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.'"

Nostalgia isn't what it used to be...

[syrinje]

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.....

Mybe he could find that in open source...

[monopole]

...If he didn't totally trash it [technocrat.net]

The homebrew computer club was pretty close to the current Open Hardware movement.

Not the same world anymore

[blind biker]

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.

Re:first

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Not the same world anymore

[Rick Genter]

The last thing this comment should be moderated is Offtopic. This is one of the more insightful comments you'll find.

My first computer was an IMSAI 8080 [imsai.net]. I built it from the kit, as well as the Lear Siegler ADM-3A [old-computers.com] terminal I connected to it. This was in 1976, and I, too, miss those days. While we can do some cool stuff today with 3-D graphics, multithreaded and multiprocessing operating systems, networks, etc., there was still something about building everything from scratch.

I'm with Woz on this one.

Re:Nostalgia isn't what it used to be...

[iamacat]

So what stops you for buying a Mac, installing Windows or Linux and making those changes that Apple prevents you from doing in OSX?

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.

Re:One hit wonder

[at_slashdot]

Obviously you don't know anything about computers and history of computing... and you are an ass.

One in a Hundred Thousand?

[tinrobot]

One hit wonder, my ass. He did what he did because he understood electrons and logic at a level that one in a hundred-thousand people could not match.

One in a hundred thousand means there are approximately 60,000 people on the planet who understand those topics as well or better than him. Hardly unique, which is the point of the original commenter.

Re:One in a Hundred Thousand?

[moogleii]

60,000 people? That may not be unique in the literal sense, but that's still pretty damn rare, and therefore, special, which I think is the actual point of the grandparent, that Woz is not special. But why waste time on fabricated stats.

To the AC GP, in my opinion it was Jobs who had the fortune of meeting Woz, and like most CEO-minded people, he leveraged the assets and people he had around him (Woz), and continues to do so today. So I guess that makes Jobs more of an achiever than Woz in your book.

Re:Nostalgia isn't what it used to be...

[at_slashdot]

All I know is that I can buy a $300 machine, I don't care if it doesn't have all the features a Mac has, which BTW I might not need, and install Linux on it and have all I need -- the cheapest Mac I can find comes with double the price. How can you convince me that a Mac is not more expensive? It's like you'd try to convince me that a Mercedes is not more expensive than a Ford... heck, I can afford only a Ford and I don't need all the Mercedes features -- or not for that price, so... again how a Mercedes is not more expensive that Ford?! You can claim that is better, but you can't show that is not more expensive.

Re:I wonder if he waxes poetic about Steve Jobs

[Jailbrekr]

Actually, Jobs told him he made $750 and split that two ways. So yes, 7% is fairly accurate.

Re:Nostalgia isn't what it used to be...

[vux984]

All I know is that I can buy a $300 machine, I don't care if it doesn't have all the features a Mac has, which BTW I might not need, and install Linux on it and have all I need -- the cheapest Mac I can find comes with double the price.

There are companies out there that will sell a $100 'embedded PC' with an x86 400MHz cpu, vga output, ps2/usb ports, 10/100 networking, and even 2.1 sound. It will even run linux just fine; you can surf the web, do email.

So apparently your "$300 PC" is some sort of overpriced premium unit that only a sucker would buy? With its 2GHz celeron and 5.1 sound, and premium intel "extreme" graphics chip. Slow down big spender!

A few minutes ago you implied it was good value, but I all I know is that its 3x the price. I don't care if it doesn't have all the features yours does, which BTW I might not need. I install linux on it and I have all I need. How can you convince me that a $300 Dell isn't some sort of premium expensive product?

The point is the Mac, when compared to an EQUIVALENT PC is not really more expensive. If you are going to insist on comparing the Mac to a PC that can't do half the stuff sure, its 'more expensive' but that doesn't make Mac's more expensive than PCs.

By that logic, $300PCs are over priced because I can buy an embedded unit for $100 that does everything I need. And someone out there, will say THAT's over priced because all they "need" is to do multiplacation and it turns out a notepad and a calculator does everything they need for a fraction of the price.

So are dell $300 PCs overpriced premium deluxe units because some twit decided to compare it to a pocket calculator?

Re:What Woz...

[pushing-robot]

"Has become"? Steve Jobs was always the egomaniacal - but uncannily correct - leader, and Woz was always the brilliant tinkering geek who could pull off the engineering miracles Jobs's plans always required.

They're the Kirk and Scotty of the PC world. The Hannibal and B.A. Baracus.

Re:One in a Hundred Thousand?

[Paradise Pete]

To the AC GP, in my opinion it was Jobs who had the fortune of meeting Woz, and like most CEO-minded people, he leveraged the assets and people he had around him (Woz), and continues to do so today. So I guess that makes Jobs more of an achiever than Woz in your book.

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.)

Re:One hit wonder

[McFadden]

I entirely agree. What he did was huge. He practically created the desktop computer as we know it. And absolutely nothing since. His recent book "iWoz", with the modern day Apple style cover, using the i branding from Apple's current hugely successful range of products is ridiculous. He has absolutely no association with the current wave of success that Apple is riding.

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.

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.

Re:Nostalgia isn't what it used to be...

[Tablizer]

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.

I don't think Woz cared that much about rising higher into management for fame and fortune. He's more like *us* in that regard.
     

Buried - Inadequate abstract

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear slashdot. Please do not use nicknames like Woz in your abstracts. That makes them difficult to read.

You can do more, but have to know more

[Animats]

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.

Re:Wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

Does that Thinkpad have a build in webcam? Backlit keyboard? Motion sensor? Firewire 800? Magsafe plug? What's the weight of that Thinkpad? 802.11N? Two-finger scrolling trackpad?

Does it run the Mac OS?

Re:Nostalgia isn't what it used to be...

[vux984]

Bottom line, I have $300, can I buy a new Mac?

No. But that doesn't make Mac's more expensive.

Apple makes gold rings. Dell makes gold rings and silver rings. If Dell's gold rings and Apple's gold rings are the same price, then Apple is not 'more expensive' than Dell.

Its true that gold rings are more expensive than silver. And its true that a lot of people buy silver because they can't afford gold. But its misleading to say that Apple is more expensive than Dell when you are comparing Apple's gold to Dell's silver.

If you can afford Dell's gold, you can afford Apple's. They are pretty much the same price. If all you can afford is silver, its not that *Macs* are "more expensive" its that GOLD is "more expensive". And you aren't in the market for gold, period, regardless of whether its Apple's gold or Dell's gold.

Re:One hit wonder - you're kidding, right?

[GreggBz]

The whole point of the 6502 as well as the 8080 chip was to create a device that could serve the emerging calculator market. Several large contracts landed for the Intel hardware (aka the 8080 chip and the sister 8008 chip) and Motorola was left hanging in the wind trying to figure out how to dump a supply of 6502 chips. The reason why Woz and presumably Peddle choose the 6502 chip was cost.... it was incredibly cheap (at the time) and could get the job done. In fact, that seems to be virtually the only reason reason it was selected, perhaps besides the fact it could also be purchased in comparatively large quantities.

Where are you getting this? Peddle and his team of engineers left Motorola in disgust because they would not build HIS economical processor, the 6502. He sold the idea to MOS technology, and engineered the 6502, a capable CPU 10 times cheaper then the rest. Yes, it was actually faster and better then the 6800 from Motorola also. It sold like bloody hot-cakes. Motorola never made a single 6502. The 6502 was built by Chuck Peddle at MOS technology.

Peddle used his chip in the PET. Commodore owned MOS at that point even so the deal was golden.

Peddle designed an early kit computer around the 6502 even, the KIM-I. He sold the idea of building computers to Jack Trameil of Commodore. I think the bureaucracy of such a large company delayed the PET by a few months compared to two guys in a garage working together a prototype.

He has said that one of his motivations for making the 6502 was that he wanted to make a PC. He did indeed.. and others with him. Like I said, read that book. It'll clear things up.

Don't forget a key metric for portables

[SmittyTheBold]

Another key metric for portables is the size and weight.

ThinkPad T61p:
14.1 x 10.0 x 1.4 inches
6.2 pounds

MacBook Pro:
14.1 x 9.6 x 1.0 inches
5.4 pounds

That's around 2/3 the thickness, a little shallower, and nearly a pound lighter. If you can't acknowledge that's worth a premium, explain the pricing of subnotebooks to me.

(No, not the "you" to whom I am replying, but "you" the reader.)