The Great Woz Tells All

[raz0red]

Woz recently did an interview with MacNewsWorld. In it, he mentions that he has a book coming out this fall.

This fall, Wozniak will publish his memoir, I Woz: How I Invented the Personal Computer and Had Fun Along the Way, written with tech journalist Gina Smith (Norton).

An interesting tidbit from the interview related to Show #6:

Q: Do you feel that Jobs ever ripped you off, perhaps in the case of the game "Breakout" that you invented and he claimed credit for with Atari?

Wozniak: He was more concerned about money. In the case of "Breakout," all he had to do was ask me. I had a job at [Hewlett-Packard] and didn't need the money. He was always into business, and I was into designing. And that's not a good vs. bad thing.

Steve turned down doing the foreword for the book. But there's nothing really bad about him in the book. He may have misinterpreted something.

Even today, Jobs comes off looking like a jerk. Why wouldn't he write the foreword to the book? That is really lame.

--Raz.

[Ummagumma]

Woz recently did an interview with MacNewsWorld. In it, he mentions that he has a book coming out this fall.

This fall, Wozniak will publish his memoir, I Woz: How I Invented the Personal Computer and Had Fun Along the Way, written with tech journalist Gina Smith (Norton).

An interesting tidbit from the interview related to Show #6:

Q: Do you feel that Jobs ever ripped you off, perhaps in the case of the game "Breakout" that you invented and he claimed credit for with Atari?

Wozniak: He was more concerned about money. In the case of "Breakout," all he had to do was ask me. I had a job at [Hewlett-Packard] and didn't need the money. He was always into business, and I was into designing. And that's not a good vs. bad thing.

Steve turned down doing the foreword for the book. But there's nothing really bad about him in the book. He may have misinterpreted something.

Even today, Jobs comes off looking like a jerk. Why wouldn't he write the foreword to the book? That is really lame.

--Raz.

I pre-ordered a copy of IWoz as soon as I heard it was coming. I was lucky enough to engage in an email interview with Wozniak, and he was certainly helpful and forthcoming and really did his best to provide as much info as he could, both in his feelings about his time fooling around at Atari and with Breakout, as well as the technical aspects of its creation.

When I asked him the same question, about the raw deal he got making Breakout, his opinion was that it was simply water under the bridge, and that life is way too short to hold grudges about such things. He said he probably bought pizzas with the money he did get, and that was just fine. He definitely got a lot more out of the deal than a lousy few hundred bucks. The work he did with Breakout led the way to his designs for the first Apple computers.

Seems to me that Jobs knows what he did, still feels guilty about it and would rather not deal with it or his relationship with Woz. Probably he doesn't like standing in the same room with him, because next to Woz he looks like a pretentious, blow-hard jerk with no heart. Oh, and Jobs turned down an interview about the subject.

Just my two bytes.

[raz0red]

I pre-ordered a copy of IWoz as soon as I heard it was coming. I was lucky enough to engage in an email interview with Wozniak, and he was certainly helpful and forthcoming and really did his best to provide as much info as he could, both in his feelings about his time fooling around at Atari and with Breakout, as well as the technical aspects of its creation.

When I asked him the same question, about the raw deal he got making Breakout, his opinion was that it was simply water under the bridge, and that life is way too short to hold grudges about such things. He said he probably bought pizzas with the money he did get, and that was just fine. He definitely got a lot more out of the deal than a lousy few hundred bucks. The work he did with Breakout led the way to his designs for the first Apple computers.

Seems to me that Jobs knows what he did, still feels guilty about it and would rather not deal with it or his relationship with Woz. Probably he doesn't like standing in the same room with him, because next to Woz he looks like a pretentious, blow-hard jerk with no heart. Oh, and Jobs turned down an interview about the subject.

That is really cool that you were able to do an interview with Wozniak. As we discussed in a previous podcast, the features (immediate graphics mode, great version of BASIC, etc.) that he put into the Apple and Apple II jump-started many of the great game developers of today.

At California Extreme this year Al Alcorn told the whole breakout story again. He said that he was the one who broke the news to Wozniak on the amount Jobs was paid for Breakout and that Woz was completely stunned. The interesting part is that Woz didn't find out about the whole thing until much, much later. I think it does show the "true" Jobs. From what I have seen in documentaries, etc. he seemed incapable (back then, not sure about now) of taking into consideration the feelings of others. It was all about him...

--Raz.

[Ummagumma]

That's interesting about Alcorn.

Sort of on subject: I'd recommend reading Fire in the Valley, which is a great history of the making of the personal computer, with a focus on the relationship between Jobs and Wozniak (as well as the making of Microsoft). I'd even recommend the cable movie they made from the book, called Pirates of Silicon Valley, with Noah Wyle as Jobs and a rather maniacal Anthony Michael Hall as Bill Gates. It's a fun movie that follows the Jobs/Gates dynamic from the book closely. Pretty good performances from the two leads, as well.

[zodiacprime]

I was fortunate enough to catch Woz at CGE 2K4 where he did the keynote that year. I remember him brushing the Breakout topic aside as someone asked about it during the Q/A session. Here's a link where you can grab the audio of his keynote - along with some other audio goodies: http://www.digitpress.com/cge/2k4_mp3/index.htm

[raz0red]

I was fortunate enough to catch Woz at CGE 2K4 where he did the keynote that year. I remember him brushing the Breakout topic aside as someone asked about it during the Q/A session. Here's a link where you can grab the audio of his keynote - along with some other audio goodies: http://www.digitpress.com/cge/2k4_mp3/index.htm

Nice! Thanks for the links. I have to give these a listen.

--Raz.