Apple II Bits

Steve Wozniak‘s star continues to shine brightly, with media appearances all over the world and the Internet.

In May, Woz spoke with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) of Sydney. The MP3 of the interview is short, clocking in at fewer than ten minutes. The only new piece of information I gleaned was that (if I understand correctly) the Apple-1 was designed not with a personal computer in mind, but an Internet terminal. That’s unsurprisingly prescient of Woz.

More interesting yet less publicized was Woz’s Leap Day interview with tech podcast inThirty, hosted by Justin Freid. Part one (iTunes) and part two (iTunes) each run about 30 minutes, for one hour total. These interviews are much meatier, conducted as they are by a tech guru and not a mainstream media anchor, even though both inThirty and ABC want to know about Woz’s relationship with the late Steve Jobs.

inThirty’s exchange most relevant to Apple II Bits readers was prompted by the question: "How much of the Apple II do you see in the iPhone and iPad? Is that philosophy of Apple being an engineering company still prevalent?" Woz’s answer:

It’s very hard to see any similarity between the Apple II that I designed and the iPhones and iPads today in terms of the product features… I built the Apple II for myself, and Steve Jobs wasn’t around — he was up in Oregon, he wasn’t talking to me… Here’s what’s similar … the Apple II, I just built them because I wanted a computer to do my work at Hewlett-Packard… I wanted to play games and have a machine for fun… that was all I ever wanted out of the thing, and as such, I was building it for myself… It’s very important to know who you’re building something for, so that it comes out good and consistent for that person, and the person was only one person, which was myself. I like things simple, clean — I don’t want them full of stuff that nobody understands. That’s a beauty to me.

Woz likes things simple and clean, yet he pushed for the Apple II to have seven expansion slots, against Steve Jobs’ wishes. Is the sleek, streamline form factor and interface of today’s iOS devices therefore not the antithesis of Woz’s philosophy, as commonly believed, but rather its realization?