
Steve Wozniak remembers the early days [video] - tilt
http://www.bloomberg.com/video/steve-wozniak-on-steve-jobs-geekiness-and-starting-apple-GVS_jUoTQtGYj9fwLg8dbQ.html
======
Rainymood
For some reason I just think that Steve Wozniak is so cute. It's like watching
a child, someone with a real passion and heart for hardware, in a somewhat
older man's body. The way he talks about his hardware. This is exactly the
reason why Wozniak and Steve made such a good team, Steve complimented Wozniak
perfectly. A dream team, so to speak.

~~~
cjslep
It's interesting to see how Woz's attitude towards Steve Jobs has changed over
the years. In the book _The Ultimate History of Video Games_ (2001), I
remember Woz being very bitter about Steve Jobs and characterized Steve as
someone who would rip you off if he could.

~~~
piyush_soni
I still think he'd believe the same, but may be he's just learned to be
'politically correct' a bit, just like today's businessmen are.

~~~
coldtea
1) Err, the other guy got sick and died.

2) Many years have passed since that time mentioned by the parent.

3) Woz is not the type to be "politically correct".

~~~
piyush_soni
>> _Err, the other guy got sick and died._

So what? Should one's opinion towards another person change when he/she dies?

>> _Woz is not the type to be "politically correct"._

Everyone is, to an extent. That's why I used 'may be', because a lot of people
who weren't, learn it. I'm not saying it's bad.

~~~
coldtea
> _So what? Should one 's opinion towards another person change when he/she
> dies?_

For people from Vulcan it's usually difficult to explain this, because the
logical answer is no.

In real life though, one's opinion towards another person can and DOES change
when he/she dies.

Plus, since you're being logical and all, we were discussing whether Woz
changed opinion on Jobs, not whether he SHOULD HAVE changed. So the
philosophical question "So what? Should one's opinion change...?", etc,
doesn't apply to my response. I didn't say it _should_ change (a moral
judgement), I just listed the fact that Jobs died as one of three possible
factors that might have changed Woz's opinion of him (an estimation of what
might happened).

But, to answer that too, yes, I think changing opinion about someone when
he/she dies it not that bad, and it actually makes sense. Not in all cases,
but in some cases sure.

Death gives closure to the persons life story and makes you able to see it in
perspective. It also makes you think of stuff that you are less trivial than
the ones a lot of people focus on when the other person is alive (e.g. petty
grudges).

Your question assumes the person that dies was in the wrong, and the person
that lives should continue to have the same opinion on him. But the other
person dying also triggers a re-evaluation of whether our judgement of them
was correct or not. How many people regret not being nicer to their father or
their spouse when they die, understanding that some things that seemed
unsurmountable in separating were actually BS compared to those that should
unite them?

~~~
axotty
Great response. I lol'd at the people from Vulcan bit. Your points about the
change of perspective death offers are very true and insightful.

I have nothing to add other than I really enjoyed reading this and felt
compelled to comment. It upped my mood :) Keep up the positive outlook
(sometimes rare on this site) and have a great day.

------
midnightclubbed
tl;dr - "The garage is a bit of a myth. We did no designs there, no
breadboarding, no prototyping, no planning of products. We did no
manufacturing there. The garage didn’t serve much purpose, except it was
something for us to feel was our home. We had no money. You have to work out
of your home when you have no money."

~~~
ypeterholmes
Videos suck like that. What could have been one sentence becomes a whole
multi-media, ad infested clustersuck.

~~~
cbd1984
"Boy gets taken from an idyllic childhood, becomes rich and corrupt newspaper
man, and utters an enigmatic last word on his death bed."

"Large fish eats people. Chomp. Chomp chomp."

"Ugly bell-ringer falls in love with beautiful social outcast. Doesn't get
her."

"Man loses leg, sanity, life to large white aquatic mammal. Crewmember who
enjoyed knocking hats off mens' heads returns alone to tell the tale."

Yep. Much better.

~~~
victorhooi
Hmm, I don't get the first two?

Third is The Hunchback of Notre Same.

Fourth is Moby Dick.

~~~
gjkood
1\. Citizen Kane 2\. Jaws (???)

~~~
cbd1984
Yes, Jaws

------
Kenji
I wish there were (more?) people who feel about software like Steve Wozniak
feels about hardware. Because it is an art, a pursuit of perfection. And not
slamming frameworks, libraries and snippets together until something kind of
runs sometimes.

~~~
NhanH
I suspect a lot of us had the ideal, and it got beaten out of you somewhere
during your first job.

In a sense, Woz was incredibly lucky to be able to success that early, and
never lost the childhood sense of wanting perfection and playful. And as
someone else mentioned, Jobs is also a perfection-seeking type of personality,
which helped alot - most of the "business guys" nowadays couldn't careless
about that. At best you'd hope that your business partner care about how the
product looks like, let alone the code behide it.

It's hard to keep your head down to produce good code, when the business side
constantly remind you that customers don't really give a shit about the code,
they just want it to run.

~~~
stevewoz
Thanks. You hit it on the barrel.

------
dade_
It sure looks like Woz is holding solder with his mouth in the video. A lot
more brave than I am, even if it is lead free. Maybe it is a generational
thing, but my parents and adults around me when growing up were always warning
me about the dangers of lead and mercury and would tell stories about how they
played with them as children with no idea of the hazard.

~~~
kazinator
The form of the metal matters. The elemental lead in leaded solder is not
nearly as harmful as the lead in various compounds like tetraethyl lead anti-
knock additive for gasoline, or the compounds used in leaded paint.

About mercury, consider that it's still widely used in dental amalgam.

FDA article on amalgam:
[http://www.fda.gov/MedicalDevices/ProductsandMedicalProcedur...](http://www.fda.gov/MedicalDevices/ProductsandMedicalProcedures/DentalProducts/DentalAmalgam/ucm171094.htm)

> _A lot more brave than I am, even if it is lead free._

Nobody who knows what they are doing works with lead-free solder for manual
rework or repair. It needs a higher temperature, flows poorly, and produces an
ugly matte surface, upon cooling, that looks like a cold solder joint even
when the joint is actually good.

I can almost guarantee you that Woz is using nothing but 60/40 Sn/Pb in that
shot. :)

~~~
stan_rogers
Nah, Woz is/was geeky enough to be using 63/37 (eutectic). (If you've never
used it, it's wonderful stuff -- nary a cold joint to be seen, unless you
really put some effort into it.)

------
drawkbox
Love the Woz. He closed with this statement, "To this day I'll stay at the
bottom of the org chart as an engineer because that is where I want to be".

It is sad that one of the most influential engineers or our time thinks that
to be the best engineer he has to be on the bottom of the org chart. Says
quite a bit about where we place value.

I suppose he means the business org chart because in the
engineer/programmer/hardware guy/tinkerer hierarchy or org chart he is at the
top. My first game was on the Apple II in 4th grade because of Steve Wozniak.

~~~
bunderbunder
By definition, the bottom of the org chart is people who don't manage other
people. If you want to devote your career to engineering, the only good place
to be is the bottom of the org chart. Anywhere else, and you're starting to
spend more time managing people instead of engineering products.

What's really sad that many companies have pay scales that all but force
engineers to move up the org chart, and therefore out of engineering
positions. But there's nothing sad about being happy to not have any direct
reports.

~~~
vidarh
If you place all leaf nodes at the "bottom", then yes. But in many companies
you will find some engineers reporting in to very high ranking people -
including the CEO some places - and still be "leaf nodes".

Those guys can be paid as normal, or they can be paid according to execs at
similar slots in the chart, depending on why they are there. The latter will
often be accompanied with a suitably important sounding title to justify it,
but still be effectively engineering positions with some advisory capacity
tacked on, often with wide latitude in picking and choosing what projects they
want to work on.

A reasonable number of organizations also explicitly have "grades" associated
with people and have parallel non-managerial grades for engineering that goes
fairly high. E.g. when I was at Yahoo a decade ago, there were engineering
grades that went up equivalent to 3-4 managerial levels - near director or VP
level if I remember correctly. They'd still be leaf nodes, but in the more
critical teams.

------
goatforce5
The ending of the video is quite sweet.

The Apple 2 is considered a beautiful and marvellous piece of engineering, and
at least somewhat responsible for getting the fledgling personal computer
business off the group. Here's the guy with his creation, fiddling about
trying to get it to boot...

And what's he want his wondrous device to do?

10 PRINT "HELLO MY NAME IS STEVE."

------
agumonkey
Couldn't play it on my system (flash, html video issues), but one can manage :

    
    
        # segments
        $ for url in $(curl -sL http://b5vod-vh.akamaihd.net/i/m/NjIzMjk0Ng/xVc_Rg1fNn9bndgr_M6.GD7_Lk.3w3FeiCzVWzGcJJY1MDBh/3c45758f-6a07-47a2-8cbc-70d98b3e0bbc_,44,15,24,70,120,180,240,0.mp4.csmil/index_0_av.m3u8 | egrep '^http') ; do wget ${url} ; done
        
        # reassembly
        $ for segment in $(ls -1rt) ; do cat ${segment} >> complete.ts ; done
        
        # joy
        $ mpv complete.ts

~~~
cbd1984
You know, the whole point of cat is that you don't need to use it in a loop.
It concatenates files. It wasn't named after a small furry mammal.

~~~
agumonkey
Can you explain a little more ?

~~~
scott_karana
You can just do this:

    
    
      cat $(ls -1rt) > complete.ts

~~~
agumonkey
Aight, I thought he meant globbing, I was worried about order. Point taken.

~~~
scott_karana
Well, he probably did mean globbing.

I suspect glob collation is the same as the collation that `ls` uses for any
given locale, so... :-)

~~~
agumonkey
And AFAIK, globbing can't be told to order by time, thus producing an
interesting director's cut of the original video (I actually tried).

------
glenra
tldr: Wozniak built the Apple I and Apple II. He's proud of it. Jobs turned it
into a business.

No actual "myth" is debunked.

(If the alleged "myth" is that they "started the company in a garage", then
the myth is _confirmed_ but downplayed - they did use the Jobs garage but
mostly as a staging area and quickly outgrew it.)

~~~
kazinator
Fellow Git user? Or is it coincidence that you're using "staging area" in
reference to something superfluous? :)

~~~
spoondan
The term, "staging area," (in the sense of a place to setup) was popular
several decades before Git existed.

~~~
glenra
I would have guessed centuries rather than decades. We've probably had the
concept of "staging areas" for as long as there have been stages. The Globe
Theater opened in 1599, so...

------
Jonovono
I like this. You can see why Steve and Steve made good friends/partners, at
least in the beginning. I think most people think of Woz as the tech guy and
Jobs as the everything else. But here you can see Woz's love beyond just
making the tech. For him it's art, like the part at the start where he wanted
to make it better and have fewer holes. Reminds me of Jobs talking about his
dad and how he taught him if you are building something you have to care even
about the things that would never be seen. I can't find the story, but there
was one about Jobs wanting to make everything inside the computer look nice,
to the engineers frustration.

The two together seem to make an awesome bridge. Woz with the tech skills, but
still with a passion to make things perfect and amazing and can see the
potential for the designs (not just making it cause he's told), and Jobs
picking up seeing those things as well and wanting the products made that way
and being able to express/sell those ideas to others (which sometimes it seems
is very undervalued by tech people)

------
cydonian_monk
Seeing Woz hold solder in his teeth while working really made my day. I still
recall the form I had to sign in an early Electrical Engineering class that
made me promise not to do exactly that. :)

~~~
Someone1234
Hope he didn't do that back when it was lead solder.

~~~
kazinator
Leaded solder is still easily available over the counter in electronic shops,
and is the stuff of choice for manual construction, repair and rework by
everyone who has half a clue.

There are numerous exemptions in RoHS on the requirement for lead-free. This
is because everyone knows that lead-free solder is unreliable junk, and the
risk is not acceptable in some applications.

------
louprado
Am I mistaken, or does Steve hold tension on a line of solder using his teeth
? Or is that bus wire ? Surprised he isn't concerned about lead poisoning.

~~~
jack-r-abbit
Looks like solder to me. I can't imagine holding some solder (usually only
~40% lead) in your teeth would give you that much exposure to be an issue. But
I suppose doing it all day, every day, for years could add up.

~~~
wavefunction
The lead vapors from having your unshielded mouth that close would be much
worse than any direct contact with your tooth enamel, from what I know.

~~~
louprado
Lead vaporizes at 1749 °C. Not going to happen while soldering.

~~~
sliverstorm
I don't believe that's quite how it works. I don't think it needs to vaporize
the way boiling water vaporizes, to be entrained in the smoke.

~~~
kazinator
Of course, liquids have vapor pressure at any temperature between melting and
boiling. I think there is no question that whatever vapor there is can be
carried by convection along with the hot gases.

------
plg
A perfect example of a guy who has achieved enough self actualization (Jung)
to understand what makes him happy in life, (and spend time doing that) and
what doesn't (don't spend time doing that). He has said in many interviews he
would rather stay at the bottom of the org chart doing what he loves
(engineering) than to be "promoted" and move up the (managerial) chain.

------
Tycho
How special was the Apple II. Was it just special in its own market (US) or
globally? What about the Spectrums, Amigas, Ataris, Commodores, Acorns etc...
how do they compare?

~~~
protomyth
I always believed Jay Miner (RIP) and the Atari folks built a better machine
in the Atari 8-bit series. They actually designed custom chips for video and
audio.

If you look at market share before the IBM PC, Commodore actually owned the
market. [edit] Looking at the graph from
[http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/08/from-altair-to-
ipad-...](http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/08/from-altair-to-
ipad-35-years-of-personal-computer-market-share/) Commodore peaked in the 80's
(Commodore 64 launch). Apple wasn't the market leader, but probably made a lot
of the profit.

The Amiga is not really of that era but is really a successor in spirit and
technique to the Atari 8-bit computers (Jay Miner again). It is definitely a
superior machine to the same eras Macintosh (Macintosh 512K vs Amiga 1000).

~~~
ddingus
I held a similar view for quite some time. And I own a nice Atari, Apple //e
and CoCo 3 system today. They all work, and I sometimes do stuff with them.

Over time, the simple design of the Apple meant it could be added to, and it's
programming environment was very friendly.

Truth is, I learned 6502 assembly, and various languages on an Apple 2. The
ROM code listing was right there, so was the schematic. That open nature meant
people could open the box and just go.

Atari machines are capable, and fast, but...

They don't do that out of the box, and it took people a while to really
exploit the things.

Apple got 80 column text, and it got cards for all sorts of things. Heck, I'm
working on one myself. Always wanted to, so why not?

That expansion capability meant an Apple 2 made for a great 8 bit workstation,
and an awful lot of Atari related development happened on the more usable
Apple 2.

I think the technical capabilities of machines like the Atari were really
noteworthy at that time. But, the Apple 2 did just enough. 6 colors on the
high-res screen, for example, was just enough. You can do anything in 6
colors, but it's harder to do it in 4...

Today, I can fire up that machine, write some stuff, save it to a USB thumb
drive, plug that into my PC, get the disk image open, get the data and go.
Spiffy, if you ask me.

~~~
protomyth
I'll give the Apple 80 column text

> They don't do that out of the box, and it took people a while to really
> exploit the things.

I never really had much problem programming the Atari, the Apple II was
simpler but it sure is a less capable machine overall. Music and graphics are
pretty simple on the Atari once you get the hang of it (which I don't think
takes very long given the right book) and you can do things the Apple just
cannot do.

~~~
ddingus
Depends on capability.

Having 80 column text, a nice office type suite, lots of expansion options:
test & measurement, industrial control, etc... made an Apple quite a nice
machine.

In terms of entertainment, games, etc... yeah. Totally. Though I have to
admit, many of the greater game experiences on an Apple are pretty darn great.
But, there were a ton of things done on more capable machines with custom
chips that were better. No argument.

But, when it came to getting shit done, making money?

I made a ton of money with an Apple computer. Money that was off the table
with the Atari one, unless I was going to write a killer game. Plenty did.

But plenty more did things that were not so much entertainment too.

I love my Atari machine and spent long hours on it making it do all sorts of
spiffy things with graphics and sound, and I really loved the bi-directional
game ports. It is a nice machine.

We need to be careful about "less capable" in this context though. While I
didn't spend the same hours on that Apple in the same way, because the simpler
design didn't require it, I did spend them getting lots of things done for
people, and for myself. Often somewhat boring things, compared to fun graphics
and sound, but important things. The software was there, storage etc...

------
tanto
This is interesting:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIvtXDCP2CE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIvtXDCP2CE)

I really love how he talks about his work.

------
BobMarz
wonder if he's seen the kids react to episode with the apple II?

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PF7EpEnglgk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PF7EpEnglgk)

------
jokoon
isn't it weird that most of today's computer still kinda have the same design
that the apple II ? or was there other computers as small as the apple II
before ?

~~~
snori74
Really? Not sure what makes you think that.

The Apple II is one of a number of machines at the time that had the system-
unit-plus-keyboard as a base on which a matching monitor was put. The HP 9845A
and PET 2001 for example.

Later CP/M systems often had the system unit built into the monitor - and
sometime the keyboard as well in systems like the Intertec Superbrain.

------
m52go
Does anyone know what watch he's wearing in the video?

~~~
nicpottier
Pretty sure that is a Moto 360 (with a case?)
[http://moto360.motorola.com/](http://moto360.motorola.com/)

Woz is famously agnostic when it comes to what brand phone/gadget he carries.
I think he carries them all.

~~~
provemewrong
It's not a Moto 360, it's actually his famous Nixie tube watch.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4R3hODnTGo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4R3hODnTGo)
Made by: [http://www.cathodecorner.com/](http://www.cathodecorner.com/)

~~~
nicpottier
Oh nice! Thanks for the correction.

------
cmsmith
Interesting video, but the title is a complete fabrication - no myths were
debunked.

~~~
danbolt
I could be wrong, but I think the myth part had more to do with the garage
being their base of operations.

The headline is a bit of click bait in that sense, sadly!

------
nsxwolf
So where _did_ the Apple I boards get assembled? How could this story have
been told so wrong for all these years? Sometimes I get a vague feeling that
Woz is still suffering the effects of brain damage from his plane crash and
that we shouldn't instantly accept his recollections.

~~~
hack_edu
Probably in a very drab, anonymous office park just like most companies in the
Valley.

