Wozniak in Houston

[Bruce.Baker@juge.com (Bruce Baker)]

It was to see Steve Wozniak in Houston today.  He can do two hours easily,
every stays rapt and he is so engaging.  He looks so comfortable, you can't
really see evidence of the shyness he mentions as a young man, teenager.

He describes a lot of the stuff being discussed here, the Apple 1, the first
basic compile/program (whichever).

You can get a dvd video of his Kansas City presentation from syndicomm.  It'll
be great.  The one today may be available from haaug.org in the future.  Stay
tuned.  

They are different.  In KC he talked a bit more about the Apple 2 days and a
lot of about pranks and his black box, electronic playing around.  In Houston
he spent a lot of time on the progression on Macintoshes.  He mentioned owning
all of these computers, buying some.  He said most all had weaknesses, some
were unusable, some were so great that he still has them.  He mentioned OS 9
crashed all the time but if you stopped using IE you could go weeks without
crashing.  But no one wanted to give up IE.  So OS X seems much more stable.

He mentioned today he is one of the only pc originators to have gone back and
finished college.  He felt it would be good to do to be an example for his
children.  It wasn't clear to me whether he finished with an electical
engineering degree or a psychology degree, perhaps both.
He defended Emilio a bit saying the cutting and reorganization that he did was
important and thankless.

You can get both videos and learn a lot of different things, not that much
duplication.

I got a couple of computer tops signed.  People had shirts signed and got their
pictures taken with him.  He is very engaging.

He gave Steve Jobs credit for being the marketer, the one who encouraged him to
take a chance and start a company, to quit Hewlett Packard - a place he thought
he would stay with all his life - and partner Apple Computer.  He mentioned the
same third partner who wouldn't take the risk, he had more to lose, and sold
out for a few hundred bucks.

It is always great to see Woz.  Someone had a capital mac users group shirt on.
 Did she come from out of state to see Woz?  It would be worth it.

I saw some old friends I have not seen in a while.  It was great to see and
compare how life was treating us.

Rubywand, were you there?

Bruce Baker