Wozniak's Comments on "Pirates"

webslacker wrote in to tell us that Steve Wozniak has posted his commnts on the TNT Movie, Pirates of the Silicon Valley. He notes several things and clarifies other things. As many of you noted, the movie made him out to be one of the coolest guys ever to live. I'd say thats very deserved. And I'm not saying that just because we had an Apple ][ (on a cart wheeled from class to class!) in my elementary school.

Woz: A Compassionate Hacker

Just as Woz says:

I designed the computers just to do it and show the world that it could be done and help them happen. Later Steve Jobs suggested starting a company to make money from it. I'd been giving out schematics for free at the Homebrew Computer Club. That's what I believed in. It was hard for me to even start the company when it looked like there might be real money in it.

He is the proverbial compassionate hacker. He was perfectly happy to just give out the schematics, and found ethical dilemma in building a business which might turn into a serious money maker. This is no different from the likes of rms, Linus, Eric Raymond, Larry Wall, and the now very large number of people out creating such wonderful things as gnome and KDE, GIMP, Python, Apache, and the list just goes on.

Doesn't it just blow your mind that this guy is out teaching high school instead of finding new ways to make himself richer? Don't you wish you could have been lucky enough tp have taken classes from this guy? He does these things because he enjoys the labor, and wants to help others enjoy the success of creating new things! What better lesson would you want your children to learn?

That he made enough money to comfortably live in ease for the rest of his life may be blind luck -- but don't you think he deserves it more than Gates, Jobs, Ellison, and all the other blowhards who probably haven't written a line of code in 20 years?

Woz is a man I can respect.

Thanks Woz!

Haven't seen _Pirates_ yet, but just wanna reminisce just 1 sec about the late 70s/early 80s, being about 10 years old, using my friend's Apple II, and knowing my life would never be the same. I'd later get a Franklin Ace 1000 (Apple II clone w/lower case & 64k!!) and that was it, I was hooked. Jobs may have been running the business, but to us kids "Woz" WAS Apple.

Woz had an attitude which, I can't fully say how, sublimated itself into my young conciousness. He was a cool, almost fatherly role model who set an example of what it meant to do the "Right Thing"... A crazy, bearded silicon Jedi Knight, a Wizard...I'll never forget going to the computer store to check out the IIgs "Woz" limited edition and seeing his handwriting...thinking "how cool!"

Oh, and YES, who can forget (in no particular order) Locksmith, Dalton's Disk Disintigrator, The Beagle Bros., H-Wings in Sneakers, The Novation Apple Cat, Castle Wolfenstein, 80-column cards, GBBS, Ruski Duck, Cat-Fur, G-files, Space Eggs, The Wizard and the Princess, peeks & pokes, "cracked by" splash screens, Ascii Express, Lemonade Stand in lo-res, call -151, 300/202/212, tape drives... ah, those were the days.

Thanks Woz!
W

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Also check this out

Suck.com [suck.com]

Re: Contract doesn't expire in 2001

AFAIK, the commitment was that for 5 years, Microsoft would publish Office for Mac on parity with Office for Windows. Since the commitment was made in 1997, it follows that it'll expire in 2002. And yeah, I also wonder what'll happen after that...

Temp Mirror

I see the woz.org has been slashdotted. So I've posted a mirror at
http://www.discover.net/~still/
No images, just the important stuff. I expect woz.org to be back up soon.

Jonathan
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The day Microsoft makes something that doesn't suck is the day they start making vacuum cleaners.

Apple I

Did anyone see this? This was buried a little more deeply on his page, and refers to the auction of the first Apple I.


WOZ: I wanted to give the first Apple I, on a PC board, to Liza LO*OP of the LO*OP Center in Cotati, California. I took Steve [Jobs] up there and she showed us how she rolled a PDP-11 around to elementary schools and told the students how a computer was just a collection of programs written by people and didn't have a mind of it's own. 4th through 6th graders. I admired this and wanted to give her the first one. Jobs actually made me buy it, if you can believe that, for $300. I did and gave it to Liza. The one being advertised must be number 2.

This is very interesting. I wonder if the auction house realizes that it isn't selling the original Apple I like they claim? Supposedly, Jobs had identified it as being authentic, so I guess Woz disagrees. Hmmmm...

Re:Old Woz stories

One more story I've read (and I don't know if this is true) is that during their early days together, Jobs told Woz they'd split a payment 50-50. But he lied about the amount and told Woz it was $500, when it was actually twice that, while pocketing the rest himself. Apparently Woz found this out, and things were never the same between them again. (Can somebody confirm if this is true?).

The full story was published in Next Generation magazine a few months back. Jobs was working for Atari at the time, and the company was designing the mainboard for the Breakout arcade game. Breakout was a pre-microprocessor machine, built with discrete logic, so it was to Atari's advantage to optimize the design to use as few chips as possible. Jobs took the problem to Woz, who did a phenomenal job of optimizing the board in exchange for half of Jobs' bonus. Jobs told Woz that he got $500 out of it and paid him accordingly... but Jobs really got $5000! Woz literally cried when he found out, several years later, what his friend had done.

The punchline (if you can call it that) was that Woz's changes worked, but were totally incomprehensible to the engineers at Atari, so his design never went into production. Sad but true.
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Re:Schematics

Hey, if those are still out.. does that mean I can build my own Apple I?
I don't know this for sure, but I think the chips that the Apple I used are hard to come by anymore (Like memory chips, processors, etc.) I'd imagine that your best chance would be to partially redesign it to use modern-day, easily available parts. That might be something worth writing to Woz about.
Oh, wait a sec, it might violate US Supercomputer Export laws... Sorry, couldn't resist.

Old Woz stories

In an article (I think it was in Byte) there's a story about Woz going back to college to continue his academic education. Of course, by then Apple was a billion dollar company so he enrolled under a false name. During an economics class, the lecturer went on a rant about how companies only try to cheat and steal from customers with bad products, and Woz stood up to disagree, but was cut down by the teacher. He says something along the lines of - "Here I was, the founder of one of the most successful companies in history, and he was telling me I didn't know what I was talking about and I had to just sit there and listen." Cracked me up.

Another really good one - Woz hacked the phone to make free international calls, and as a prank, he and his buddies called up the Pope. The bishop who answered asked them who wanted to speak to him in the middle of the night.

Woz: "Henry Kissinger".
Bishop (now suspicious) : "You don't sound like Henry Kissinger".

There's another story he relates about writing a spreadsheet at Apple, and being the nice guy he is, he's nervous about the deadline and worried about being fired. Woz. Worried about being fired from Apple. Well, he had some Star Wars contacts call his boss and tantalize him with some rare memoribilia. I forget what exactly it was, but it was a pretty funny trick he played.

One more story I've read (and I don't know if this is true) is that during their early days together, Jobs told Woz they'd split a payment 50-50. But he lied about the amount and told Woz it was $500, when it was actually twice that, while pocketing the rest himself. Apparently Woz found this out, and things were never the same between them again. (Can somebody confirm if this is true?).

L.