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Re: Big Bang Theory - The Woz

On 10/3/2010 1:57 PM, Michael Black wrote:

On Sun, 3 Oct 2010, John B. Matthews wrote:


In article
<ba5ef161-ad61-4899-848b-85d7b0eb2edd@h7g2000yqn.googlegroups.com>,
Steven Nelson <steven-nelson@uiowa.edu> wrote:


On Oct 3, 10:10� am, Steven Nelson <steven-nel...@uiowa.edu> wrote:

Check out Steve Wozniak and the Apple II on Big Bang episode.


Oops! Forgot to post the link.

http://www.cbs.com/primetime/big_bang_theory/video/?pid=zfNTonqbYkQUycd0wirNYrOGq7sdbULK



Sheldon mentions the limitations of DOS 3.3 in connection with a
vintage 1977 Apple ][, but I think DOS 3.2 was extant at the time.


I didn't quite follow that bit either. While watching it, and I did
watch the episode live but had forgotten Steve was going to be on it,
it struck me that Sheldon's comment was about it being named "DOS" when
everyone knows that Microsoft has the only DOS. I can't remember the
wording, but the mention of the version just seemed like Sheldon's usual
need to be "precise".


Sheldon said "one of my proudest possessions is a 1977 Apple II",
which is completely consistent with his running DOS 3.3 on it at a
later time.  Given his apparent age, he must have used it as a young
child sometime during the 1980's.

Microsoft had no DOS until after 1981, when it was first PC DOS for IBM
and then later MS DOS for clones--and I didn't hear any allusion to
Microsoft at all, though calling it "Apple DOS 3.3" probably helped to
resolve any ambiguity for more PC-centric viewers.


Putting Steve Wozniak on was good. But then Sheldon babbling didn't sound
right. He didn't say "creator of the Apple II" or even better "Creator
of the original Apple and then the Apple II", he said something about
co-founding Apple with Steve Jobs.


Sheldon did obliquely honor Woz, both by putting him at #15 on his
list of technological visionaries and by enthusiastically praising
the Apple II, implicitly acknowledging Woz as its creator.  (He was
considerably more overt when talking with his friends, when he referred
to him as "the great and powerful Woz".)

Sheldon's declaration about the "limitations" of DOS 3.3, which makes
perfect sense in the Apple II context, was very much in character, since Sheldon feels that his own opinions and judgements are objective 
facts.  And he stated them as such to the creator of the Apple II and
a major contributor to DOS!

One of us might have been more inclined to ask for Woz's opinion's, but
Sheldon is seldom interested in the opinions of others, unless it is to
clarify some ambiguity in his own mind.

BTW, did anyone notice that when Sheldon exited the apartment to head
down the stairs, the Apple II and monitor that he carried seemed to have
a lot less mass than the real things?  (I suspect they were "gutted" to
reduce their weight.)

And, of course, a real Apple owner would have carried the computer under
one arm and the monitor by its "handle", but that can certainly be
forgiven in this case.  ;-)

-michael

NadaNet 3.1 for Apple II parallel computing!
Home page:  http://home.comcast.net/~mjmahon/

"The wastebasket is our most important design
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