The Man. The Legend. The Woz.

My Personal Experience

2011-10-25T19:43:00.000-07:00

This project was an interesting process to me. It was challenging due to the fact that many elements were involved in creating the blog itself. Since this is my second blog, I seem to finally be able to getting the hang of all the small elements involved. A blog, in itself, is a surprisingly great way to centralize many different feeds from all different social networks that you are a part of. The use of "badges" and "gadgets" in a blog to me is a nice way of having information available to users, yet I still prefer complete straight hyperlinks to full profiles on the original social network's site. My favorite part of this project was the research aspect of it as well as the design aspect of the blog itself. I also enjoyed listening to many interviews with Wozniak, who I have been a fan of (obviously) for a very long time. For my next blog, I would spend more time on the design and research areas of the blog. In the future, I wish to learn HTML/CSS to edit and customize pages (such as blog pages) more than the "Designs" tab of any given control panel in Blogger or Tumblr.

Wozniak on People Helping People

2011-10-25T19:22:00.001-07:00

The Apple II

2011-10-25T19:16:00.000-07:00

1975 - - - - - Wozniak begins working on what would become the Apple I.

March 1976 - - - - - Apple I is complete. Wozniak goes to his employer, HP, first to ask if they are interested in this creation. HP turns Wozniak down.

April 1st, 1976 - - - - - Apple is co-founded by Steve Wozniak & Steve Jobs.

May 1976 - - - - - The Apple I, Apple's first computer, is introduced to Homebrew Computer Club. A fellow hobbyist, Paul Terell of Byte Shop places 50 orders of the unit.

June 1976 - - - - - Order for Paul Terell of Byte Shop finished 1 day before deadline.

Fall of 1976 - - - - - Wozniak shows Apple II prototype to Commodore. Commodore turns Wozniak down.

January 3rd, 1977 - - - - - Apple becomes incorporated.

March 1977 - - - - - The Apple I ends its run.

April 1977 - - - - - The Apple II is introduced. Pioneering computer of its time. This unit paved the way for Apple and the eventual creation of the Macintosh & Lisa computers.

December 1982 - - - - - The Apple II ends its run.

January 19th, 1983 - - - - - The Lisa (GUI driven) computer is introduced. The Apple IIe is introduced.

January 24th, 1984 - - - - - Apple Macintosh & Lisa 2 introduced.

1986 - - - - - Wazniak completes his degree in computer science/electrical engineering at UC Berkeley

February 6th, 1987 - - - - - Wazniak leaves Apple.

1987 - Present - - - - - Apple has created many lines of personal & professional computers designed to be easy to use, just as Wozniak originally intended with his original designs.

Steve Wozniak & The Personal Computer

2011-10-25T18:02:00.001-07:00

After reading many articles andinterviews with the great Steve Wozniak, I can now fully justify myappreciation for the man. Wozniak has always been an intelligentperson. He sees himself as a lifetime engineer and innovator, aswell as a philanthropist. However, his most important contributionto modern day living was the invention of the truly personalcomputer. This all sparked from his humble beginnings co-foundingApple alongside Steve Jobs. Apple was a small company back in Aprilof 1976, their first product being the Apple I, which Wozniak builthimself. According to Wozniak, he was always the technological halfof the coin, with Jobs was the marketing half of the coin.

Wozniak wanted to create a computerthat was easy to use and that would appeal to the everyday person. Something Wozniak & Jobs wanted first was their product to appealto the Homebrew Computer Club of Palo Alto, a group of hobbyists (which Wozniak was a part of) highly interested in exactly what Wozniak & Jobs were making. The interest and limited production profits from these first unitshelped Apple sell its second personal computer, the Apple II. Thiscomputer was designed by Wozniak and paved the way to the modernpersonal computer as we know it today. While the Apple I had goodreception among hobbyists, it was only designed for such a group. With the Apple I as a proof of concept, Wozniak was able to build offthis model and design the simpler Apple II that included a CPU,keyboard input, color graphics and a floppy disk drive. This simpleapproach to the personal computer lead Apple, along with many othercompanies, to develop the home computer industry that Wozniak sparkedso long ago.

Resource 1 | Resource 2 | Resource 3 | Resource 4 | Resource 5

A Technological Innovator

2011-10-25T15:11:00.000-07:00

Steve Wozniak is the first choice that came to mind for my final project. As the post title says, I see him as one of the greatest technological innovators of our time. As a co-founder of Apple, he is a geek of all geeks and rightfully so. Wozniak created one of the first computers marketed towards the average home user. Without his original innovations of the technology available to him many years ago, the computer industry would never be where it is today.