How Steve Wozniak Colorized Personal Computing
Apple fanboys always love Jobs, however engineering fanboys will always love Woz. In this video Steve Wozniak recounts his creative process of bringing colors to personal computers. While I love the story what’s interesting to be as a videogame fanboy is hearing how he and Jobs were working on designing games at Atari. What’s fascinating is that Woz describes creating the games not as a software programming exercise but as a hardware project!
One of the things that I think has always made Apple different is that it’s both a hardware and a software company at heart: This is very different than Google or Microsoft whose DNA is pure software or the likes of Intel or a Dell which are true hardware operations. It’s that synthesis of the two sides that has been at the core of Apple all of these years from the original Apple II to the roll out of the iPad. In this way I think the only company that may be seen as a true peer of Apple might be Nintendo or Palm back in the day.
I should also note that today we give Apple and Microsoft a great deal of credit for the PC revolution — however my thinking is that we shouldn’t forget about the role that early companies like Atari, Commodore and yes even Tandy played in making the industry real. Back then a major selling point of many of the home computers was that they could also play games: With the introduction of the IBM PC and the popularity of VisiCalc productivity made the industry a tad more respectful although a slightly duller place to be. With Microsoft pushing the Xbox and the iPhone becoming a game platform we’re in fact seeing the industry return to their roots.