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Woz Still Misses Homebrew Computer Club and Apple
UtahSaint writes "The Electronic Design site has nabbed a short interview with the Woz, where he waxes poetically about his time growing up as an Engineer and founding Apple. Even to this day, he says, he still misses the Homebrew Computer Club and his days running around Apple leading the technical teams. 'I miss the technical camaraderie ... The whole feeling of being on a revolution, on the edge. I miss the intuitive philosophies.'"
Not unusual for most people to remember with inordinate fondness the times past that they have lived through. I doubt that WOz would be waxing poetic if he remembered the jockeying and bickering and the easing out of the scene that happened when Jobs effectively obliterated him from the pantheon. Jobs was arguably better suited to "lead" Apple beyond it's enbryonic days - but still.....
See that long UID - that's what you get for lurking too long
This might look like atangent to some, but bear with me for a moment: how did the world change in just a few short decades. The 70s and 80s were years when a skilled individual, perhaps with the help of a peer, would be able to project and implement his/her idea of a computer. You had a flurry of various hardware and software architectures, most richly in the "home computer" market, but not only.
For an example, the S-100 based computers definitely were in the professional segment, and yet a lot of hardware accessories existed, designed and produced by small workshops.
Fast forward to today: what can an individual do, today? Electronic components are integrated to the point that you can't even assemble them without special and very expensive equipment, not to talk about the motherboards. Not to talk about the difficulties of prototyping. The bar to entry has been set incredibly high. So high, in fact, that the world of microprocessor architectures has significantly shrunk, and basically the only computer designed, produced and sold is based on an intel processor.
It's a word where only multimillion dollar corporations can implement visionary ideas - but them being corporations, it's an idea that usually doesn't excite the developers, only the product managers. It has to be profitable, that's the only relevant angle. In this world, the ideals Wozniak is after, are dead.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Wonder if he has ever considered recreating it? Something akin to a modern Menlo Park, but with Woz at its head instead of a tyrant like Edison. A place where meetings actually bring results. A place where you can acquire new knowledge and skills while helping others learn as well. Search out and bring together freethinkers and solid engineers. This could be taken lots of directions and many of them at once. He has the money and sounds like he has the desire, plus he has the reputation to acquire more funding. Such a place could help move his interests in space along too. Even if he didn't want the day to day active management, he could assign that to others while keeping himself in overriding control while moving about and being active in discussions. Of course that still might change the feel for him if people looked at him as the boss and not just one of the creative engineers.
As amazing as Woz's achievements were, and they truly were, he needed Jobs more than Jobs needed him. Without both of them there would be no Apple, but Jobs would have gone on to find some other venture. He was pretty much guaranteed to be successful. But Woz was happy with simply impressing the members of the Home Brew Club. He'd have never turned his work into a successful company.
(I'm not trying to slight Woz's accomplishments. He did amazing things.)
I have no great love of Jobs, but let's be serious. If Woz was the boss of Apple, the company wouldn't exist any more.
Ha. Modded funny, I love it. Here it goes anyway:
I was hoping this was true the last time I needed to buy a new laptop.
I compared top of the line offerings from Apple and IBM/Lenovo. Note that I'm not comparing Apples to cheap ass PCs, that would be all too easy. Thinkpads are the gold standard for x86 laptops.
Here's what I got:
Thinkpad T61
15.4" LCD, 1680x1050
2.2gHz Intel Core 2 Duo
2 gigs of ram
100gb 7200rpm drive
dvd recorder
integrated wireless and bluetooth
That comes to.... $1458.
(Seriously, check it out on lenovo.com)
Now let's go to Apple. Surely this machine is at the level of the MacBook Pro. MBPro STARTS at 2 grand, same processor/ram, though 20GB extra hard drive (at a blazing 5400rpm). And I'm stuck at 1440x900 on the screen, not to mention stuck with a crappy ass keyboard that can't hold a candle to the venerated thinkpad keyboard.
Now, it's true that I could add a 20" LCD with a lightning fast 16ms response time for.. SIX HUNDRED DOLLARS?! What the.. I just picked up this Samsung 20 incher, 2ms response, for under two hundred.
The dream that Macs can be price comparable to PCs will probably never come true.
"Orthodoxy means not thinking--not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness." --Eric Blair
It's actually possible to do far more with electronics at home today than in the 1970s. But the amount of information you need to do it is much greater.
If you want to play with microcontrollers at the bare machine level, you can get something modern, like an ATMega 128. The entire tool chain, which is gcc plus a rather nice interactive development environment from Atmel, is all free. Development boards with lights, buttons, and a little LCD display are about $55. The only extras you need are a 12VDC power supply and a JTAG to serial converter.
If you want to have PC boards made, it costs about $50 to $75 to have a small one made. Free design software is available. This is all much easier than it used to be; no more mailing transparent films around. You just upload the files. They even drill the holes and plate them through.
Soldering, though, is much harder than it used to be. Soldering fine-pitch surface mount parts requires special tools, which aren't cheap, and much skill. And there are harder parts, like ball grid arrays. Worse, soldering is going lead-free. This is good for health, but means a narrower temperature range between the temperatures for successful soldering and part damage. Soldering is now a temperature and time controlled process. It can be done by hand, and there are hobbyists who do it, but it takes practice, skill, good vision, and good fine motor coordination.
Getting parts is far easier. Everybody serious uses Digi-Key. They have data sheets on line for most of the parts they sell, reliably ship within hours of ordering, and will let you order one each of fifty different small parts. But if you don't know much about electronics, the Digi-Key web site and catalog will be very intimidating.
The real problem with hobbyist electronics today is that expectations are so high. In the 1970s, you could build stuff cooler than other people could buy. Today, consumer electronics is so sophisticated that there's little hope of beating what somebody can buy at Best Buy. The payoff isn't there.