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Apple Businesses

Woz to Speak at MacWorld SF 31

EccentricAnomaly writes "Steve Wozniak (co-founder of the Wheels of Zeus start-up) is coming back to MacWorld after a six-year absence, and will be speaking as part of a panel discussion of Mac OS X. This is Woz's first speaking engagement at MacWorld in 10 years."
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Woz to Speak at MacWorld SF

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  • WOZ support (Score:5, Interesting)

    by frooyo ( 583600 ) on Friday November 22, 2002 @11:28AM (#4732404)
    I hope this is an indication that Woz supports OS X. He was the thrust that made Apple what it is today. I know, I know, you could agrue that what Apple is today is what NeXT Step was 10 years ago ( Steve Jobs started). But Woz was really the forces that brought Mac's to elementary schools nation wide. Maybe now we can start to bring that back
    • Re:WOZ support (Score:5, Interesting)

      by psyconaut ( 228947 ) on Friday November 22, 2002 @11:31AM (#4732416)
      He's publicly commented before that he likes both OS X and some of the current crop of hardware.

      Personally, I'd rather wait for the speech where he shows the cellphone/PDA that he's working on that Apple will be licensing ;-)

      -psy
      • Re:WOZ support (Score:1, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        In the last comments I've read from Woz on the subject he has stated he *does not* run Mac OS X because it's not polished enough for his liking.
        • Re:WOZ support (Score:2, Interesting)

          by Nomad37 ( 582970 )
          Actually, Woz's position (according to his webpage, which I can't be bothered finding) is that he thinks os x is great, but it doesn't fit the way he uses the computer _at the moment_: he says os 9 suits his workflow just fine... (i read this a while ago, but i believe that's about accurate)

          Come on people, you can't blame him...
      • Re:WOZ support (Score:1, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        He has a TiBook. It was on his desk yesterday when I looked at the wozcam. Woz owns all.
  • by neocon ( 580579 ) on Friday November 22, 2002 @11:57AM (#4732594) Homepage Journal

    Steve Wozniak (co-founder of the Wheels of Zeus start-up)

    In unrelated news, Paul McCartney (former frontman for Wings) will be touring soon.

  • by MacAndrew ( 463832 ) on Friday November 22, 2002 @12:04PM (#4732651) Homepage
    ...is Woz still so, um, strange? I owned (own, actually) an Apple ][+ and have been aware of him for many years, including the "US Festival" diversion. He has seemed like the member of the Beatles who never grew up. :)

    But with a name like the Woz, what can you do? He also symbolized the counterculture aspect of Apple Computer the startup, as opposed to Apple Computer the multibillion-dollar Jobs corporation.
    • Dude, nobody beats the Woz!
    • Re:No offense but... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by gwernol ( 167574 ) on Monday November 25, 2002 @12:58PM (#4752483)
      ...is Woz still so, um, strange? I owned (own, actually) an Apple ][+ and have been aware of him for many years, including the "US Festival" diversion. He has seemed like the member of the Beatles who never grew up. :)

      Back when I worked at Apple (late 90's) I had the pleasure of meeting Woz a couple of times. I would not describe him as strange - he's a smart, funny guy who knows more about computer hardware than 99% of people on Slashdot (myself included). The stories he tells about the early days, phone phreaking, building the first Apple machines: great to hear them from "the horses mouth".

      His work post-Apple in education is admirable. Most people with his level of wealth could restire to a fancy multi-million dollar house and play golf. Woz decided to give something back to the community he grew up in and became a high school teacher - and by all accounts a brilliant one. Now that's a mature and responsible person who has more than "grown up".

      But with a name like the Woz, what can you do? He also symbolized the counterculture aspect of Apple Computer the startup, as opposed to Apple Computer the multibillion-dollar Jobs corporation.

      Hah, Jobs was and to some extent still is every bit the embodiment of the counter-culture. In many ways Jobs is much more the arrested adolescent than Woz is. Go read this book [amazon.com] which tells the tales of the early days of Apple Computer. You'll find a very different Mr. Jobs there. Those who knew him in those days tell me its a pretty accurate account.
      • Re:No offense but... (Score:3, Interesting)

        by MacAndrew ( 463832 )
        Thanks for the first-hand account. :)

        My memory of is not not personal, but from growing up in L.A. during the Apple phenomenon. I certainly got the impression that Woz was very bright and a nice guy, but you see that kind of computer god was a novelty back then, maybe it is the strength of first impressions. IBM only let them out late at night.

        Notice I didn't say there was anything wrong with being strange! Why would I make fun of myself? By counter-culture I did not mean juvenile -- one has to outgrow juvenile, too many outgrow eccentricities.

        I'm glad to hear Woz has been so productivite, and will look up so more information. I had hoped the US Festival would not be the zenith of his post-Apple activities (ohmigod that was 20 years ago).

        As for Jobs, I am grateful for his vision and business acumen, but more dubious of his soul (to be melodramatic about it). He is clearly a very self-absorbed person, causing the predictable collateral damage, though he seems to have "grown up" as well.
  • [Wish2] Ask Woz (Score:4, Interesting)

    by korpiq ( 8532 ) <-.@k o r piq.iki.fi> on Friday November 22, 2002 @12:24PM (#4732800) Homepage

    I found his new company far more interesting than the fact he's going to drop a few live lines somewhere.

    1. "Being clear-headed about money, how do you view open approach to technology? Do you think that making Macintosh parts open (as in clonable hw and free sw) would have leveraged information tools better than what happened back in 80's and what's still happening today? If, how? Now that you are free to try again, are you considering taking care that APIs and HW specs are available for others to build on, reverse engineer and share?"

    2. "I found to my surprise that you took part in forming EFF. What was your role there then and how do you view its current behavior? In which issues/attitudes would you separate your personal views from EFF's? Are you still active there?"

    Those are my 0.2 wishes.

    (Oh, am I happy that my gf's out? I'll have the whole evening for our 'puters!-)
    • Re:[Wish2] Ask Woz (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Mononoke ( 88668 ) on Friday November 22, 2002 @01:12PM (#4733314) Homepage Journal
      1. "Being clear-headed about money, how do you view open approach to technology? Do you think that making Macintosh parts open (as in clonable hw and free sw) would have leveraged information tools better than what happened back in 80's and what's still happening today? If, how? Now that you are free to try again, are you considering taking care that APIs and HW specs are available for others to build on, reverse engineer and share?"
      My guess would be that it would have gone just as well for Apple as it did for IBM's PC division.

      • No sh*t, Sherlock (Score:2, Interesting)

        by korpiq ( 8532 )
        "Dig deeper, Whaz'on"

        It wouldn't. At the time, IBM was The Really Big Blue. As in the wallpaper in The Big Blue Room. Apple was just some upstart with a great commercial.

        In other words: IBM held the corporate world by its accounts. Apple held a possibility for unnerdy people to become nerdy. It's image was all it had, and it kept it. Miraculous, thinks me. What W0z would have thought... better hear the horse when it's still alive.

        Sorry, it's friday night and I'm terrrribly dwunk. Leaving you with your thoughts and going to pub to meet an old irc friend to kill the rest of mine :P
  • by bill_mcgonigle ( 4333 ) on Friday November 22, 2002 @01:36PM (#4733569) Homepage Journal
    While true, I think more people would recognize him as "co-founder of Apple", or even "the guy who invented Personal Computers". The point of such parenthetical phrases is to remind the reader who this is you're talking about. Wheels of Zeus, while a swimming concept, hasn't really proven its worth yet, even if it is abbreviated 'WoZ'.

    Perhaps submitter works at Microsoft [216.239.37.100].
    • Steve Jobs (CEO of Pixar) was a childhood friend of woz... I hear they even went into business together selling phone phreaking equipment... They also did some other business selling fruit out of their garage...

      Hey, where are the nits about Woz not really being a co-founder of wOz but more of a founder because the other guys are all VC's? :) I mean, can a VC really be a co-founder? I wonder about that..

  • by Microsift ( 223381 ) on Friday November 22, 2002 @01:40PM (#4733613)
    I went to the Wheels of Zeus inquiries page [woz.com] and clicked on the Job Inquiries link the email address was "jobs@woz.com".

    I checked the ground temperature and looked for airborne swine, and then figured it all out.
  • freakin' awesome! this is a positive injection to macworld!
    (go woz, go woz,..)
    • by Anonymous Coward
      _the_ maker of macintosh
      Insightful!? I hate to rain on a poster's parade, but.. Jef Raskin might have a little somthin' to say about attributing the Macintosh to Woz.

      Apple I and Apple ][, yes... From there on out, it was various teams of engineers working on pet projects (Lisa, Macintosh, Apple ]|[)
      • So would Steve Jobs. Raskin's main contribution was the 'Macintosh' name and the general overall philosophy ('Easy to use computer').

        Go read Steven Levy's Insanely Great. Raskin wanted the thing to be a text-based machine with a few applications built into the ROM and no expandability. Granted, the original Mac had no expansion possibilities (other than the stealth-upgradability to 512K that the designers snuck in behind Steve's Back), but that's about all it had in common with Raskin's vision.

        Jobs was the one that switched it over to being basically a cheap Lisa after he got forced out of that project. Woz was on the Macintosh project for a little while, but left fairly early on. But he still had more to do with what we call a Macintosh today than Raskin did.

        --AC

  • by Anonymous Coward
    He's so far behind the times that his entire spiel will be based on two-year old beer commercials, with him leaning in to the mic whenever it's his turn and going, "I'm Woz. Wozzzzzzz up!"

In case of injury notify your superior immediately. He'll kiss it and make it better.

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