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> you likely would not be on this forum right now if not for him, the IBM pc only happened after early Apple validated the market.

Years before the IBM PC came out, I had a Heathkit H11 (a version of the PDP-11) and was writing and selling software for it. I'm fairly confident that the PC revolution would have happened with or without Woz. I had been working with 11's, 6502's and 6800's for years before that, and it was pretty clear that there was a revolution in the works.

The students at Caltech (75-79) I was with were all excited about microcomputers and quite a few designed and built their own systems from scratch (it wasn't very hard, the chips pretty much just plugged together). Hell even I made one around a 6800. None had an Apple II, mainly because a PDP-11 was the preferred system used to dev the software for the microcomputer boards.

Woz certainly made enormous contributions, and nobody can say what the shape of it would have been without him, but it would have happened anyway.

The H11 was released a year after the Apple I.

I had a KIM-1 at the time and the Apple was lightyears ahead of it, even though they shared the same processor.

Most other 'personal computers' were still stuck in hexadecimal keyboard territory.

I've rolled my own (6800, '09 and 6502 based boards) and learned a lot doing that but the Apple I and later the Apple II (neither of which I ever owned but an uncle of mine had an Apple II that I played a lot with) was a real computer rather than something more akin to a large embedded system, programmed with paper tape and terminal interface using current loop. The Apple stuff rocked the world of personal computing.

The difference was huge, and I'm pretty sure that the design elements present in the Apple II raised the bar considerably for the competition and had a direct effect on the PC lineage.

It would be nice to interview the designers of the original IBM PC to ask them where they got their input.

The H11 was just a repackaging of the PDP-11 which had been around for years, at steadily dropping prices. It was far, far more powerful than the Apple II.

Apple had many firsts, but it's an awful stretch to say the PC revolution wouldn't have happened without them. It's like saying we wouldn't have airliners today if the Wrights never existed.

You'd have airliners today. But likely they'd be the airliners of a decade or two ago.

The Wrights are an excellent example because they did what they did when they did it, and there were still people talking about whether powered flight was even possible. Kitty Hawk was a milestone for exactly the same reasons the Apple I was a milestone: huge improvement over the status quo, accelerating development and validating a market.

That's worth a lot in my opinion, it moves the needle with a large jump rather than a tiny increment.

There's is quite a list of inventors from around the world who independently invented powered flight at about the same time as the Wright brothers. Flight being invented in 1903 actually has more to do with the evolution of petrol motor power to weight ratios than it did discovering the principles of flight. It would have happened within 1 year of 1903 with or without the Wright bros.

And even if it had taken a decade, that almost certainly wouldn't have set us back a decade today.

It's amazing how smug we can be and how we can lose all sight of perspective.

When apple released their kit, there were already competitors in the marketplace.

What the wright brothers did was much more akin to inventing the first computer, period.

There is still controversy about whether the Wright's were first with powered flight or not. Around the same time the Wright's Flyer took off you had Langley and Santo-Dumont. Both were in weeks of getting their first.

Also, the Wright's set aviation back a little with their patents on powered flight and wing warping. Even though control surfaces were better they basically had their competitors under their thumb with other 20+ year patents.

If you take a good hard look at the engineering, the Wrights were about 5 years ahead of the others. Unique to the Wrights were:

1. The first propeller theory, yielding propellers that were twice as efficient as others. This translates into needing half the power that other rivals needed.

2. The first aviation engine. The Wrights designed and built their own engine, because nothing else available had near the power/weight they needed.

3. The first wing shape based on wind tunnel tests. The Wrights discovered that the lift/drag tables existing were wrong by a factor of two. Much more power and lifting area was needed than anyone else realized.

4. The first 3 axis control system. Other experimenters had not even realized they needed one. Years later, when the Wrights demo'd their flyer in europe, they could literally fly rings around the others. The other planes could do little more than fly straight and level, making wide, clumsy, skidding turns.

5. The Wrights had the first, so far as I know, directed research and development program. They built a series of prototypes, each designed to validate a particular principle. The other experimenters just "winged" it with whatever they thought looked good.

And, of course, the Wrights documented their flight with photographs that are undeniable, and their airplane still exists. Exact replicas of their flyer have been built, they fly, and they fly in a way matching the Wrights' descriptions. The Wrights also built followup aircraft with improvements.

All modern aircraft can trace their design elements in an unbroken line back to the Wright Flyer, and no other.

I've read many books on the early development of aircraft. The Wrights certainly invented powered, controlled flight. They were about 5 years ahead of the others. So I'd say the max effect of the Wrights never existing would be about a 5 year delay.

Was Apple ahead of the others? Sure. By a decade or two? No way. The most generous you could say would be a year.

> I'm fairly confident that the PC revolution would have happened with or without Woz.

I don't like this argument at all.

I'm fairly confident that any single invention or discovery in the history of the world would have happened with or without the person we credit it to, someone else would have done it anyway. But that doesn't change the fact that it is an achievement and doesn't give you the right to dismiss the work the person did.

> doesn't give you the right to dismiss the work the person did

What part of WalterBright's post made you think he dismisses Woz's work?

He isn't saying that he thinks he is doing that. WalterBright was heading off such criticism and micampe was disagreeing with his method of doing so but pointing out that doesn't mean he disagrees that Woz deserves credit for what he did.

I vote for the "it wasn't very hard, the chips pretty much just plugged together" part.

1. "[...] you likely would not be on this forum right now if not for him [...]"

Yes sure. Without Apple there would be no desktop PC or internet "forum" users.

a. I've used News/Usenet accessed on a VAX quite heavily b. The Altair 8800 never happened

2. "[..] all the meaning is there in plain sight, no hidden agendas."

A very bold claim without any facts that substantiate it.

3. "[...] even a sense of naivety is quite rare [...]"

Naivety might be cute but it's not a value in it's own like you make it sound.

[edit] More downvotes please. Fits our industry with booing of people that demand facts and upvotes for people with strong opinions with no ground in reality.

The VAX was not exactly a personal computer.

I've read quite a bit about and from Steve Wozniak and I've yet to see him exhibit a hidden agenda. He's just as likely to say stuff against his own financial interests as for them. I don't think he speaks for Apple in any official capacity. If you think that he has a hidden agenda I think it is up to you to prove that he does or to come up with an example where that would be evident.

Naivety is not 'cute', it means to me that someone is not out to play me, to say words to please me or to further his own interests. There is a lot off value in there because it means that you can probably believe what they say, whereas words from people that have an agenda and are actively working to twist reality by using words that generate a feeling of trust in the listener need a lot more scrutiny, assuming they have value at all.

1. I didn't say the VAX was a personal computer, I've countered your claim that without Steve Wozniak people (me) would not be on a forum talking about these topics. As many people accessed "forums" on the internet without a desktop, I don't see your argument holds true.

2. If the agenda was hidden you probably would not know it. I would call a public agenda not hidden.

"If you think that he has a hidden agenda."

You have to show he has no hidden agenda (should be hard, see aboce) as you have claimed he has none, not me having to show there is one.

The forum we are talking on exists by the virtue of the fact that millions of people now have computing devices, and that trend had a couple of breakthrough moments, specifically, the 4004, the 8008, the 6502, the KIM-1, the Apple I (and later the II), the TRS-80, and after that a cambrian explosion of computer brands and models culminating in the PC standard and everything that followed from there.

A computer with a built-in glass TTY / memory mapped display and a dedicated keyboard was a game changer.

Likely that revolution would have happened eventually but I'm fairly sure (having been there and having used / played with most of the above, if not outright owned them) that the Apple I was a catalyst.

Hidden agendas can be inferred because people say stuff that makes no sense until you realize that they are gaining through some other channel than the one they are communicating on / about.

So if a guy tells you that you should go and deal with a specific bank and makes a real effort to hook you up you can infer that there may be a hidden agenda there. If he does not care which bank you deal with that would count as proof that he likely does not have a hidden agenda.

You can't be sure unless he tells you or until you find evidence.

I'm saying that you'll find it hard to find anything that you could pin on Wozniak that he would say because he gains from those words in an indirect manner at your expense.

I'm the last person on the planet to defend Apple and their products, I think they are just as bad or even worse than Microsoft and I wished they'd see the light and quit trying to push us back into some kind of locked-in new world of computing.

But I'm not going to deny the effect they've had on personal computing and how much I respect Steve Wozniak for his contributions and lack of guile.

Wikipedia on Naivety

"Naivety (or naïvety, naïveté, etc.), is the state of being naive—having or showing a lack of experience, understanding or sophistication, often in a context where one neglects pragmatism in favor of moral idealism."

Naivety does not exclude hidden agendas, cunning or anything else. Your definition of naivety to me seems no the common consensus.

> [edit] More downvotes please. Fits our industry with booing of people that demand facts and upvotes for people with strong opinions with no ground in reality.

The content of your comment is true. The tone is profoundly irritating. Nothing to do with facts or opinions.

I don't think the Apple PR dept cringes. I doubt they even care, because their customers don't care.

No die-hard Apple fan will hear what Woz has to say and switch camps, and your average Apple customer— the non-tech-types— will say, "Who the heck is 'Woz'? Wasn't he in that episode of Big Bang?"

The "average Apple customer" is in the same average as every other smartphone owner.

> something that most business guys have very little empathy with (engineers are tools in their toolbox)

That's why I stay away from the "business guys" whenever I can.

I doubt many people know or care about Woz other than engineers and perhaps some studious Apple fans and analysts. Remember that he hasn't been involved in the company for twenty-five years. Bill Gates saying things like these agout Microsoft would understandly have a much larger effect.

Often times there are too many Jobs types and not enough Woz types. When people ask "why should we listen to this guy?" they ought to look at the history and make the connections between what Woz accomplished and where we are today with personal computers. This is a guy that wanted to give the computer designs away for free. Woz is a true hacker.

Right on. He's one of us. I admire Jobs. Of course, how could you not. But Woz sees things most don't. And you have to respect him - greatly - for that.