Apple co-founder, Steve Wozniak on Kim Dotcom

With the Kim Dotcom saga (or farce) continuing to lead the the news I was reminded of this Interview Steve Wozniak gave towards the end of July in which he comes out firmly in favour of Dotcom. 

Woz was in the local news again today with a story suggesting he may be planing to move to New Zealand to live.

#Woz on net neutrality, Kim Dotcom and WikiLeaks - video

Here's an interesting interview in which Steve Wozniak, the Apple co-founder,  gives his opinions on net neutrality, the Kim Dotcom case, Wikileaks and a range of other topical issues. If you want to hear him speak in more detail Woz is giving the keynote at The Turing Festival in Edinburgh, where I will be next week.

North Shore Times - Woz cover

We made the cover of The North Shore Times, a local Auckland newspaper. That's Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak in the centre with me to the right - the photograph was taken on the top of Mt. Victoria in Devonport. The article quotes Woz as saying Devonport was, "the most beautiful place for a Segway tour."

Segwaying with Steve #Wozniak

Ian & Woz

A couple of months ago I went on a Segway tour, which I really enjoyed. I then learnt that Apple's co-founder, Steve Wozniak, was due in Auckland for a speaking event - unfortunately though the tickets are very expensive. I recalled that "Woz" is a very keen Segway rider; the Segway Polo world championship is called the Woz Challenge Cup after him, so I thought why not invite Woz to go Segwaying whilst he's in Auckland. I contacted the lady who runs Magic Broomstick Tours in Devonport, gave her Woz's agent's email address and suggested she invite him. She did, and he accepted! So yesterday we spent a couple of hours together on a tour of historic Devonport. The sun shone, the harbour sparkled, the views were spectacular and once again riding a Segway was great fun. Woz said that he "always feels good after a Segway ride," I have to say I agree.

35th anniversary of the #Apple II

Woz & Jobs with the Apple II

Thirty five years ago if you'd gone to the West Coast Computer Faire, at San Francisco’s Civic Auditorium, front and centre as you walked through the doors you'd have seen a smart display from a new computer start-up - Apple Computers. Steve Jobs, just 21 years old, in typical fashion had talked his way into the prime spot at the exhibition, because Apple had something revolutionary to show off.
    The Apple II was Steve Wozniak's (Woz's) masterpiece; what he'd been put on this planet to do. He designed most of its circuitry, including new circuits for displaying color graphics. He'd spent the night before the exhibition writing code to control the disk drive - most other PC's of the day used cassette tapes, but Apple wanted the faster random access of a disk. Woz also wrote the initial operating system and software. All this he did, not to make money, but for fun, just to prove he could!

    Jobs had a significant input as well. He oversaw the visual design of the Apple II. It was the first PC to ship in an attractive chic case; most computers looked like they were built by ham radio enthusiasts - the Apple II looked more like a stylish European hi-fi. Jobs knew that it was important that the Apple II "worked right out of the box,"  and it was one of the first PCs to do color graphics and sound and even shipped with two game paddles. The Apple II was a computer you could take home, unpack and use right away. But for the enthusiast the Apple II featured eight expansion slots which eventually enabled a wealth of aftermarket products like: more memory, printers, modems, and light pens to be connected. The Apple II was simple yet flexible. 
    Although the Apple II was expensive, starting the slur that Apple fans have more money than sense, it was a best seller, grossing Apple at its peak over $1 billion a year. Remarkably the last incarnation of the Apple II shipped 16 years later in November 1993 -over 6 million were sold in total.  
    Happy birthday Apple II, you were a remarkable computer.

#Apple is the most valuable company in the world

With Apple's stock price making news headlines as it punches through the $600 mark, making it easily the largest company in the world by market capitalisation, at some $565 billion and with it's CEO deciding what to do with the $100 billion it has in the bank, it's perhaps time to recall the companies beginnings in a garage in Silicon Valley.
   The free sample chapter of The Universal Machine, "The Computer Gets Personal," can be downloaded in pdf, epub (for iBooks) and mobi (for Kindle) and describes Apple's early years from the Apple I to the Macintosh and includes a biography of Steve Wozniak, the college drop out, who along with his friend Steve Jobs made all this possible.

Final book cover design - #Turing's poison #apple

The final book cover of the Universal Machine is in. The new cover design slightly reworks the previous one which was voted the best by a majority of my friends who saw four alternatives. At the top is a passport photo of Alan Turing, signifying that the reader will go on a journey with him through the history and future of computing. The new design replaces the green apple with a red one, which is a reference to the poison apple with which Alan Turing committed suicide. His means of suicide was itself a reference to the poison apple in Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, which was Turing's favorite movie.

The apple with a bite out is of course a reference to the Apple logo, since Apple, Woz and Steve Jobs feature in the book occupying almost two chapters. In an interview Steve Jobs said the logo "isn't [a reference to Turing], but I wish it were!" The serif font of the book's title is also a reference to the clean simple sans serif font that Apple use. The background field of the cover, which is quite faint, is a circuit diagram of a computer chip.

Excellent video about Universal Turing Machines

This short video gives and excellent overview of Universal Turing Machines and Alan Turing's inspired discovery that one machine can solve any problem that has become the origin of all modern computers. It features a short interview with Steve Wozniak amongst others.

Turing Machines on Vimeo

The History of Hacking - documentary

During research for my chapter on hacking I came across an interesting old Discovery Channel documentary called "The History of Hacking." It features, Captain Crunch, Steve Wozniak, and Kevin Mitnick.

Writing again

I'm back to writing again. My 85 year old mother has come to visit from England but she's gone off for a tour of the North Island so I've been back to work writing. I've been working on the section about Steve Wozniak and the birth of Apple. What an interesting and unusual guy. I came across a remarkable story during my research about Jobs and Woz where Jobs defrauded Woz (that's really the only way you can describe it) of several thousand dollars. Woz found out but remained friends with Jobs!  Here's an extract from my book:


However, another business opportunity came along once again involving Steve Jobs. Now working for Atari, Jobs was involved with designing a circuit board for the Breakout game. You remember the game that you had to bat a ball against a wall with a paddle and once you hit the wall enough times in the same place you could knock a hole through. Now back then computer games were sold not as software like today but as a piece of hardware in a module that you plugged into the game console.


To reduce the cost of the modules Atari wanted a design with as few chips on as possible. Jobs subcontracted his work to Woz. Sound familiar? The master of efficient design had a project he could sink his teeth into. Jobs had negotiated a bonus from Atari. $100 for each chip removed from the design. Woz astounded Atari by reducing the design by 50 chips earning them $5000. However, Woz didn’t get his full share for reasons that tell us a lot about both men.


Jobs told Woz that Atari had given him a bonus of $700 for the job which he split 50:50 with Woz giving him $350. Woz subsequently found out that his friend had got $5000 from Atari and he’d been short changed by $2150. That’s still a lot of money and was a lot more in the 70s. Now if my “friend” had ripped me off to the tune of over two grand I’d be pretty mad and I’m fairly sure our friendship would be over. Woz however, says in his autobiography that he didn’t understand why Jobs had lied to him about the money, and though he was hurt he didn’t see it as a good reason to end the friendship. His decision to be so magnanimous paid itself back big time, since had he dumped Jobs he wouldn’t have co-founded Apple and become a multi-millionaire. Think about Woz next time someone does you wrong.

How's the book coming along Ian?

Is a common question I get asked, and I often avoid a precise answer: "oh, slowly", might be a common reply.

Currently I'm working on content for what may be Chapter 6, which centres on the early developments in Silicon Valley, the Stanford Research Institute and Doug Englebart, Xerox PARC and leading on to the Homebrew Computer Club, Wozniac, Jobs and Apple.

Now there is a lot of stuff that could go into this chapter. I have one book on Xerox PARC that is 450 pages long! So obviously deciding what goes in and what doesn't is a major headache. What I realised the other day is that I don't need to make these decisions all at once. If I now lay down the main structure and flow of the chapter I can at a later date (probably next year) reread all my sources and at that time decide what details and anecdotes to add to my chapter. That should even by quite fun.

On a separate issue I was reading a book called the Physics of Star Trek last night and I wondered if perhaps my book should have lots of small bite sized chapters or sections rather than a small number of long traditional 30ish page chapters. It might make the book easier to digest. If you have opinions one way or the other let me know.

The Hardest Chapter

Perhaps the hardest chapter is always the one that you're currently working on. However, the chapter on the innovations coming out of Northern California in the 60s and 70s is challenging me. There's just so much material and so many people involved. Compare this to the chapter on the Analytical Engine where there was really only Charles Babbage and little bit of Ada Lovelace.

However, I think a way through is emerging. I'm currently planing to concentrate on three people:

• Doug Engelbart - the inventor of the mouse and heavily involved in the development of networking and the GUI
• Alan Kay - the inventor of object-oriented programming and the Dynabook (the precursor of the iPad)
• Steve Wozniak - co-founder of Apple and designer of the Apple I & II

I'll also concentrate on three institutions: SRI, Xerox PARC, and the Homebrew Computer Club.

I know that this will cause some to howl "what about so and so" and "what about such and such" but it has to be done.