An Apple-1 Personal Computer

I think you shouldn't look at Warhol as some kind of technically superior artist. I like this quote from Robert Rosenblum (an art historian): "Warhol’s art is itself like a March of Time newsreel, an abbreviated visual anthology of the most conspicuous headlines, personalities, mythic creatures, edibles, tragedies, artworks, even ecological problems of recent decades. If nothing were to remain of the years from 1962 to 1987 but a Warhol retrospective, future historians and archaeologists would have a fuller time capsule to work with than that offered by any other artist of the period."

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Art isn't about copying something so that it looks realistic. Anyone with a decent amount of hand-eye coordination and patience can learn how to draw photorealistically and learn the techniques to copy a cup in front of them onto a piece of paper and make it look damn real.

But it's hard to understand that art isn't about realism, because it's hard to get out of that perspective of thinking: "I can do that."

Well, you probably could. And you probably, given enough time and patience, can learn how to paint like Leonardo da Vinci.

Any child can be taught how to play some songs by Mozart. Given enough time and patience, someone with relatively good coordination will be able to play many very difficult pieces by the greatest composers.

But no one would honestly say that a piece of music is good only if it is difficult to play. That's just ridiculous. Some of the best music is playable by anyone who has been practicing for a few years.

And no one would say that you are as good as Mozart because you could play one of his pieces on the piano.

Many artists are, however, technically good. The reason for this is because they paid their dues before reaching the higher level of talent, a real understanding of their medium. But this isn't necessarily always the case.

This is a ridiculous, ill-educated statement that shows a lack of understanding of history, art and the facts of Andy Warhol's technical drawing ability.

1. Art and it's ability to effect people's emotion and intellect has never been (and never will be about) the technical ability of the artists alone. Art is as much about ideas and emotion as it is about craft. Especially since the advent of photography.

2. If you ever stand next one of Andy Warhol's pieces you will appreciate the skill he used. For one, they are often huge: his Chairman Mao in the Met takes up a whole wall. If you only ever see a reproduction of an Andy Warhol you will never appreciate this. Also, although he was trying to say something interesting about the mass-production of art you can see that even his prints were hand-produced and often have manual brushwork on them.

3. If you look at his early work you will see that he was a very skilled draughtsman, illustrator and pen & ink-smith. He hand-drew illustration for magazine, adverts & products so was being paid and appreciated for his skill in the tough world of graphic design before he became a renowned artist.

4. It is hard to imagine what the world was like before somebody invented something that became so prevalent that it is now seen as obvious. Every young artists with access to a screen printing machine has a go at making an Andy Warhol-esque print, most courses in screen printing will include a lesson where people make pop-art, repetitions and colourful squares. It seems obvious now. But when Andy Warhol first did it it was a revolution and a revelation. That is why people liked them so much - they were new, pretty, thought-provoking and very clever.

Go to the Met. Look at the canvases. You might be surprised.

Well, I won't be bidding, but I'd pay a sensible amount for a good print of that photo!

> So, if I'd joined Apple, I may well have insisted on not getting any stock.

Didn't steve stole the stock and pay of all the first employees anyway?

The point isn't that it's overly professional, but that you can see they tried.

The Apple I was just a board and you could connect any ASCII keyboard to it. The Byte Shop probably had a standard one they sold with theirs, though.

I believe that is an over-simplification and slightly revisionist take on early Apple history. Jobs was more technical than he is given credit for these days: Atari had employed him as a technician.

However, next to Woz any of us would look like just a marketing guy. Nor would I sugest that anyone but Woz designed the Apple's circuitry.