iWoz - From Computer Geek to Cult Icon: How I invented the personalcomputer, co-founded Apple, and had fun doing it
reviewed by Harry {doc} Babad
Authors: Steve Wozniak with Gina Smith WW Norton and Company http://www2.wwnorton.com/catalog/fall06/006143.htm Released: September 2006. Pages: 288 $26 USD, $32.50 CND, £14 GBP, 21,67 € Euro ISBN: 10: 0393061434 and ISBN 13: 978039-061437 Audience — Anyone interested in computing and its history, especially those who love Apple and its computers. It might even benefit those who bash or company and platform, they might learn some real historic truths. Major Strengths — The book is an easy read. Seldom am I motivated to finish a non-Sci-Fi book in two readings on consecutive days. To say the least, for the most part, I was enthralled to follow what the books publicist pretentiously notes: “The mastermind behind Apple sheds his low profile and steps forward to tell his story for the first time. Okay an exaggeration with a bit of hyperbole, but the Woz is a great man worthy of reading about, what in Yiddish they would call a mench. Weakness — The book is too blog-like in its flow making for interesting but bumpy reading. In addition the book omits, despite Steve’s saying he cares and feels strongly about them, any real information about relationships other than with his father. Furthermore, the book lacks details about his three marriages, children, Steve Jobs, or even Woz’s beloved dogs. Omitting personal interactions and feelings about one’s influential boss (Steve Jobs) and about his marriages was disappointing. These certainly were among the most influential aspects his personal adult life. |
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Publisher’s
Overview — On the heels of Apple's 30th anniversary, the inventor of
the personal computer, engineering wizard, concert promoter, philanthropist,
and irrepressible prankster Steve Wozniak steps forward to tell his story for the first time. iWoz: From Computer
Geek to Cult Icon: How I invented the personal computer, co-founded Apple, and
had fun doing it. Against
the backdrop of numerous rumors and inaccuracies regarding his personal and
professional life, the elusive cult icon finally steps out of his protective
shell to "set the record straight" in this first ever memoir by the
Edison of our wired age.
Review Introduction
I’m not sure when Steve Jobs will tell the whole and uncensored story of Apple computer. But in both the IWoz and in Andy Hertzfeld’s Revolution in the Valley he will have plenty to viewpoints to contend with. This is a book for you if you like to read about Technology, its history. If reading about the development of and the truly creative minds that most influenced the creation of the personal computer, check out iWoz.
In this memoir, Steve Wozniak, the co-founder of Apple computers, tells his side of the story of the intense and exhilarating effort in the 1970s to turn an idea--the personal computer--into a viable reality. He and Steve Jobs, sometimes working out of a garage, did just that with the Apple I and then the Apple II, a forerunner of the Macintosh. Their unprecedented success changed America and the world, and made Wozniak a wealthy man. In the book, he describes how it all happened, and also writes about his life after Apple, including his philanthropic pursuits, conveying a zest for life as he exemplifies the advice to "follow your bliss.
Steve is at his best when he described his ongoing and often achieved drive toward engineering perfection, as he calls it being an engineer’s engineer. In this book Steve Wozniak, with Gina Smith’s help, shares some of the stress, angst and excitement of that time. Although reading it was a mixed pleasure, I would do it again; skipping over a few of the parts that got in my way to learning about Steve the human inventor and engineer.
The Book Itself
This is neither your everyday chronological treatment of the Woz’s life and experiences nor a tour of the factors and feelings that most influenced his life. Rather it’s Steve sharing his experiences, particularly those relating to his view of the world and love of things engineering with us in a blog-like episodal fashion.
This has been my first opportunity to learn about Apple’s Steve. By reading the iWoz book, I could finally get to understanding his pivotal roles un creating what is now Apple Computer Co, maker of the paradigm crushing Macintosh and iPod. I could lean about his childhood and young adult influences and what exactly he was thinking when he invented the off-the-shelf (not a kit) personal computer. I wanted to know more about what the early days at Apple were like, what he did with his life after leaving Apple in the mid-eighties. Also of interest to me was what the Woz thinks of Apple's current products and of its resurgence as an industry giant. Finally, I wanted to know mo0re about his philanthropic ventures, what continues to inspire him to give back. call these things were promised by the publisher in their announcements.
As noted by the publisher “We learn of Wozniak's upbringing in Sunnyvale (never knowing what his father did-an engineer working for a defense contractor at Lockheed), his childhood exploits with the Electronic Kids, and his high school phone-phreaking pranks (tapping into the phone system and making free calls throughout the world). In this "homebrew mix" of brilliant discovery and adventure, we are privy to Wozniak's early Hewlett-Packard days as scientific calculator designer, his meetings with the Home Brew Computer Club in Menlo Park, which would eventually lead to the rise of Apple as an industry giant, his eight years as a public school teacher in the nineties, and his landmark contributions as a philanthropist and rock organizer. iWoz not only gives us some of the excitement, the serendipity, and the wizardry of invention in the wired age, but also reveals the person behind the personal computer. He's weird, wild, a brilliant iconoclast, and honest almost to a fault.”
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A Prank or Three |
What Number Please |
Book Themes That WOZ
I’ve listed some of the themes that the Woz returns to, over-and-over again in varying contexts. These themes, which form the core of the book, include:
His Father-His Guide — The best parts of the book were the Woz’s remembrances of his father, his leaning how to think and do, and the values he gained s a child and refocused and strengthened as a young man. We all should have such a father or friend.
Ethics - Woz talks early on about his Dad imparting the importance of being honest: “…my dad believed in honesty. Extreme honesty, extreme ethics, really. That’s the biggest thing he taught me. He used to tell me it was worse to lie about doing something bad under oath than it was to actually do something bad, even murdering someone. That really sunk in.” [The Woz]
Genius and Preparation - “Typically, once I started a design, I’d stay up very late one or more nights in a row, sprawled on my bedroom floor with papers all around and a Coke can nearby…I was competing with myself and developed tricks that certainly would never be describable or put in books.” [The Woz]
Loss of Political Innocence — “His explanation of how he lost his political innocence when the Pentagon Papers revealed the extent to which the US government had lied over the Vietnam War, is moving and pulls the reader back nearly half a century in just half a page. When Woz opens his heart, he has a wonderful, infectious quality.” [Kieren McCarthy http://kierenmccarthy.co.uk/2006/09/29/iwoz-a-book-review/]
On Being an Engineer — “He (Woz’s father) told me that as an engineer, you can change your world and change the way of life for lots and lots of people” [The Woz]
Passion for Circuitry — “The same gentle passion comes across when he describes his first love - circuitry. All engineers will immediately recognize the joy that a tight, almost perfect design brings, but Wozniak does a wonderful job of explaining that feeling – the obsessive attention to tiny details that results in a working model – (bringing it) to a wider audience.” .” [Kieren McCarthy http://kierenmccarthy.co.uk/2006/09/29/iwoz-a-book-review/]
Patience – “Patience is so underrated…I learned to not worry so much about the outcome [of my engineering projects], but to concentrate on the step I was on and to try to do it as perfectly as I could when I was doing it.” [The Woz]
Woz’s Secret to Life - “…To find a way to be happy and satisfied with your life and also to make other people happy and satisfied with their lives.” [The Woz]
On Being a Great Engineer – “Don’t waver. See things in gray-scale (not in black and white). Work alone. Trust your instincts.” [The Woz] As you can see this is not the corporate American or Japanese team way!
Being An Inventor — From his experience, the Woz advises today's would-be inventors to avoid big, structured companies, where there is less leeway to turn clever ideas into revolutionary new products. "Yes, a person who is technical, a little bit nerdy, not so social, can just do some common-sense things and have it work out great," he said. [The Woz] To this I could paraphrase the Woz by noting that any device engineered by marketing and engineering group-think (e.g., the Apple III) is likely doomed to failure.
Before moving on to my discomforts with this book I need to share Shawn S. Sullivan’s, Amazon.com comment’s about the iWoz book. I’ve copied for your consideration the paragraph that struck a responsive chord in me. “I have often thought of the two as highly different individuals brought together in a common cause with radically different skill sets. Cast The Woz as John Lennon and Steve Jobs as Paul McCartney. Lennon wanted to CREATE something special, something beautiful and something new. Wozniak clearly did this at Apple. McCartney wanted to become huge, well known and wealthy. Jobs did this for all at Apple, very much including the author as Wozniak had other motivations that occupied his very busy mind.
Discomforts
As I will note in my conclusion to this review, I cannot be dispassionate about the way it covers Steve Wozniak’s life and times. At times the book was a barnburner and all I could do was to turn pages, reading as fast as I could. In other places, I kept want to scream — come-on Steve, get on with it.
This was not the book I expected, despite careful reading the publishers information prior to ordering it. There was much I would have liked to know about Steve the thinking-feeling experience-driven human being. Such personal detail was, to my dismay, absent for the book. Perhaps Gina Smith can work with the Woz to write a sequel called “The Inner Life of Steve Wozniak: getting beyond engineering and design details.”
One of the information voids that perturbed me is that we get less than a dozen lines about the women that the Woz married, despite they’re being such lengthy part of his life. My trouble with the treatment of wives and occasional girlfriend is that there were no basis provided fro the relationships deteriorating other than their interest diverged as time whet by. Comparable the fact that is daughter was her mother’s child doesn’t negate the fact that we learn almost nothing about her or her relationship with her father.
I was able however to find several images of Steve’s dogs on the web, despite the fact that nothing descriptive about them or their part in the Woz’s life appeared in the book. Of course from the word or two and these pictures we can opine that Steve loves his puppies very much.
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Morgan – who looks like a sweet puppy. Wonder how big it’ll get? |
Steve gets a kiss from his Australian shepherd, Cruiser |
I must agree with Kieren McCarthy’s assessment:
“You’ve just gone through 300 pages of personal narrative about this remarkable man’s life …, and yet at the end of all this, you can’t help but feel a bit cheated. Wozniak is a shy, personal and humble man - virtually the antithesis of his famous ex-partner Steve Jobs - and it is for this reason more than any other that it has taken the best part of three decades for him to collaborate on a book about his fascinating life. It’s a story lots of people have wanted to hear and as a result Steve Wozniak was able to tell it on his terms. And those terms were 56 two-hour interviews with tech reporter Gina Smith at two restaurants in California.”
“The problem is that while Woz comes across as one of the most likeable men you’re ever likely to meet, he is not the best storyteller. iWoz is a comforting read but it is all the worse for that. Gina Smith clearly enjoyed her subject’s company - in fact it appears that it was only the chemistry between the two that allowed the book to be produced in the first place - and as a result the risk of upsetting him caused her not to pry too deeply into the most intriguing parts of Wozniak’s life.”
“There were plenty of clues that Wozniak was prepared to talk as well, if only he had been prodded (by Ms Smith.) He talks of his deep sadness at seeing his first marriage fall apart, and of how he did his best to save it - but that is all. You get no sense of what it really felt like and what impact it had on him, a shame considering that the written word is the most effective tool we have to communicate complex emotion. We glide over his second marriage breakdown, despite the fact that his third child was born while they were separated. And you hear almost nothing at all of his third. Humble or not, marriages are the most intense emotional experiences human beings have and Wozniak has had three. (This part of Steve’s life) feels untapped”.
Doc says, “Need I say more?”
In Closing
Much of the evolution of the Woz from computer designer to music event sponsor to education (5th Grade) though entrepreneur were fascinating. Especially descriptions on the manner in which Steve’s basic beliefs and outlook on life were fundamental to his making some of these decisions. The book is full of Steve’s sense of humor and love of pranks. It amply describes his creative drive that was clearly was self-motivated and as important, doing it right technically no mater what the pressure and circumstances.
Much of this was exciting to read. It surely will capture any student of technology history and the folks that our techno-junkie society owes its dept. I deeply enjoyed, at first, some of the pedagogical explanation of various elements of physics and electronics --- but at some point about three-fourths of the way through the book, they became increasingly distracting – by swerving to move me away from my interest Steve Wozniak as a person.
The best way to close this review is to quote from Guy Kawasaki’s preview of it.
“Every engineer—and certainly every engineering student—should read this book. It is about the thrill of invention, the process of making the world a better place, and the purity of entrepreneurship. iWoz is the personal computer generation’s version of The Soul of a New Machine. It is, in a nutshell, the engineer’s manifesto. I hope that the so-called innovation experts and MBAs choke when they read it.”
http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/05/gina_smith_the_.html
Buy it most of you will like it. Rating 3.5 macCs
Gina Smith BIO
Gina Smith – Gina Smith is a New York Times Best-Selling Author. Her last book, The Genomics Age, explained DNA and stem cell science to investors and interested lay people. Barron's named it one of the top 20 books of 2005.
Previously, Gina was on air as ABC News' first technology correspondent. She appeared weekly on Good Morning America and World News Tonight with Peter Jennings from 1995 to 2000. From 1990 to 2000, she also authored Inside Silicon Valley, an award-winning column in the San Francisco Sunday Chronicle.
In her words “I am an author and a journalist specializing in tech and biotech -- I consult and write”. She also plays guitar (doc).
