Apple II Bits

As previously reported, Steve Wozniak was on-hand last month to give the press a tour of the Computer History Museum‘s new exhibit, “Revolution: The First 2000 Years of Computing“. The exhibit opened last week, and Todd Miller of the San Francisco Chronicle took the opportunity to speak further with Apple Inc.’s lesser-known founder, learning more about Woz’s motivation to write BASIC for the Apple-1 and how he improved upon the original machine’s design with the Apple II:

Here’s my favorite quotation: “Most of the big companies and — a lot of new thinking went into them. They were risky, and it was difficult to say whether they would work or not — just like the Apple II.”

It’s so encouraging to know that the genius who invented our favorite computer is so welcome to continue speaking about that topic. As Jason Scott recently said in the Retro Computing Roundtable podcast, “The retrocomputing culture is very, very lucky, because … so many of the people who formed what’s important to us are part of the community still. It’s so rare that you’d have someone who’s into old cars, and the guy who invented the cars shows up all the time. We’re so lucky because we get people like Wozniak who show up and are like, ‘Oh, yeah! Yeah, hi! Oh, did you like that? Oh, thanks!’ as opposed to we all dream of what that person must’ve thought.” Thank you, Steve Wozniak, for being that guy.

While Mr. Miller’s videos are new, there were plenty more shot at last month’s press tour. Check out the original blog post for a half-dozen other appearances by the Woz.