Woz on dancing with the stars

People we need to vote him through. use all your text votes and internet ones!!1

the number is: 1 800 868 3410
ATT text VOTE to 3410

Meh... so we need to vote him through to propagate yet another desperate cry for attention from a has-been, second rate engineer from the 70's who happened to have one of the luckiest partnerships outside of Gates and Ballmer.

Sorry, I don't mean to rain on your parade, but the latest shenanigans with "The Woz" are growing tiresome.

WEll how is this a cry for attention, he didn't ask to be on, he was picked. did you even think that really without him you might not be on the computer you are on right now? I hate the expression, rain on your parade. Im not having a parade, but it is raining here and supposed to snow 5 inches

mjb94 said:

WEll how is this a cry for attention, he didn't ask to be on, he was picked. did you even think that really without him you might not be on the computer you are on right now? I hate the expression, rain on your parade. Im not having a parade, but it is raining here and supposed to snow 5 inches

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Doubtful. Woz's primary claim to fame was the Apple I, which was much like most of the other home brew computers in the mid-70's. The difference is that Steve Jobs marketed it and made it a commercial product. Woz had a hand in designing the Apple II, but that was a mostly also-ran product. The real innovation at the time was happening elsewhere.

It's sad that revisionist history with a heavy bias to Silicon Valley is what has managed to make it's way into the history books. The computers that really had a hand in pushing the envelope and making the modern multitasking, multimedia, GUI driven machines we use today were not designed by Apple and certainly didn't have any contribution from Steve Wozniak.

As far as a cry for attention, between Woz's egomanical autobiography, his laughable "relationship" (read media stunt) with Kathy Griffin, blatherings about the death of the iPod, and now this stunt (which I find it hard to believe the producers just dug him up out of nowhere), I guess I'm getting tired of seeing his name in the news held with any degree of reverence.

cwa107 said:

and now this stunt (which I find it hard to believe the producers just dug him up out of nowhere),

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Oh they didn't just happen to dig him up from obscurity (where he belongs, BTW)

Interview with Woz said:

Wozniak is not the first technoguy on the show. As you may remember he was preceded by Mark Cuban. In fact it's being reported Cuban is the reason Woz is there!

" Mark Cuban, the guy who referred me to the show..."

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SOURCE

So we can thank the tool, Mark Cuban for this.

Nice find. I figured as much.

I think this might be in part to deal with Steve Jobs stepping down temporary.

mjb94 said:

WEll how is this a cry for attention, he didn't ask to be on, he was picked. did you even think that really without him you might not be on the computer you are on right now? I hate the expression, rain on your parade. Im not having a parade, but it is raining here and supposed to snow 5 inches

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I'm at work. They're making us use P IV HPs.

cwa107 said:

It's sad that revisionist history with a heavy bias to Silicon Valley is what has managed to make it's way into the history books. The computers that really had a hand in pushing the envelope and making the modern multitasking, multimedia, GUI driven machines we use today were not designed by Apple and certainly didn't have any contribution from Steve Wozniak.

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To build on this, it's a shame that many people don't acknowledge the contributions that Xerox has made to the computer industry. IIRC, they develop the GUI and the mouse. We have the Xerox PARC to thank for these inventions.

vansmith said:

To build on this, it's a shame that many people don't acknowledge the contributions that Xerox has made to the computer industry. IIRC, they develop the GUI and the mouse. We have the Xerox PARC to thank for these inventions.

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Xerox PARC was a think tank for many of the technologies we take for granted today, including the GUI. They didn't make it a commercial success (Apple is credited with that), but the concept was generated there.

Apple, Commodore, Atari and a number of others drew their inspiration from Xerox PARC, each of them developing their own variations on the same theme in order to avoid any IP conflicts. But in my view, it was Commodore that really drove the innovations we enjoy today. Between the Commodore 64, which is still one of the best selling computers of all time and the Amiga, they had the best and most innovative technology of the infancy of the PC. It's a shame that they couldn't market themselves out of a paper bag (which is one of the biggest reasons for Apple's and Microsoft's success). It's a shame that they have been relegated to a footnote in the history of the PC - and much of that is because they were Silicon Valley outsiders.

Chuck Peddle, Bill Herd, Jay Miner, Carl Sassenrath, Dave Haynie and too many other Commodore engineers are the people I think deserve the credit for the actual innovation that drove the success of the PC.

As an aside, for anyone who is interest in the history of early PCs, I HIGHLY recommend On The Edge: The Spectacular Rise and Fall of Commodore. Looks like it's out of print right now, but if you can find, beg or borrow it, it's a great and very interesting read.

EDIT: Looks like this is about to go into its second printing, with a new title: Amazon.com: The Commodore Story: A Company on the Edge: Brian Bagnall: Books

I have to agree with cwa Commodore was the one company that was WAY ahead of any other computer company, they were the highlight of the whole expansion of computer but because of there greed the company spiraled downwards. If there greed had not gotten in the way, I bet for the most part that we would all be on Commodore's.