applemacpunk@cox.net
A Visit from The Woz
By: Kale Feelhaver aka: Applemacpunk
I attended an IT trade show recently. The 3-day trade show was decent (nothing compared to Macworld San Francisco) but on the evening of the second day, there was a special event that made it all worthwhile. A local Technical Institute was sponsoring a dinner, and the guest speaker was Steve Wozniak. There were hundreds of people at the dinner, and the school rented a grand ballroom to host it. Tickets for the dinner were $90 each. The food was good, but not worth anywhere near $90. However, the experience of meeting Steve Wozniak was priceless.
I attended the trade show by myself, so I was afraid I would also be attending the dinner by myself. I was hoping I could find another Apple addict to sit with. As the crowd started gathering, I was looking around to try to spot someone I knew, when I saw a man wearing a necktie with jeans, carrying an Apple IIGS. I instantly knew he was a Mac user. I walked over and made a comment about his vintage Apple. Immediately, we engaged in conversation and started swapping Mac stories. It was reminiscent of a Macworld conference, which both of us had attended. The dinner had assigned seating, and in true Mac irony… I was seated only 1 seat away from the fella I just met. There were 8 people per table, and our table was the absolute furthest one from the stage. Seated at my table were: Me, the guy with the Apple IIGS, a female school teacher (huge Mac geek), another guy who had an Apple IIE, and 4 businessmen who said they were all avid PC users, but appreciated everything Apple did for computing.
After dinner, Steve Wozniak took the stage. The four Mac geeks at my table gave him a standing ovation as he took the stage. Keep in mind we are the very back table in the room. Woz looked up and said, “Oh, so they put the Mac users in the back of the room.” The crowd cracked up. Wozniak proceed to talk for over an hour about the early days at Apple, his relationship with Steve Jobs, and his days before Apple. It was absolutely the most interesting presentation I’ve ever heard. The entire room was mesmerized as he spoke.
Wozniak talked about the day he became a licensed Ham Radio operator at age 10. He said he wanted to be licensed in something, and he found out there was no minimum age to be a Ham Radio operator. He also talked about the day he went to work with his dad and had his first vision of a computer when he saw an old gear-driven machine that was engineered to save time. He said he looked at it and saw a skeleton of a computer. By age 13 Woz had programmed his first game, Tic Tac Toe. He threw in some more humor when he said, “If I could play any one of you at Tic Tac Toe right now… I bet there’s a good chance I could beat ya. I’m good at it.” Again the crowd laughed hysterically. Woz talked about how he used to sneak in to college libraries so he could find the computer manuals and “steal” the forms out of them. He would fill out the forms to get more manuals and have them shipped to his home address. Then he would study the manual, memorize the computer, and redesign it with fewer chips. If the “experts” did it in 20 chips he’d do it in 15. If they did it in 8 chips he’d do it in 5. Keep in mind; he did all this before he was even old enough to drive a car.
When Woz went to college (the first time) he tested into advanced placement computer science his first year. He was so far ahead of the rest of the class (and the teacher) that he would come in on the weekends and write programs for hours on end. This was back in the days of punch card programming. He wrote so many programs, that he used up all the punch cards on the campus. He ended up running the department 5 times over its annual budget in his first quarter. Needless to say, he wasn’t a student there very long. The school kicked him out for reckless use of materials. Think about how stupid they feel now.
Woz also talked about some of the early days when he and Jobs were inseparable. Some of his biggest laughs came when he would talk about his inventions and Jobs reactions. He talked about his TV jammer (a device designed to interrupt TV signals) and how Steve Jobs would say, “Woz, this is great… let’s sell it.” Or when he made his first blue box (a device designed to make free phone calls), and Jobs said, “Woz… we should sell this.” When Woz made his first computer… there was Jobs… “Hey Woz… we need to sell this.” His presentation was funny, emotional, amazing, and inspiring all at once. The most amazing thing however, is what happened after the presentation, after his standing ovation.
When the event ended, a handful of Mac geeks ran across the room to meet the Woz. He politely stood up, and took time to chat with each person one-on-one. He signed people’s computers, books, posters, and even posed for pictures. Woz signed my copy of his rare 1988 joke book, and I gave him an Applemacpunk business card. He put the card in his wallet and told me he’d be sure to check out the site later that night. The schoolteacher that sat next to me during dinner had him sign an old Apple Educational poster that featured Woz and his son. The other two Apple addicts at the table had him sign their vintage computers.
Steve Wozniak has achieved a notoriety that no one will ever duplicate. He is truly the first computer geek. A trailblazer and a genius, Woz’s inventions will stand in the history books for centuries to come. He is not only a technological visionary, but an incredibly humble man who took the time to chat with every one of his fans and make sure they would always remember that night as the night they met a legend. Woz is truly a class act.
