Steve Wozniak Interview Transcript

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Steve Wozniak Interview Transcript
�1999 Aaron Slater

<AARON> I am sure you know about Kansas Fest, arguably the nation's
largest
convention of Apple users. Do you have plans on attending KFest 2000? Do
you
plan on attending KFest in the next few years? When?

<WOZ> I'd love to attend but am so far behind on personal things (I'm
saying
'yes' so often to others that I have to say 'no' to my family too often)
that
it's unlikely that I'll make one.

<AARON> Regarding the Apple logo, where did the idea come from to use
six
colors, and does the 'bite' represent anything?

<WOZ> The Apple ][ was the only low cost computer to be offered with
color (and
graphics and hi-res color graphics and game paddles and sound and BASIC
in ROM
and low cost DRAMs, and casette tape interface built in, and many other
things)
and we wanted to stress that. No other computer would have a claim to
color for
years. The PR agency that we hired came up with the multicolored Apple
shape,
with the colors in rainbow order. Steve Jobs took it and rearranged the
colors
to put the darker feeling at the bottom.

<AARON> When Microsoft first introduced Windows, what were your personal
feelings? do you feel betrayed?

<WOZ> The first Windows that I was aware of was just a shell over DOS
and still
had it's drawbacks. The first Windows that started looking like a Mac
was
something like 3.1 and it felt like an infringement. Windows 95 was way
over the
line. But the courts ruled that Apple had licensed this technology to
Microsoft
because of some fine print that included the phrase "and derivative
works."

<AARON> What do you think will happen to Microsoft, now that the United
States
Department of Justice has delclared them a monopoly?

<WOZ> I hope that they will be severly broken up and have to put their
OS in the
public domain and give their browser to AOL, along with the value of
lost
browser business ($100B?) and penalties too...But I expect that the
final deals
get worked out with a settlement that is mostly words and costs
Microsoft
little, like agreements to avoid certain practices in the future and
token
apologies. That's probably the difference between the justice department
and
Microsoft right now...Woz

<AARON> What do you think of the open source situation in general? Are
Linux or
BSD variants viable options for the future of the Mac?

<WOZ> I'm not close enough to answer. It sounds good and pure and can
attract
some of the best minds for a while, but will it continue in this mode? I
don't
have the answer.

<AARON> Where do you see the Mac going as Open Source software breaks
hardware
barriers?

<WOZ> I haven't thought about it, sorry...It seems that the Mac has
always been
very closed source, held closed by at least one copyright ROM. Apple
didn't have
a good experience with clones. I think that the feeling is that Apple
can make
better hardware when it keeps control and there aren't 20 companies
making their
own versions of it.

<AARON> The Apple II series was undoubtedly the most popular and
widespread
computer of it's time, unfortunately it's lineage was ended with the
IIgs. What
do you think the Apple II series would be like today if it had been
allowed to
evolve past the IIgs into today?

<WOZ> I don't think that the processor extensions, along with the need
to
support the past products, would have made sense. An OS should be
designed for a
graphics environment from the ground up, as the Mac's was. I don't think
that
app development for the ][gs would have kept up with that for the Mac.
But there
would still be a sizable group of followers, just not in relative, or
percentage, terms. The Mac today suffers from having fewer new apps and
compatible products, but it fare's OK.

<AARON> Looking back on all you know now, if it were 1977, what would
you have
changed about the design of the Apple II?

<WOZ> I've looked back sincerely many many times and always concluded
that I
would not change a thing.

<AARON> What single accomplishment are you most pleased with in the
Apple II?
Why?

<WOZ> Probably it would be the few-chip color solution. Overall, the
product was
designed to take very few chips in a day when there weren't many large
chips to
use. Even the 4 paddles only took one chip. The system timing got
reduced from
10 chips to 5 and then again to about 2 chips. Combining the video RAM
and
processor RAM was another huge chip saving. In the end we were able to
build a
product that far outclassed the other computers of the day, yet took
only a
small fraction of the chips, and was therefore able to be manufacture


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