“This book is interesting because it gives an answer to
the following questions:
1) Does Steve Wozniak live up to his status hardware genius?
2) Could he be a role model for engineers?
Lets start with the latter.
Being an electrical engineer myself, I'm always looking for examples
of successful fellow engineers who 'made it'. These people
can serve as an example showing that one of the best professions
is the world is also 'cool' and rewarding.
The nerdy and introverted image of engineers is detrimental
in attracting young people to the profession.
Unfortunately, Steve Wozniak's autobiography confirms every
conceivable prejudice about nerd engineers. He is shy, he
kicks on geeky pleasures, he's immature, and
probably has never read a real book in his life. His
political insights (e.g. on the war in Vietnam) are shallow
at best....
With Steve Wozniak as role model, no sane kid will consider
a career in engineering, unfortunately.
The writing is awfully bad. The book reads like the
unfinished first version of a manuscript.
His ghostwriter writes on her
web site that she deliberately picked the style to
reflect the way that Steve talks. Wrong choice: She
should have protected
him for this rambling disaster and she should have
pushed through on some key details. One example:
The fate of the other people who were on board the
airplane that Steve crashed is not properly mentioned.
It makes the Woz appear as a self-centered person.
Now to the original question: is 'the Woz' indeed a genius,
or was he just at the right spot at the right time?
After reading the book, it appears to be the latter.
Though there are not many technical details in the book,
it is clear that the projects he pets himself on the back for are
quite simple, even for 1970ies standards. They are well
in the reach of averagely competent hardware geeks. His key
'apple' idea was to combine the TV-graphics of the 'pong' game
with a microprocessor, essentially making a one
of the early graphics cards for a computer.
He was one of the first, but likely not the only one
who made this (though the book suggests otherwise).
In 1975 the time was simply ready for this, all it needed was
the entrepreneur spirit of Steve Jobs to make it happen.
In the 1980ies the automatic logic synthesis revolution has
made Steve Wozniaks digital hardware speciality obsolete.
It appears that he has not kept up with the field.
Steve Wozniak was clearly a very competent engineer in his time.
However badly written this book is, it is still very interesting to
get some glimpses of his side of the story.”
Patrick G wrote this review Friday, April 4 2008.
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