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)
..why Woz is so respected and admired by some people. Heck, this guy has what one could call, a following of fans. The more I learn about him, the more I feel he'd be my perfect role model - a talented hardware (actually systems) engineer that is also noble.
Sigged!
For example, when typing onscreen, the replica can perform a backspace, which the original cannot. Briel said it took him weeks to figure out how to disable it.
All he needed to do was install X
These days a lot of people class themselves as inventors or techies, but they're just interested in money, or the whole patent game.
This story reaffirms Woz as my favorite techie of the last fifty years. His inventions, while not quite on the level of the wheel or the television, have revolutionized numerous areas of technology.
But what sets him apart from the majority is his openness and friendliness. He doesn't appear to get riled at people asking him questions about his inventions or theories, and he doesn't put himself on a pedestal talking in techie-mumbo-jumbo. How many techies are like that these days? He almost seems to have no ego.
We need more people like this in tech. I will even admit that I have an ego, and a tendancy to 'talk down' to non-technical people sometimes. Woz is inspirational in that you don't need to do this to be respected in the tech community.
His Web site is a reminder of what an open minded, friendly, and unjaded character he is. I am sure he would cringe at reading this post, but I hereby dedicate it to the 'nicest techie of modern times', even if he's not the most famous.
It's nice to see that people will be able to experience and remember what once made the computer field great; a sense of wonder, and good engineering!
No one today does anything innovative, except occasionally Apple...no one takes chances, and when they do, they do it so half-assed that they already seem to think that they are going to fail, and thus become a self-fufilling prophecy.
But people like Woz were willing to take that leap, because their knew their engineering was good and innovative, and because of that we have the systems we have today. Without the Apple computer, we would still be using terminals on smaller, but more powerful mainframes and minis.
So thanks again Woz, for the Apple 1.
ttyl
Farrelll
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
From the article: Besides, Woz continued, he freely distributed the Apple I's schematics and ROM code at the Homebrew Computer Club in 1975, long before he and Steve Jobs went into partnership and began selling the machines from Jobs' parents' garage.
"The best anyone could say was that it was mine and that I made it public," Woz said to Briel.
Could this be the first implementation of open source? Or at least open design? There wasn't a GPL at the time, but it was open.
So linux geeks can love him too, just like astronomers love Gallileo!
Everything seemed to be going so nice
'till the end of all beings punched right through the ice
Imagine the modern equivalent of disabling the backspace key: you might remove the second and third mouse buttons - oh, wait...
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Other than in highly commercialized areas, most source was 'open' in as much that you could easily see a lot of it, even if you couldn't legally copy it or change it.
Of course, it sounds like Woz was inviting people to take it and change it, although that is not made clear.. making something public back then was not the same as giving everyone a right to change it for commercial purposes (unlike today's GPL world).
Back then, of course, even on mainframes the code for business applications was often interpreted. On the microcomputers that appeared in the late 70's and early 80's, a lot of source was also open to view. Everyone remembers typing in sources from books and computer magazines. And I'm sure a lot of us 'escaped' programs and typed 'LIST' (on those platforms which used BASIC anyway!) and watched the source code fly up the screen.
The code was not 'open' in the GPL/Open Source way, but open as in.. not protected.. somewhat in the same way that nearly all Perl scripts you can buy now are readable source-wise (even if they're obfuscated).
Today everything's only 'protected' because of the commercialization of the IT sector, and a cynicism and 'protectionist' attitude of coders. But back in the fun 'early' days, source was a lot more in your face, even if you couldn't change it and sell it on.
Just thought I would mention that Woz is appearing for our local Mac user group on Wednesday. I realize I'll probably get modded down for this, but we really need to sell a few more tickets, so if you mods can find it in your heart to at least leave it at karma 1... :)
My English teacher once told me that two positives don't make a negative. Two words for her: Yeah, right.
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!
After some time, the whole "cuteness" of aged hardware wears off and you cease to be amazed with how far technology has come. It's only novelty for few days.
For some people its not a matter of "cuteness", but of interest and appreciation. Some people enjoy the challenge of seeing what they can squeeze out of a limited platform, which can really be quite amazing. (How many K above 48k does your C compiler need to run?) Some people find the relative efficiency of earlier platforms agreeable. Some people enjoy the simplicity of earlier platforms. Some people just want to have what they couldn't afford at the time, to explore the things they missed. Some people want older platforms to run a program that they really liked (More(TM) on the Mac anyone?) that isn't availalbe anywhere else. Some people want to experiment and find the older hardware and software more approachable. There are lots of reasons besides "cuteness" for someone to want something like this. Bigger, better, faster isn't always better or faster or even as interesting.
I've typed on everything from a 2Mhz Z80 system to a 2.8Ghz system. Can you guess how different my typing speed was? Can you guess which one booted faster?