The wizardry of Woz

FT.com / Arts & Weekend - Lunch with the FT: The wizardry of Woz:

"He was - indeed, still is - the primal computer nerd, a bearded whizz who rode a boyhood love of electronics to spectacular early successes of the computer industry. The Apple II, a machine he designed single-handedly in 1976, is reckoned by many to be one of the most impressive engineering feats of recent decades, a machine that laid the blueprint for the desktop and laptop machines that have become central to modern life. It turned him and Jobs into stars and multimillionaires, and launched the personal computer revolution almost overnight.

We are sitting here now because Wozniak has written his memoirs. To be more precise, he has spoken and a journalist friend, Gina Smith, has written the words down. He recently sat in this same booth for what he reckons to have been 50 days straight while he and Smith went through the text. I think of all the Hickory Pit ribs that represents.

So what does Steve Jobs, four years younger and at high school when the two first met, make of Wozniak’s rendition of this slice of Valley history? “From what I understand, he read it and thought it made him look like an asshole,” says Wozniak."