Slashdot Mirror
Woz OK's Apple I Resurrection
A reader wrote to us with a story from Wired about a gentleman who's hand-crafting Apple Is for ordering. He's been unable to get a response from Apple, but Woz has graciously responded.
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
What kind of demand is there for Apple I's? The people who I know who have bought one is for nostalgic purposes; will an replica Apple have the same effect? I'm not sure. The fact that he took the time to "unimplement" features to make the computer more realistic is neat though.
That aside, I bet the guy making them is having a really good time. Woz knows that home brewing computers is a lot of fun. It's good to see someone do something like this despite the patent situations that usually arise.
100% Crunchier
You know, in the beginning software usually was open and free, then it became closed and proprietry - exactly the thing that got Stallman into a rage and ultimately produced the FSF, the GPL and tons of GNU software etc.
Still, it was a nice thing of him to do - but I bet you dollars to doughnuts he didn't give it away because he had some ideals about freedom - I'm pretty sure, he like every other hacker in the 70's and 80's just wanted to show the others the cool stuff he had made. I know that is how I would have thought back then, almost noone cared about any licenses or anything then - it was all showing off, and lots of stuff went into public domain.
If it had been an idealistic thing already then, you would have seen a whole nother company later, I'm sure.
We never really had the Apple-1 here, but you can re-live the heady days of the British equivalent, CLive Sinclair's MK14.. (Precursor to ZX-80/81/Spectrum etc)
http://users.aol.com/mk14emu/emulator.htm
"You lied to me! There is a Swansea!"
Lest anyone forget, this was the same Homebrew Computer Club where a certain Bill Gates got a little upset by the way some people were sharing software. RMS was just 23 years old then and hadn't had his Vision by then. That would take another nine years .....
I wonder what would have happened if the others at the HCC had decided to beat the whining nerd senseless with suitably-sized pieces of constructional timber instead of capitulating to his ridiculous assertions of ownership?
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Isn't it great that he's using a Commodore 1701 or 1702 monitor (Can't tell from that pic, they're identical aside from the label.) on his Apple computer? Those 170x monitors were actually very durable, they were made by JVC, I believe.
-- Liberalism is a mental disorder.
"The best anyone could say was that it was mine and that I made it public," Woz said to Briel.
Seems like the Woz is saying that he originally published the specifications of the Apple I, including the ROM code into open source.
One wonders if he could be convinced to put it into the GNU license. Yes, it is ancient-ancient code that would be good for only esoteric or educational purposes, but it would also make a statement about obsoleted programs that have little or no commercial value being used to teach by example. Something Microsoft and other huge commercial code vendors should take a lesson from.