Andrew’s Mac Tips Weblog

I’ve already read every book written about Apple, so when iWoz by Steve Wozniak found its way to the bargain bin, I read that one too. I’d read several interviews with Woz in the past, as well as audio of his speeches and keynotes; so I was pretty well armed with expectations.

Those expectations were that, yes he seems an amiable fellow with a few amusing stories, but how can he spin it out into a whole book? He struck me as a genius when it came to the creation of the Apple I and the Apple II, but beyond that — a bit of a twit.

Looks like I was right.

I’d mentioned in a couple of previous posts how class, or cool, could mean simply doing nothing; as in the saying that a gentleman is someone who knows how to play the banjo, but chooses not to. Woz likes to talk about how he was, and still is a close friend to Steve Jobs — and yet he still feels this compulsion to rehash how Steve ripped him off over the Atari bonus.

He admits that the only reason he invented the Apple I was so that he’d have a computer of his own, and something to show off at the Homebrew Computer Club. It was rip off artist Steve who wanted the whole world to have one, as a consequence making Woz a gazillionaire.

Yet Woz never acknowledges that fact. In fact, quite early in the book he simply walks away from Apple to play with his fortune, without so much as a by your leave. Where’s the class in that?

Finally, by page 257 Woz rips off the oldest “bit” in comedy; you know: the one where a guy undoes three suspicious screws under the carpet of his Moscow hotel room, only to hear a chandelier crash to the floor in the room below…

So, that was enough for me. Nothing more to see here.