhirsch]

What part of the country (or world) do you live in? Are east coasters still using "wicked?"

Yeah, I just finished reading _Infinite Jest_ for like the third time and my head is all full of Boston argot. But personally, I live in Appalachia.

-carl

Re:Woz was cool but...

[n1ghtstr1k3]

Woz and the rest of the people who started the personal computer revolution should be no less celebrated than say, Christopher Columbus.

Many people explored after he did but he is the one who found America.

Just because he isn't still around at Apple pretending he's doing things like Steve Jobs does doesn't mean we should still remember him.

Just my $0.02

The best thing about Gerstner is ...

[mmccune]

>But wouldn't people say the same thing about Lou >Gershner (sp?), who had never done anything with >computers before he came to IBM and completely >turned the place around?

None of the managers since Tom jr. understood technology either - they were marketing droids. The main advantage Gerstner (the correct spelling of his name) brought to IBM was that he was the first outsider to run IBM. While Asskisser (Akers is the real spelling of his name) was runing the show, it took a week to decide to use the John (the shitter, that is, although John Akers often got confused with one). Getting people to make decisions instead of kissing ass help IBM more than anything else done there in the last 15 years.

I got out of IBM while it was on the decline and I'm glad I did.

Flash!

[AirSupply]

I'd love to have read this interview, but I'm afraid the fourth time I had to click on the "No" button to say that I don't want to install the freaking Macromedia Flash plugin -- well, I just snapped.

Failure -- as your name, so your website.

Several naughty words were removed from this post, but no electrons were harmed.

Re:Woz was cool but...

[gradji]

Woz is a very smart man, one who has designed many cool devices and one who has played a big roll in our past, but is he really that revelent today? Has he presented any new paradigms? Has he pushed new technology?

I think the above quote points out a major flaw in the thinking of many in our Geek community. There's a clear difference between what I call science and engineering ... and by this I do not mean the usual technical definitions. The mis-concept is that something is worth admiring only if it has pushed the frontier ... while in reality, there's a lot of value to activities that take what is at the frontier and make it more readily accessible to the common people.

The glory of Woz is not that he pushed the frontier of knowledge. Rather, he brought much of this knowledge and power to the masses. We often forget that there is a huge divide between what the few, select know and understand compared to the general public. For example, Edison was by no means a great scientist. His methods were crude and unorthodox, based on massive trial and error experiments (not what people today would call rational design). But his brilliance was that he was able to take solid scientific fundamentals and develop a tool (distributed electricity, light bulb) that could be appreciated and utilized by the society as a whole.

Similarly, Woz did not necessary develop the great paradigms or technologies (most of what was in the Apple ][ had already been developed) ... he brought it together in a package that could be exploited by others.

Does Woz get too much credit ... sure, he didn't single handedly build the PC. But should we still respect and hold some reverence for him? Absolutely. Not all of us can be the great frontier researchers, pushing the bounds of what we know and understand. But we can strive to do what Woz did ... which is take what we do know and distribute it better to the general public.

Re:The Major Malfunction

[n1ghtstr1k3]

The link is www.failuremag.com

Why isn't Woz a rich bazillionaire?

[Anonymous Coward]

He seems to be getting the same historical treatment as Nikola Tesla. Shafted.

Re:Why isn't Woz a rich bazillionaire?

[SlashGeek]

"he's quite wealthy. back in 1996 (i *think*) he was estimated at $200 million"...last I heard, Bill Gates was worth $28 billion. I think that's what the comparison is to. Not that I'd mind being Woz.....

Re:Why isn't Woz a rich bazillionaire?

[ebh]

do you know any genius who's actually rich?

Bill Joy. Linus, eventually.

Re:Why isn't Woz a rich bazillionaire?

[stuffman64]

Boy are you guys not knowing whats up. Tesla, my favorite scientist, did not invent the CRT, nor the Television. The TV, or more precisely, the scanning CRT, was invented by Philo Farnsworth (or somthing like that). However, without Tesla, we would not have good, high quality electricity to use. We would be stuck with Edison's DC transmition method, requiring a power plant about every 2 miles, because DC loses a lot of energy in long transmitions. We wouldn't have efficient cooling fans to keep our CPU's cold, nor would we have refrigerators to keep our Bawls cold (the AC induction motor in the compressor is what he invented, not the fridge). Before fluffing of Tesla as an other scientist, remember that his inventions changed the world more than any other scientist, and remember that most of Edison's patents are for things that his workers invented, not his own personal creations. But be warned: when reading books on Tesla, stop immediately when they start talking about time travel and Atlantis and the such, it is all made up garbage (duh). Anyways, just be a little bit more considerate about ALL inventors, but remember that some of the less popular ones made the biggest impact.

Re:Why isn't Woz a rich bazillionaire?

[Golias]

It must be a struggle getting through life with no sense of humor like that. You have my pity.

Re:Why isn't Woz a rich bazillionaire?

[Rand Race]

But nobody has brought up Philo Farnsworth yet! The only man to ever get RCA to pay him royalties.

And unlike Edison, he wasn't so full of himself so as to think DC was good for long distance electricity transfer.

Back on-topic myself, the damned server is dead as the proverbial doornail.

Re:Why isn't Woz a rich bazillionaire?

[Golias]

Yes, very interesting... and totally off topic. Next I suppose you are going to bring up the debate about who really invented calculus.

You Tesla cultists are worse than the scientologists. Give it a rest.

Re:Why isn't Woz a rich bazillionaire?

[chris54494]

calculs? whats that? with out tesla cultists his memory would fade away. also tesla is the inventer of radio

Re:Why isn't Woz a rich bazillionaire?

[Golias]

What the hell... I got plenty o' karma to burn on an off-topic rant, so you win today, troll:

The mathematical proof-of-concept for radio was first submitted by a brittish mathemetician named James Clerk Maxwell. Shortly afterwards, Heinrich Hine made a working radio that transmitted a signal about 5 feet. Marconi introduced the Wireless Telegraph a couple years later in 1874.

Interestingly enough, Hine is quickly joining Tesla in modern folklore as another "lost" or "forgotten" inventor. Like Tesla, his name is often attatched to crackpot inventions by scam artists looking to add an air of legitimacy to their fake machines.

"This [generator, motor, time-machine, widget] was origianally conceived by [Tesla, Hine] and has been reconstructed based on his long-lost lab notes. Big corporations, who have always had it in for this great inventor, are doing their best to cover it up, but I will happilly sell you the plans to build your own for $20. Better yet, join my pyramid scheme... er... I mean distribution network and help me save the world from the eeeevil corporations that are trying to run out lives!"

Both Tesla and Hine deserve better than these morons.

Re:Why isn't Woz a rich bazillionaire?

[deewite]

bill gates has not proved he is genuis ... he stole every good idea from xerox, just like steve.

a visionary maybe but no a genious

Re:Why isn't Woz a rich bazillionaire?

[nchip]

Well, the guy (A graduate of Oxford University) at cern (Nuclear physics reseach lab) who invented web definetly had gone through "navigate through channels and bureaucracy and kiss all the right butts." -University...

Re:Why isn't Woz a rich bazillionaire?

[crazyj]

Yeah, and he had a really cool pop-metal band in the late 80s/early 90s.

I really liked that "Signs" song he covered.

MacSlash: News for Mac Geeks

Re:Why isn't Woz a rich bazillionaire?

[Anonymous Coward]

Transmeta would have no use for the Woz's kitchen-table level design 'talents'. The industry is now far beyond the stage where a 20-something can kludge together a handful of TTL chips and come up with a revolutionary 'invention.'

Re:Why isn't Woz a rich bazillionaire?

[e-matt]

Execllent Telsa reference, unfortunately most of his inventions get credited to Westinghouse.

Re:Why isn't Woz a rich bazillionaire?

[Anonymous Coward]

Transmeta would have no use for the Woz's kitchen-table level design 'talents'. The industry is now far beyond the stage where a 20-something can kludge together a handful of TTL chips and come up with a revolutionary 'invention.'

Success is only for the elite!

Just like Universities won't let you just take the final exam for a course [even if you do pay in full for the course!] and skip all the classes. They won't give you credit because it's not about what you know, but showing that you can navigate through channels and bureaucracy and kiss all the right butts.

Then again some guy wrote a simple app (mosaic) and "revolutionized the computer industry". So I guess it can still be done.

Re:Why isn't Woz a rich bazillionaire?

[David Ham]

he's quite wealthy. back in 1996 (i *think*) he was estimated at $200 million. he has just traditionally always kept out of the spotlight, and so you never hear about it. anyway, he lives comfortably, and with his spare time and money teaches music and computers to children.
--
DeCSS source code!
you must amputate to email me.

Re:Why isn't Woz a rich bazillionaire?

[WildBeast]

Why isn't Woz a rich bazillionaire? Simple, do you know any genius who's actually rich? And the best thing is that they don't care about getting rich, if they did they would concentrate all of their efforts on that.

Re:Why isn't Woz a rich bazillionaire?

[Bun]

Tesla just slowly went insane, and now his work only appeals to fringe types.

I'm no Tesla fanatic, but last I checked, multiphase AC generators and motors were in pretty widespread use.

Give credit where it's due.

Re:Why isn't Woz a rich bazillionaire?

[luckykaa]

do you know any genius who's actually rich?

Yes. Bill Gates.

If only he could direct that marketing genius to producing quality software.

Re: Yay, Woz!

[cactopus]

Having followed the technology since 1997, and the development cycle on Stepwise and other locations, the Red Box was sort of an MOSR. It was a complete fallacy as far as actual Apple Technology goes. It was also somewhat revived after the "Star Trek" rumor was reconsidered in light of OpenSTEP 4.2 (prelude to Rhapsody) and Rhapsody DR1 for Intel. Rhapsody was renamed because Apple didn't want people playing with OS's in boxes. They wanted Classic to be transparent to the user, and to transition developers gently to Cocoa through Carbon.

A great read

[MicroBerto]

Read this -- It's good.

Wozniak knows Woz up :)

Mike Roberto
- GAIM: MicroBerto

Re:Yay, Woz!

[pb]

Yes, but note that I said I consider it an unreasonable premium. Of course, this is a personal opinion, but Apple has always struck me as being very arrogant about their systems. The third-party PPC machines didn't have this problem, and I might have bought one if Apple hadn't crushed them.

But, back to my original example, the Apple ][: except for its upgradeability, I consider it an inferior system to the C64. However, you still paid more for an Apple ][, just because it was from Apple. Other examples include the Lisa, and to a lesser degree the Macintosh. Back in the day the Macintosh was pretty innovative, but now its just old, proprietary technology, badly in need of a real OS. The PPC is cool though, and so is MacOS X. I just wish Apple had followed through on Rhapsody, or I might be using that now.
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Re:The Major Malfunction

[Borogrove]

Just curiuos, but have you checked out www.failure.com lately? It looks like a fairly interesting site, but it has nothing to do with the magazine. www.failuremag.com, however, seems to be unable to tell Netcraft what it's running, so we'll have to wait a while to know.

Just curious, but has the site been down for a while, or is this just the /. effect?

Re:The Major Malfunction

[otis wildflower]

www.failure.com is running Microsoft-IIS/4.0 on NT4 or Windows 98

No wonder it's slashdotted :(

When will they ever learn?

Your Working Boy,

Re:Woz a better writer than Jobs...

[EngrBohn]

Woz has his head on a lot straighter than most of the people in SV

Coming face-to-face with mortality and walking away can do that. As for myself, my head's still a little loose, but I've found that I'm certainly more philosophical than I used to be.
Christopher A. Bohn

Re: Yay, Woz!

[HeghmoH]

The Mac clones are overrated. I own one, and I love it dearly. It's wicked-fast considering whet I got it. But, aside from the OS it runs, it feels like a PC. The inside is horribly designed and painful to fiddle with. The parts seem substandard. The CD-ROM drive does weird things. Also, Apple has followed through on Rhapsody. That's what MacOS X is. Unless you're referring to the idea of an Intel version.

Re:Woz a better writer than Jobs...

[twoodfin]

When will the technology industry realize that you can't have hi-tech industries run by people who don't understand them?

This may be the exception that proves the rule, but Lou Gerstner, not a high-tech guru by any means, apparently has done a pretty reasonable job running IBM.

Michael S. Malone Interview

[Metrol]

As cool as seeing a Woz interview is, I actually found the follow up interview to be more interesting. Need to go shopping around for this guy's book.

Anyhow I felt I just had to repeat this paragraph from that second interview here. This is singuarly the finest analysis of the whole MS monopoly issue I have seen to date.

Any thoughts about the Microsoft case?
I don't think the whole story was about Microsoft as a monopoly. The Justice department coming in had to do with power. Orrin Hatch let the cat out of the bag when he said, "Microsoft should have thought about working in Washington a lot sooner." Spend more money on campaigns, spend more money on lobbyists, get back here and schmooze us. Tug on your forelock and show respect. Look what happened after the Justice department announced its case. Microsoft gave away millions to campaigns, got a whole army of lobbyists back there, and Bill Gates went around from door to door to all the congressmen. That's why Intel did such a better job. Intel, the moment they announced the Justice department case, the whole executive team flew back there and said, "How can we settle this in an amicable way?" No one even remembers there was an antitrust case against Intel. They got out of that sucker in a week and a half. Microsoft was too arrogant. They said we don't need a federal government. They should have remembered Al Capone; he said the same thing. Federal judges and the United States Army, they'll get you. Gates' mistake was he didn't immediately apologize, settle, and say, "How can we make this thing better?" and by the way, we're donating a million dollars to the Democratic national committee and 2 million dollars to the Republican national committee. He's paying for being Bill Gates. Part of Gates' personality is to never, ever give up an inch of ground. But I think what they're scared of now is that they've now been categorized as evil. Everybody knew that in the industry anyway. Where it's going to hurt them is recruiting. The key to all these companies is what kind of talent they can recruit for the next generation of products. Do you really want to go work for the Evil Empire? People are embarrassed to say they work for Microsoft now. In the long run that's what kills you because the quality of your talent starts falling and you can't fix it. And so your products don't get out on time and they're not as good as they used to be. They should have just caved the first day. Big mistake.

RANT :ON:
Nobody, and I mean not a single soul, in congress gives a squat about whether or not Microsoft bruised other companies around them. Fact is, they didn't pay their "protection" money like Intel, IBM, Netscape, Sun, Apple, Oracle, and the rest of the industry testifying against Microsoft has done. MS has not been fighting a battle to innovate, but rather to not have to pay the "protection" money.

When all this plays out, no court ruling is going to replace the desktop OS's of the world. Only a better product will do that.

• High ease of use
• Low consumer cost
• Heavy support by developers

At this point, Linux is perhaps the best bet for actually going after the MS market share. The point is, nobody in the open source world should be looking to this monkey trial as any kind of victory no matter how it plays out. Instead, it should be waking folks up to the cold hard fact of the payola system that's really on trial here.

RANT :OFF:
The rest of the interview was definitely worth a read as well.

Re:Yay, Woz!

[pb]

Hmm. In the first part, you aren't comparing the OSes anymore.

Also, the RISC vs. CISC doesn't really hold water anymore--the PPC has some pretty complicated instructions nowadays, and all the x86 chips these days translate CISC into RISC in hardware (except for Transmeta--they do it in software, with a RISC-y VLIW core) and make the RISC vs. CISC argument obsolete. The reason I never liked RISC was that it tended to bloat the binaries at least on some platforms, which required more memory...

Ooo, ooo, unprovable argument: Windows has BASIC in it? Do you mean like GW-BASIC or Visual BASIC? I think they use C/C++ for that stuff, or else VB wouldn't need those extra DLL's. But if we're going to resort to pointless name-calling here, I could argue that MacOS has a significant amount of PASCAL in it.

I don't know if this is true or not, and I like Pascal, but in reality it's just 0xCODEDBAD, and needs to be reworked. (which is why we now have MacOS X, Windows 2000, BeOS, Linux, etc., etc. (which one don't belong? (Spot the UNIX clone!)))
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Re:Yay, Woz!

[Deanasc]

I wouldn't say that an easy to use interface that does not crash with nearly the frequency that other OS's do sucks.

Re:Woz, NY Times, and Microsoft

[Azog]

Indeed! I had to shake my head when I saw this:

"I wrote 'Microsoft's a monopolist' and the [New York] Times wanted to edit it to say, 'Microsoft is innovative.'"

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. "All the news that's fit to print... except if it challenges the status quo." Not the first time, either.

Bah.
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)

Re:why isn't he working?

[redeyedfish]

Actually, I double checked, it was indeed a motocycle accident.

Re:Woz was cool but...

[InfoVore]

"But Woz was a man, and we give him more credit than he deserves by glorifying him as we do. "

ARGHHH!!! It is so painful to see historically uninformed opinions like this surface so casually.

What Woz brought to the young field of digital electronics was Art. Anyone with a smidgen of electronics training who ever looked at the schematics for the Apple II Disk Drive controller saw the genius, the elegance of the design. Forget that other disk controllers for minicomputers occupied whole cabinets. Forget that Woz's controller only used a few cheap TTLs on one board. But do remember that Woz was the first real digital designer to realize the importance of integration. The Apple II was a Tight design. He knew he could toss functionality out of the hardware and pick it up in the software. He knew that without hardware support (like onboard color graphics) he could make difficult software hacks easy (like Breakout in 100 or so lines of Apple Basic). Woz had a greater insight into a computer as a single integrated SYSTEM than anyone before him. Woz was the Bobby Fischer of digital electronics and computing. He got underneath the whole field and transformed it into something new: the personal computer.

Would he have brought that to the masses without Jobs, Markula and Co? Probably not. Would he have gotten as much credit for being a computer genius without the business success of Apple Computer? Hard to say. But before you go mouthing off about how we give him too much credit, then go back and get some pre-1980 issues of BYTE Magazine; talk to an old timer or three; ask yourself what company design team could have done what Woz did at his desk in his bedroom at home with damn near no resources but his brain and pencil and paper.

THEN you can talk to me about how much credit we should or shouldn't give Woz for his achievements.

Kids!!!

IV

Who is Woz?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're seriously asking, Woz designed and built the Apple ][, which was basically the world's first multimedia-capable home computer. Before the Apple ][, small computers were designed for use by computer people, not home users. Many aspects of the current desktop PC's design originated in Woz's work.

Woz also invented the learning remote control and one or two other useful gadgets, but he's mostly known for not making a pretentious ass out of himself in public the way most of his peers have. He spends most of his time these days as a grade-school teacher.

Re:dude

[nEoN nOoDlE]

Those who can't do, teach.

Not only that...

[The Queen]

...but he's a great comic character, too.

The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk

Re:Yay, Woz!

[ncc74656]

And I think that's what Apple has never really understood. They make quality products, but people pay an unreasonable premium for that; and their OS has always sucked, except perhaps for MacOS X.

That's funny...of the OSen that run on the different computers I have, ProDOS on my Apple IIs has never crashed in the 15 years I've used it. Never. You can't say that for Win9x or NT...hell, you can't even say that for Linux (my Linux server once ate itself in a really weird way when a program I was writing malloc'd way too much memory). The worst that's happened is a date-rollover problem once every seven years with certain hardware combinations (specifically, 8-bit IIs with Thunderclock-compatible clock cards). Apple used to fix that with new releases; now, there are patch programs to deal with it. The IIGS (that's the 16-bit model, for those of you in Rio Linda) was even Y2K-ready, despite the last one having been made about eight years ago and the last OS upgrade having been released not too long after that.

_/_
/ v \
(IIGS( Scott Alfter (remove Voyager's hull # to send mail)
\_^_/

Re:Good Interview

[ebh]

Woz's refreshing lack of concentration on matters financial shows that he is willing to sacrifice his personal pleasure in the name of his vision

I'd say that he is not willing to sacrifice "pleasure" for "vision", but rather that he makes them one and the same. For almost 20 years now, he's used his money to do nothing but what he wants to do. He made his bundle, and somehow knew what his idea of The Good Life would be, and he continues to live it.

That's such a happy contrast to the horror stories you hear about so many people who come into sudden wealth. I hope if I ever hit it really big, I'll know what to do with it as well as Woz does.

Re:Geez, what a name

[Black Parrot]

> I was trying to figure out what "Wozniak interview in failure" meant until I read that Failure was an online magazine.

Yeah, the editors are headline challenged today. I thought the other story was Attention: Sensitive User Interface. Like it was some kind of kid-gloves interface for users that are easily offended.

--

Re:Failure Magazine

[a troll]

They're server Failures?! Huh?
---

Re:Yay, Woz!

[Black Parrot]

> I wrote `Microsoft's a monopolist' and the Times wanted to edit it to say, `Microsoft is innovative.'

Looks like the Times is using Microsoft's definition of "innovative".

--

Re:it's not your link

[a troll]

Explain your theory of client link == less busy server.

I would like to patent this system and become filthy, filthy, rich.

Thanks.
---

Re:Yay, Woz!

[Golias]

The third-party PPC machines didn't have this problem

That's because the PPC clone companies, with the exception of Power, had no R&D budget... at all.

Some of them, like Motorolla, also spent $0 marketing their product. Why bother when a review in Macworld will get you plenty of sales?

Finally, most of them used cheaper hardware than Apple traditionally went with. They were basically selling performas in PC cases.

None of the clone vendors did anything to expand the Macintosh market, contrary to the predictions of those who had been calling for it. All they did was put out a "me too" product for less money and steal customers away from Apple, which would be great except none of them could possibly survive without Apple's ongoing OS development, and none of them wanted to share the cost of that work. (They continually balked at Apple's licensing costs, and were bitching and moaning about that price right up to the day that Jobs pulled the plug.)

Woz a good role model in the capitalist world....

[Troy2000]

It sounds to me like he's one of the few people more interested in his own interests than the typical capitalist nirvana (more money at the expense of everything).

Why isn't he as big and bad and rich as Bill Gates? Probably because he *really* doesn't care. Some of the posts expressed concern that its not fair or its unfortunate that he hasn't been as financially sucessful as some of the other pioneers - I doubt he wants or needs our pity. He surely has enough money to continue doing the things he wants, and thats really all a person needs when it comes down to it.

One of the horrible side effects of capitalism is that it becomes very easy for people to lose site of (or never even discover) what actually interests them and brings a smile to their face. Its not too surprising if you think about it:

The core of capitalism is the open market. Anyone can compete. So, whats always in everyones faces? Advertising. "Buy our products. YOU WANT OUR PRODUCTS. YOU ARE NOT COMPLETE WITHOUT OUR PRODUCTS." Look no farther than the advertising strategy of the more successful companies - its a brainwash. People are tricked into thinking that having things equates with being successful and happy (aka materialism). Being rich becomes the ultimate goal. Often in rich communities thats exactly the mentality children are raised on (followed by fraternities, sororities, and businesses). Its quite unfortunate - especially now that the execs at MTV have figured out how brainwash all the teenagers. Anyone else notice that MTV is 1 never-ending commercial now? Anyone else feel like we're in a downward spiral?

Re: Yay, Woz! (Off Topic)

[FyreFiend]

Not all of the clones had the meat slicer cases. I know the early 601 based PowerComputing towers did but My PowerCenter 120 not bad (Better then the PM 8500's)

Bad example.

[renoX]

I do agree with you but Einstein was a bad example.

E=mC^2 is part of the special relativity, but its greatest theory is the generalised relativity (which is less well-know by people because it is MUCH more harder to learn).

There isn't really a problem with the generalised relativity in its domain, but the real problem is that it doesn't mix well with the quantum theory..

So he spends the rest of his life, trying to build an unified theory, which nobody has been able to build yet..

PS: and you could say that its constant opposition to the quantum theory did help in fact to advance the quantum theory!

Re:Woz a better writer than Jobs...

[Cat Mara]

He did not understand the value of innovation, and he and Nolan Bushnell quickly locked horns, just like Steve Jobs and the idiot-from-PepsiCo.

Unfair. Jobs' behaviour left Sculley no choice but to fire his ass. He humiliated the members of the Lisa team. He humiliated the members of the ][ team, despite the fact that the Apple ][ was the only machine Apple was making that was actually selling at the time. He played favourites. Like Jef Raskin put it: `you can't use the words "management" and "Steve Jobs" in the same sentence.'

Like Jobs at Apple, Bushnell was forced out of his own company and the new management destoyed the corporate culture. Unlike Apple, Atari did not pull its innovative culture back together....and it fell.

IMNSHO, it ceases to be your company when you IPO. That was shareholder's money Jobs was burning to fuel his delusions.

And Bushnell? Bushnell was a flake. Chuck E. Cheese? Petsters? Give me a break.

Re:gnarphlager goes to hell

[Tomahawk]

This is from Sign of the Orc, just changed. It's a good story, if I remember correctly. Do a search for Knight Orc, and you'll find the story - Knight Orc was one of the old style text adventures.

T.

Re:NYT: Wake up & smell the coffee

[satanic bunny]

Does it really take Woz coming out of retirement to point out - shock - that M$ has been buying favorable press??? I mean, read the Failure piece/s closely and check the credentials. Michael Malone, for instance, runs Forbes. What kind of an accident is it that he wrote the most one-sided rant of an Apple "book" ever? Yet he is giving them "authoritative" quotes on Woz, Jobs and Apple's engineering.

Why? Not because he "grew up with" Woz and Jobs. This is only true geographically. The only actual Apple personnel he interviewed for his book were all aggrieved in some kind of way. His "insights" about Jobs & Woz & most of the central players are guess-work.

Just because Apple looked like it was going down and a book about THAT looked like it would make a LOT of money. Hence his book deal, hence his book. If you haven't read it, it's kind of mind-boggling. Most reliable journalists, of which there are still a few, would be knocked sideways by the singleminded hatred & envy exuded by it. That comes from the editorial voice - the author.

It's entertaining but....this guy runs Forbes? Hmmm. No wonder all that matters to him re M$'s monopoly is whether or not Gates was smart enough to "get out of trouble".

Whereas it matters to Woz that M$ ARE a monopoly capable of getting _him_ censored.

Failure should have emphasized the NYT's attempt to change an independently commissioned Op-Ed piece. Most people reading this - unless they work at a paper - have little idea HOW rigged all Op-Ed pages are. And let's not even talk about their software reviews!!!

Re: important bit you missed

[satanic bunny]

Hey, didn't you catch the part about *Microsoft's* pals getting Woz's opinion censored? After it was asked for?

Re:Woz was cool but...

[gnome176]

Yes, Woz was/is cool.. remember the Apple chip labeled the IWM? stands for Incredible Woz Machine. I had the cover of my Apple ][ signed by him at a talk... then some jerk stole my computer :(
As a side track, didn't Edison want to use DC to distribute electricity, and others (Westinghouse? gee, I don't remember) had to really fight to get AC accepted. Because Edison was so well respected at the time, his opinions on DC were difficult to overcome.

Re:lack of concern w/matters financial?

[satanic bunny]

Actually Woz is _plenty_ rich enough - as he notes - to never work again. Although, if he hadn't been in the plane crash, whether he would have taken the course he has certainly seems debatable.

One crucial difference is that he, unlike so many software celebs, does have an ability to disconnect when he wants to. ALWAYS MORE MONEY is not the only driving force in his life.

Re:Yay, Woz!

[pb]

I can't argue with you there; I clarified that issue here, actually.

Ah, computers were simpler back then. :)
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Re:Woz a better writer than Jobs...

[Bad Mojo]

Dare I ask? Do you even WORK at IBM?


Bad Mojo

Hey Woz, publish the M$ article!

[Gorimek]

So if Woz has this anti-M$ article lying about, that NYT won't publish, why not publish it somewhere else. Such as here on Slashdot. I know *I* would read it!

If you just joined us without reading the full article, Woz describes how NYT asked him to write an article about the M$ case, but woudn't run it after he was too critical of M$, and he thinks it's beacause of the close ties between M$ and NYT

Re:Hey Woz, publish the M$ article!

[eel]

Frankly mister Pink, the last thing you need is another anti-M$ article.

Re:Yay, Woz!

[ChristTrekker]

Yeah, it sucks to have an OS so usable that a certain Redmond software giant couldn't approach it for 11 more years.

Give props where they're due. Sure, lack of memory protection, blah blah, all sucks...but DOS didn't have that either. Yet for some reason the industry stuck with that model rather than the GUI. It's only within the last 5 years that the industry has had a modern "mainstream" OS. Apple isn't so far behind when you think of it that way.

Re: Yay, Woz!

[pb]

No; Apple didn't follow through on Rhapsody.

An Intel version would be nice, but what I really wanted to see was the native x86-emulation on PPC.
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Re:Yay, Woz!

[Hieronymous Coward]

Didn't Apple only allow clonemakers to buy motherboards? I don't think Power, etc. could just license the ROMs and build any device using them. If they are stuck with a desktop motherboard, they will build desktop machines.

Apple gave up its chance for market share when it insisted on controlling the production of the hardware. This was a valid strategy for the purpose of generating revenue in the short term, but the Apple's natural inability to compete(1) against the whole world on hardware/software pricing and innovation will eventually cause the Mac market to disappear.

(1) Apple is a very innovative company, but one company with limited resources can't keep a proprietary platform competitive with the rest of the world forever.

Re:why isn't he working?

[slycer]

With a couple of billion, I would buy an island, build a nice house (not huge), setup a good power supply, build links of some sort to the rest of the world - hell maybe my own phone switch.. Build a good high-speed net link and I'd be happy.
Course, a helicopter for visits to wherever..

Most of the rest I would donate to some charity or another, keep enough to maintain a good standard of living. Now, $1 billion is probably a little too much for that, but islands can be expensive :-)

Re:why isn't he working?

[Turing Machine]

If memory serves me, Steve suffered a pretty nasty motocycle accident way back

Airplane accident.
--
WordSocket Voice BBS Software

Re:Yay, Woz!

[pb]

Dude, Microsoft makes crappy software too.

But what about the weird memory segmentation model they use? Or all the extra crapppy modules they load? Or the incredibly *slow* performance?

Apple is pretty far behind, which is why we now have MacOS X, instead.
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Re:Yay, Woz!

[mr]

>And I think that's what Apple has never really understood. They make quality products, but people pay an unreasonable premium for that;

Micheal Spindler said "We are committed to maximize shareholder value." when he took over.

That ment that Apple would charge the most they could get for thier machines. (put the screws to the customer)

So, yes....Apple users HAVE paid a premium.

Re: Yay, Woz!

[pb]

I believe it was called the Red Box.

If apple could have had Blue, Yellow, and Red support, with a native Unix core, then Rhapsody would have been excellent.

But... it was just vapor.
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Re:And don't forget Edison, the Bill Gates of the

[Golias]

It adds profound resonance to Apple's "here's to the crazy ones" commercial, don't you think?

"Here's to the ones who thought they could talk to martians. The ones who shocked animals to death. The ones who got too much Mercury in their blood stream..."

Think different, indeed. :)

Reason for Failure Server Failure

[RobL3]

Failure Magazine is not only being Slashdotted right now, but NPR's all things considered just did a piece on the online 'zine as well. It can be found Here.

Re:Splitting the earth in two

[deewite]

but also where do you draw enough power to generate an oscillating signal with enough amplitude to actually make a difference?

if you ar exciting a system at its resonant frequency you don't need a large input to get a large output.

Re:Woz a better writer than Jobs...

[yakfacts]

I'm not convinced IBM has turned around. Things are looking better, but I am taking a wait-and-see approach.

I don't know the story at Apple as well, but when Ray Kassar first took over Atari, he brought in marketing--something Atari never had--and people started to cheer him for "turning Atari around". But soon he started to fire engineers, and destroyed the creative startup environment that had made the company a success. He did not understand the value of innovation, and he and Nolan Bushnell quickly locked horns, just like Steve Jobs and the idiot-from-PepsiCo. Like Jobs at Apple, Bushnell was forced out of his own company and the new management destoyed the corporate culture. Unlike Apple, Atari did not pull its innovative culture back together....and it fell.

IBM has been unique as both an innovator and a dinosaur at the same time. I hope they survive and contiunue on their path toward greater use of open-source SW, but I am not holding my breath.

Re:Edison and Tesla quotes

[Golias]

Heh.

Edison's approach, pedantic though it was, made him a very rich and successful inventor, who made massive improvements on a lot of technologies that were going nowhere without him.

Tesla, on the other hand, became a bitter and insane old man who though he could talk to aliens. History can decide who was the success... oh wait! It already has.

'nuff said, indeed.

Re:dude

[nEoN nOoDlE]

yep, man I hate those guys... but who says you cant do/teach and post moronic comments on slashdot?

Re:Woz was cool but...

[Hard_Code]

Edison ripped off many of his ideas from the people who worked for or with him, including AC from Tesla, who died penniless because he did not believe in restricting the application of his ideas.

Re:Yay, Woz!

[pb]

Are you still talking about the Apple ][ here? That didn't crash often.

However, both MacOS and Windows die too often; I've used both of them. I remember that little bomb icon fondly, along with the Reboot button that didn't work, when the local Mac geek would wander around, going "Do you have a system disk"?
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

at most..

[ebbv]

that would cost about $3-4 million (unless you way overpay for everything.)

seriously, $1 billion is impossible to spend without going completely insane (as the other folks said, your own private space program, et cetera.)

there is no real valid reason anyone needs more than $10million (even your example is rather silly...)
...dave

Re: Yay, Woz!

[HeghmoH]

Er, when did they ever promise that?

The idea was that there would be a PowerPC version of Rhapsody, capable of running both traditional MacOS programs inside a virtual machine, and the more modern NeXT-style binaries. There would be an Intel version, only running the modern stuff. Running Windows programs would be a definite possibility, but left up to third parties. On the PowerPC side, it would be up to other companies to build an emulator.

If you actually have something where Apple had planned to make a built-in x86 emulator for PowerPC Rhapsody, I'd be very interested to see it.

Re:Woz

[MouseR]

It would really be cool to meet him one day, just to have a conversation and thank him.

Send him an email at Woz.org. He answers all received emails.

Re:Woz

[The Optimizer]

Having met Woz in person (at the Apple ][ 20 year reunion, hosted by Jon Romero and Ion Storm), I can verify the most surprising aspect of Woz is his personality. A nicer, more sincere, yet fun loving, life enjoying, mischevious twinkle-in-his-eye uber-geek does not exist. Most of the people I know that have technical skills that approach "build their own arcade machine using only IC's and radioscrap" suffer from lack of human interaction skills and life balance. But not Woz. I think it's impossible to hang around him for any length of time and not go "Hey! what a cool guy".

Bill Gates: Genius

[dwalsh]

He is a business genius. That the best way of describing him. When IBM were the big bad guys (most of you probably don't remember this, but they invented both FUD and Embrace & Extend), Bill and Microsoft spanked them good. Now IBM is a very different company...

Re: Yay, Woz!

[HeghmoH]

If I recall correctly, the Red Box was more of a hypothetical "could be" made up by magazines and web sites. Also, the Red Box idea was more like WINE, in that it would only work on the x86 version and not emulate the processor.

Somebody should research this and find out. :) Maybe it'll even be me....

Whoops! Actually failuremag.com is running

[ch-chuck]

www.failuremag.com is running Apache/1.3.12 (Unix) PHP/4.0.0 mod_ssl/2.6.2 OpenSSL/0.9.5a on Linux

Sorry about that.

dude

[mikpos]

Woz is a teacher now. If you can think of something more admirable than a teacher, I'd like to hear it.

Re:...

[photon317]

I'm being redundant intentionally here and wasting space, but I just have to stand up and agree outloud. In my mind, Woz definitely ranks in the top 10 computer hackers of all time. And I was never even an Apple fan.

Re:And don't forget Edison, the Bill Gates of the

[Golias]

Just yet another Canadian the world is blessed with. Thanks Canaduh.

Edison was born in Ohio, which is very much not in Canada. His first profitable invention, the Edison Universal Stock Printer was built in New York... also not Canada. He then spent most of his career in Menlo Park, New Jersey. Again, not Canada.

His only connection to Canada was that he took a job as a Telegraph assistant with a company in Toronto when he was 16 (and invented an automatic transiever so he could sleep on the job). He was still a teen when he moved to the US.

Failure Looks Promising

[carlhirsch]

NPR did a segment on this magazine yesterday. It sounds wicked-smart.

Sort of like suck in that it busts a hole in the whole dot-com thing.

I recommend it.

-carl

Yay, Woz!

[pb]

At least Woz doesn't give in...

I wrote `Microsoft's a monopolist' and the Times wanted to edit it to say, `Microsoft is innovative.'

...I just wish he'd designed something after the Apple ][...

Now, I loved my C64, I thought it was a great computer regardless, and I definitely liked the graphics and built-in sound better. The Apple ][ was more expandable, you could get more RAM, a soundcard, etc. However, the cost was a *lot* more too, at the time.

And I think that's what Apple has never really understood. They make quality products, but people pay an unreasonable premium for that; and their OS has always sucked, except perhaps for MacOS X. Only time will tell for that one.

However, Woz is always cool in my book. I don't have much respect for Steve Jobs, but maybe that's just the business end.
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Re:Yay, Woz!

[Strog]

I used to expand my Apple II's as much as possible. Thanks to companies like Applied Engineering who made this possible. The IIe had a memory expansion of 512k, an RGB card and Phasor (midi/sound card). I loved Phasor because it had this speech program that would speak whatever you typed. It sounded terrible but considering it was a IIe in 1987. My IIgs had 1 3/4Mb RAM, 60Mb external HD, MIDI keyboard connected, battery backup RAM disk and 2400baud modem. I used to have Applework GS loaded in the RAM disk and boot to it.

I remember when Paintworks Gold came out for the GS and required 1 1/4Mb of RAM. People were complaining about needing that much RAM. The good old days. Both computers are still running today and my mother is still trying to use the IIgs for everything even though I built her a PC a while back.

I haven't owned a Mac but my brother-in-law has exposed me to them again. He does use the dual PII box I built for him. It is running Maya 3 and I wonder if he will get rid of it when Maya for OSX is released. I like what I see in the G4's. I might buy one if I have some extra money but I think I will get a Geforce2 GTS and 900Mhz Thunderbird for my Athlon first.

Re:Yay, Woz!

[cybercuzco]

They make quality products, but people pay an unreasonable premium for that;

Thats the point, they can charge more because they make quality products, why do you think a lexus is more than a geo? They both have engines, the both will get you from point a to point b both have 4 wheels, brakes, use gasoline etc, why is a lexus so much more than a geo? Because its a quality product, thats why Apple charges a premium for their computers.

Re:Yay, Woz!

[bugg]

They both have engines, the both will get you from point a to point b both have 4 wheels, brakes,

Breaks? Getting you from point A to point B? Obviously you've never driven a Geo.

Re:Another Tesla quote

[Golias]

That's why most electrical engineers, either haven't heard of him, or are taught to scoff at the mention of his name.

Gawd, this is exactly why Tesla cultists annoy the piss out of me.

EVERYBODY who has ever studied the history of the industrial age has not only heard of Tesla, but is well aware of his major contributions. You do not possess any 'leet arcane knowledge about a "forgotten" inventor. We all know who the f??? he was. Some of us read about him in grade school. Even stoned-out cover bands from the 80's knew about him. You know nothing that has not already been discussed about him; you just have an over-inflated opinion of him.

He was one of many, many inventors who, like Edison, made some important contributions to the field. Nothing more. Get over it. Quickly.

Dead already

[FascDot Killed My Pr]

Well, I guess "Failure" magazine is aptly named. Goodbye server. I'll just have to stay here with the other slowpokes and make humorous/offtopic remarks.

"...claims there's no bad blood between himself and Steve Jobs..."

Probably because neither of them uses blood. Woz is clearly an advanced AI left here by aliens while Jobs probably upgraded from blood to a secret liquid compound that speeds his "boot time" in the morning from 10 minutes to an insanely great 5 seconds.
--

Re:Dead already

[deefer]

So, it's an online mag about dotcom failures...
And it's a dotcom startup...
I'm sure this isn't lost on the readers of /. ...
[OT] what's up with hackernews.com the last two days?

Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.

...

[David Ham]

there's a documentary-like feature done by PBS called "Triumph of the Nerds" and my dad being the Director of Engineering at an affiliate of PBS, I had him get me a copy. They cover Woz pretty well. By this I mean, they show his technical genius and accomplishments as well as his humility. I can't help but get the impression from *everything* I read, hear or see about Woz that he's a genuinely good human being and really one of the greatest hackers ever. It's always nice to hear about him in the news from time to time.
--
DeCSS source code!
you must amputate to email me.

Re:Woz a better writer than Jobs...

[yakfacts]

You raise a couple good points. Steve Jobs is no hero of mine. He needed to be controlled, but bringing in Sculley was not a solution. And that was Jobs own fault.

Regarding Atari, Bushnell would have run the company right into the ground given enough time. It was his poor management decisions that resulted in the sale to Warner and the arrival of Kassar in the first place. Atari had no marketing.

But after the arrival of Kassar, they had no engineering either.

I take your points, but still stand by my statement that management needs to understand the technology they handle. I should add, however, that innovators tend to make lousy managers. Neither Jobs nor Bushnell had any idea how to run a company. But they knew how to hire engineers and how to have an idea.

Geez, what a name

[11223]

I was trying to figure out what "Wozniak interview in failure" meant until I read that Failure was an online magazine.

It's interesting how he keeps claiming that there's no bad blood between him and Jobs - why isn't he working at Apple now, or at least on the board of directors? Does he even hold any apple stoc, for that matter?

Re:Geez, what a name

[cybercuzco]

Actually he still is, hes a consultant to apple and still technically on their payroll. And really, why put yourself through all that stress when you can teach High School ;-) And he alrady has more than enough money kicking around im sure.

If you don't know basic science

[tilly]

Don't abuse your ignorance by BSing about it.

Einstein did a *lot* besides the theory of relativity. (Hint, what did he win his Nobel for?) Furthermore his contributions continued for a very long time. For instance he was hardly a youngster when he and some friends came up with the EPR paradox!

Regards,
Ben

Re:Woz was cool but...

[Mr. Slippery]

Woz and the rest of the people who started the personal computer revolution should be no less celebrated than say, Christopher Columbus.

Um, I'd say that those who invented PC technology deserve much more celebration than the rat bastard who started the genocide and slavery of the American Indians. (Not to mention that he fudged his figures in planning his circumnavigation of the globe; he was just lucky to run into land before he starved.)

Woz, NY Times, and Microsoft

[blakestah]

Can it really be true that if you are someone as rich and powerful as Microsoft, that you can buy favorable Op-Ed pieces ???

Woz seems to think so.

why isn't he working?

[ebbv]

he doesn't have to :)

as soon as i have $5-10 million i'm retiring, permanently. no more devoting my time to anything i don't want to do.

anyone who goes after more than that is basically just being greedy,.. with that kind of money you can live your life and do pretty much anything you want, with no problems. nobody needs a billion dollars, and if i somehow had it, i'd give almost all of it away (again, only keep a bit.)

and don't bother telling me it's only a matter of perspective, i'm well aware :) some people could get by with less than what i want, but,... seriously, if you think about it, how can you possibly spend $10 or even $1 billion? it's just ridiculous...
...dave

Re:why isn't he working?

[redeyedfish]

Actually, there may be more to it that the simple fact that he doesn't need to work. If memory serves me, Steve suffered a pretty nasty motocycle accident way back when that definetly hampered what he could do for little while. Now I think he's working with kids teaching them about computers (that's one teacher I wished I had). It may simply be that this is what he wants to do with his life, money is not always the greatest reward. I'd expect people at /. to appreciate that more than most groups. -Sam

Re:why isn't he working?

[JCMay]

But the Huges HK-1 / H-4 Hercules, commonly called the "Spuce Goose," was not some Quixotic personal transport program. It was a project by which a military transport was designed and constructed out of non-strategic materials. That was the goal. It was undeniably a technical success.

Please see this page for a description of why the HK-1 / H-4 came about. It's part of the Official Spruce Goose Web Page

Re:The Major Malfunction

[tackle]

it is not down it's just really working to hard :)
telnet www.failuremag.com returns redhat 6.1 so I would say reports of m$ are overrated

Tackle

hrm apparently,..

[ebbv]

j00 d0n'7 sp3@k v3ry g00d 3ngl15h!!!!!

i said nothing of the sort,.. if you're not bright enough to understand my two-line post i feel sorry for whatever institution you bother to inflict your lack of usefulness on :)
...dave

'feeding the trolls since 1997!'

Woz was cool but...

[deander2]

I do think we give him too much credit. Sure, we all see the humble genius developer/hacker in him and (at least I do) strive to even maybe find that in ourselves, but come on.

Woz is a very smart man, one who has designed many cool devices and one who has played a big roll in our past, but is he really that revelent today? Has he presented any new paradigms? Has he pushed new technology?

Many people have contributed greatly to the advancement of computers, and they deserve to be written about in the history books. But Woz was a man, and we give him more credit than he deserves by glorifying him as we do.

Personally, if I did some really cool stuff back in the day, I'd love for people to still be talking about it 20 years later but I would be nervous if I was built into the ultimate computer man, and I think that shows a lot in his writing.

Re:Woz was cool but...

[Gallowglass]

Geez man! "Woz wuz great but what has he done lately?" That attitude irritates me.

Lots of people do something stunning in their lives and then nothing really after that. Take Einstein. His great theory (of which e=Mc^2 is part) was developed in his youth. He himself said that the rest of his life was spent trying unsuccessfully to resolve the problems with the theory.

So, by your standards, Einstein wasn't any great shakes because he never came up with any new ideas after the first one.

Sheesh!

Woz is the coolest man on the planet.

[BigZaphod]

Someday I want to meet Woz, shake his hand, maybe have a short chat, and then be on my way. That is one of my dreams in life. Too bad I live a few thousand miles from Silicon Valley. :-)

To have such an amazingly positive outlook on life after all he's seen and done is what makes him so danged respectable. Too bad we all can't be like that.

l8r
Sean

Woz the hacker / Gates the cracker

[maclay01]

Before Gates hired some lacky to back-engineer someone elses OS for IBM, Woz was building his company from money selling boxes to hack long distance. How cool is that?

Re:Woz a better writer than Jobs...

[Anonymous Coward]

When will the technology industry realize that you can't have hi-tech industries run by people who don't understand them?

But wouldn't people say the same thing about Lou Gershner (sp?), who had never done anything with computers before he came to IBM and completely turned the place around?

it's not your link

[ebbv]

i'm on a university T3 and i can't get through :)

looks like they weren't prepared for the likes of /.

...dave

Woz got the shaft?

[Cable]

Did Woz get the shaft from Apple, or did he just quit after seeing the company he founded get turned into a High Tech Religion where the Mac Developers fought with the Apple // Developers? Maybe he didn't want to get caught up in the Mac Jihad that was taking over at Apple?

Jihadspeak for more info.

Re:And don't forget Edison, the Bill Gates of the

[Bun]

I think he may be confused with Bell, who did some work in Canada.

Woz a better writer than Jobs...

[yakfacts]

I had never read any of "The Woz"'s writing before, and it is nice that he does not have the "look at me, I am wonderful" problems of Steve Jobs. To listen to SJ, one would think that he--with some technical assistance from SW--created the microcomputer. SW is a lot more accurate.

Also nice was the mention of Mike Markkula, but like most stories of the founding of Apple no mention is made of the role of Nolan Bushnell.

I was very, very pleased to see mention of Atari engineeer Al Acorn in the article, however. If you know the full story on Atari--which SW does not cover--the complicated reasons for Bushnell's decision were what eventually brought the fall of Atari. Bad management from a ex-Burlington manager ran Atari into the ground, and a ex-Pepsi manager came inches from killing Apple. When will the technology industry realize that you can't have hi-tech industries run by people who don't understand them?

Woz has his head on a lot straighter than most of the people in SV.

NYT & Microsoft

[wishus]

Applause to Woz for pointing out this association (NYT & MS).. I don't trust the media anyway, after reading some of Chomsky's works, but it's always nice when a great figure like Woz points out the blatant bias in media.

wish
---

Woz

[cybercuzco]

I can see whats coming, a barrage of Woz worship, now some people might think that all the affection slashdot readers show for woz is not appropriate, but if you know about computers and youve read some of the things that woz has done, you cant help but bend down on your knees and shout "were not worthy! were not worthy!" ala waynes world. How many of you out there could build their own arcade machine using only IC's and radioscrap? Who could Build their own computer from scratch, and I mean scratch, and how many of you would be as humble as Woz is after doing it? A truly great man.

Good Interview

[Phil Eschio]

Woz seems like a pretty interesting guy. I'm surprised alone about his lack of blood after he got the big throbbing shaft from Steve Jobs at Apple. I'm just guessing it fit really well with him, and he was able to take it with minimal pain.

Woz's refreshing lack of concentration on matters financial shows that he is willing to sacrifice his personal pleasure in the name of his vision, which definitely places him as an ideal partner in the eyes of many. He's the kind of guy who just grits his teeth, and quietly gets to work on the job under the sheets. No wonder he's brought Apple such success even though he isn't one of the suited Apple bigshot whores.

Like his thoughts on the whole MS affair too. I'm glad he doesn't have an irrational phobia about large things coming like most paranoid geeks do. What MS had to offer Apple turned him on, and he agreed with the quickie MS/Apple deal unlike most of the bleeding heart reformers of slashdot.

Just hope you keep working it hard, Woz, cuz you are the best at what you do, and I'm sure Steve Jobs knows that better than anyone else, baby.


"The most fortunate of persons is he who has the most means to satisfy his vagaries."