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.'"

Comments

Re:Not the same world anymore

[John Miles]

Well, it might have been insightful, but it certainly wasn't right. Surf through eBay's electronic components and equipment categories sometime, and if you don't come away with more cool ideas for stuff to build than you will ever live to try, you're not much of a hacker.

Sure, the barriers to entry are high if you want to mess with FPGAs or do microwave engineering in your garage, but at least it's possible for you to do that kind of thing if you want. There are probably a hundred times more opportunities open to the hardcore amateur electronics buff nowadays than there were in Woz's day. You can bitch and moan all you want about how "hard" it is, but I can remember when a 6502 was a pretty intimidating thing to deal with, too.

Wrong.

[jay-be-em]

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.