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主题: [原创]高处不胜寒之四: Steve Wozniak, Apple Co-founder Interview

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[原创]高处不胜寒之四: Steve Wozniak, Apple Co-founder Interview

积极生活态度

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标题: [原创]高处不胜寒之四: Steve Wozniak, Apple Co-founder Interview (1630 reads) 时间: 2009-6-26 周五, 00:46

作者：积极生活态度 在海归商务发贴, 来自【海归网】 http://www.haiguinet.com

Frontier Journal (FJ): Frontier Journal is interviewing Steve Wozniak, Apple co-founder. Steve, my first question, what was the most difficult challenge in developing Apple I and Apple II, respectively? And how did you work it out?

Steve Wozniak (Woz): I didn’t have challenges in the normal sense because I didn’t have a written down defined project. I was just kind of building stuff for myself like an inventor in the laboratory. And I tried a few things that may work, may not. They might be impossible. They might be possible. And amazingly, with those early computers, I succeeded on all of them.

I would normally think things out so deeply in my head that I knew what I was doing, what i was capable of, what the components could build. By the time I started wiring something it would work.

FJ: I assume there were no EDA tools and you had to manually layout your PCB, is that right?

Woz: Yes. I didn’t lay out the computer PCB, but I did lay out a PCB for a floppy disk controller that I had designed. And in laying it out I even determined that if I had designed it differently, the layout would have fewer holes in the board. So I redid the design to make it as perfect as an artist could.

And yes, you are right. All of the code that I had written, I couldn’t afford the tools to type it into a computer and get it assembled. So what I did was, I set down by hand and figured out what my program would translate to in zeros and ones in the memory. And then I typed the zeros….every bit of the code, even for the Apple II was totally hand written.

FJ: I see. My second question would be Steve, and your club, because it is called Home Brew Club or something like this.

Woz: Home Brew Computer Club.

FJ: Yes. Home Brew Computer Club. Which one had the most significant impact on you that led to starting the Apple company?

Woz: I cannot answer because I did not choose to start a computer. The club inspired me to build a computer, but my whole life had been aimed towards being the best at a certain kind of task that became very valuable once microprocessors were here.

The computer club inspired me to think “There is a lot of people interested in this sort of thing that I am good at doing.” So I built it. I passed out schematics and code listings for free. For the Apple I, no copyright notices. And we just sort of started the company as, “Whoa. There are some people interested. Maybe we can build these things and sell them.

FJ: That kind of story we heard a lot. So you regard yourself as a technologist? A computer designer, inventor?

Woz: Oh yes.

FJ: So my third question would be, throughout the history of Apple so far, from Apple series, and you invented series, which nowadays it is iMac series, both systems are closed systems. So my question would be, what is your opinion on open systems?

Woz: Open systems allow a lot of technology interested young people, mostly college kids, some high school kids too, learn how these things are done. How other people did them. How I can make an improvement. And it lets them discover their own talents where as closed systems just let you never really know, “Could I do something deep at the technology level? The lower levels of software and hardware?”

The Apple II, I am also proud, was not only open hardware. It was open software. And people actually good take our ROMs and make their own changes to them, and they did. And they sold them.

FJ: So after Apple Computer, you were so devoted. A lot of your bandwidth, your energy to child education and especially on teaching kids how to use computers and how to program, which helps a lot. I would also would like to ask your opinion on how to improve the overall quality of public education in the US.

Woz: It is very difficult. It will never be very good. And the reason is, hundreds of years ago we started defining education as a right, even if they have no money. The government can provide education. Now our government will only allocate parts of its spending, slices of the pie if you will, according to how many votes there are for a certain issue. The problem is, where we violate equality and nature in our voting system, is that a family of five gets no more votes than a family of two. A family of two doesn’t want to spend money on education because they don’t have children. The children never got counted in the voting process. So schools will always be short of money. I do think there is a possibility, if a group had enough capitalization and got going and wrote software ten, maybe more, maybe a hundred times more sophisticated than today’s educational….Educational software, as much as it was a personal, artificial intelligence software. So if the computer would really act like a human being to a child, then we could get to a point where we have one teacher per student at a very low cost. And the result of that is that all the kids can learn at different rates, but they can set their grade that they want and get trained up to that high, very intelligent level.

FJ: So you are very generous on donation to charity. That of course helps the public a lot. What do you think about the filling the gap of the digital divide. In a previous answer you mentioned helping children. What do you think about how to fill the gap of digital divide, not only in the US, but in the world?

Woz: I don’t have a good answer. I think the digital divide is very much like other social ailments and it is not fixable by a program, by money, by people setting up centers and helping those who don’t have the digital access. I think it’s very cultural among their peers, their families. What is a computer good for? What would you use it for?

There is a lot of people, especially socially disadvantaged ones, that don’t have the right surroundings, the right environment to make them want to learn to its fullest benefits. They don’t really see the need for it. It is much more important to be motivated to do something than to know that its there or to have it given to you. Money is becoming less of a factor, at least in a place like the United States. Although in many countries there is really no access to a computer. You know what? A computer doesn’t solve everything. You have problems in your life, and a computer can be a tool, but it is useless unless you have all the other elements needed to solve that problem. So just giving cheap computers is not the answer either.

FJ: Yeah. I see, I see. So no solutions for the Digital Divide.

Woz: Not unless it solves a real problem.

FJ: 30 years ago, when you invented Apple I and Apple II computers, personal computers were a luxury. Nowadays, it is a commodity. So what is the drive behind that? That is my first question. What is the drive behind that? And what will be in the next 30 years from now?

Woz: Well, in early days, we didn’t have as many applications and services. So in that sense there were fewer people that needed it; where it really improved their life, made them money, made them able to do the things they needed to do. So fewer people had computers at first. But here in the United States it wasn’t considered a luxury so much as something special that I have.

FJ: You mean in early days it was not a luxury for most families to own a computer?

Woz: No, I don’t think of it is a luxury. It was in a price range that you wouldn’t necessarily consider way way out to a luxury. To some extent…..well, some people obviously needed the computer for maybe to write software for engineering work, to keep track of small databa<x>ses, to use it as a typewriter. The first word processor. How can you put a price on a word processor? It was going to take some time for everyone to have a need for the computer. And things like America Online, the first online services, and then the Internet which followed, really brought a much stronger need for the computer. As like you say, a commodity.

FJ: Yeah, commodity. So the next question would be, what is the major difference between starting up a company in the 70’s and starting a company now? Because we all know you are now running a startup?

Woz: Actually Wheels of Zeus has recently been sold, transferred to another name, and I have a different company called Acquicor, which is exploring some acquisition deals in technology.

FJ: So my question would be, according to your several decades of experience on helping start up, and also your own start up experience, what is the major difference between a person starting a company in the 70’s and nowadays in the new century?

Woz: One of the problems we had was back then, some very small individuals, sometimes school children could discover their talents and make something useful, software or hardware, they could start a company. It is a bad model for today because there is so much money in technology. Any product that is good is going to earn so much money that the big companies, the big money makers, the big capital controllers are already there at products. Almost anything that will sell, they will make so sophisticated and well done that a little guy in the garage can’t really….it’s harder. So it will be in other fields that the breakthroughs come from individuals. You can never really predict. Something amazing could happen tomorrow in computers and it was just a couple guys sitting around with a weird idea, and it works.

FJ: Your point is entry barrier for companies in industry is becoming higher and higher?

Woz: In certain fields. Especially in tech where it is produced so cheaply that it is everywhere now. Computers are built into almost every product.

FJ: So my next question would be, looking back on your entire career so far, what was your most significant achievement?

Woz: Wow.

FJ: Of course we all know you invented Apple I and Apple II.

Woz: Well probably inventing the Apple II because it was such a superb engineering work which I can appreciate even if I hadn’t done it myself. Drive for Apple. And next to that would be the fact that I started the first Dial A Joke in our area, the San Francisco Bay area. And I did it in a year in the United States when you were not allowed to buy or own a telephone or an answering machine. So it was very hard. It was very expensive. Even though there was no way you could justify the amount of money I spent on it.

FJ: According to our observations, you have a very good balance between work and life. How do you achieve that?

Woz: The achievement to that was coming upon my own personal philosophies and goals when I was 20 years old. And really finding out what was important to me, knowing how to live to achieve it. And even without Apple I would be just as happy.

FJ: I see.

Woz: One thing I had though, it was very hard after a success like Apple, you tend to want to become a businessman and run business and invest money and talk big. Now I have power. And it is part of the seduction and the corruption of power. I managed to somehow, more than almost anyone else in my position, hold onto my original values in life. I managed to go back to college to get my degree. Things that I would have done if Apple had not happened. I taught classes for eight years. That is something that I would have wanted to do so badly in my life, I would have done it without Apple.

FJ: Yes. That would be hard for every person. Exactly. Yes. I totally agree. So you have a new book. Its called “iWoz: Computer Geek to Cult Icon”. What motivated you to write this book?

Woz: Book publishers have been encouraging me to write for decades and I never had the time. This occasion, I put the time in and got it done.

FJ: Now my last question would be, what is your advice, as an extremely successful technologist in business world, what is your advice to younger generations who want to study and become an engineer or an entrepreneur?

Woz: Find something that you believe you can do better than anyone else in the world and don’t listen to the people who tell you all the reason you can’t or even all the reasons you will lose money. If that is your goal in life, your passion, your past time; the things that you do when you are not being paid money to do it or getting grades, or getting salaries, or yachts, or titles, just a thing that you do because you wanted to your whole life. Boy, that is where you are really going to make a positive difference.

FJ: Yes. Great insight. So this concludes the interview with Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple Computers and inventor of Apple I and Apple II computers. Steve, thank you for your time.

Woz: You too.

FJ: Yes, bye bye.

Woz: Bye bye.

作者：积极生活态度 在海归商务发贴, 来自【海归网】 http://www.haiguinet.com

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