Apple's Steve Wozniak: 'We've lost a lot of control' | Hacker News Reader

Apple's Steve Wozniak: 'We've lost a lot of control'

cnn.com

39 pointsedw51917 comments

> Despite his frustrations with gadgetry, Wozniak is still a gearhead. He says he carries five to 10 cell phones around with him at a given time. Sometimes he'll set up half a dozen of them, along with standalone GPS units, on his car's windshield, all navigating him to the same spot.

What?

(I have to say, I respect Woz as an engineer, but this kind of odd behavior reduces his credibility as a popular technology prognosticator for me.)

It doesn't seem that odd to me.

I can see carrying around multiple phones to test the features and usability against each other.

I can see testing the GPS in multiple phones against one or more dedicated GPS units.

There's many reasons why you would use multiple GPS. I'm sure Woz was being Woz and testing which works the best by flat out competing them against each other and his own knowledge.

Plus I remember having a GPS tell me I was at my destination in downtown Manchester when we were actually 5km from the street address. I had another tell me to perform a U-turn on a one way street when I missed a turn that didn't exist.

I don't see it as odd, I'm sure at once one time he was carrying 10 cell phones to see which ones he actually wanted to keep. IIRC he said he usually keeps an iPhone and a Blackberry on him at all times, which I'd imagine would be his main pair, beyond that he'd probably simply be testing newer phones or different styles to see if they're better.

I like to use multiple gps units.

Some lose signal when others don't. Some recommend different or wrong routes. Its handy when one of your gps units is telling you to levitate your car to get onto that raised freeway above you.

To be fair, this is probably a one-time story that Woz told and the journalist saw it fit to paint him as a loon.

I have multiple phones on me at any given time. If you want to do side by side comparisons of how the phones "feel," or if you want to try applications that only exist on one phone platform, then you need to do this. eBay is a good resource here, because you can buy phones without contracts at reasonable prices, especially phones that are in the immediate prior generation.

Is it not part of his profession to be more interested in technology than the average person? I don't see much difference between that and a doctor collecting pictures of skin cancer or a poet browsing through a stack of literary journals.

I feel that the same could have been said after/during the industrial revolution. When the tools to enact change become so large that no one person can build a product (whether that be a vehicle, or a desktop computer), there will be someone warning that our dependence on technology is increasing.

Not that I don't agree with Woz, but I think it helps put this in perspective. If the internet or our power grid had some massive failure how easily would life continue? Would businesses continue to operate? Supply chains for food and production? These are important questions, in my opinion.

> When the tools to enact change become so large that no one person can build a product (whether that be a vehicle, or a desktop computer), there will be someone warning that our dependence on technology is increasing.

That's not correct, vehicles are regularly made from beginning to end by a single person (the Ferrari Way). I think what you mean is that an average person can no longer be expected to construct 9/10ths of what we believe we use during a day. (I'd argue you use a chair, which is still easily constructed, far more than you use a computer or a television. Our arses basically migrate from chair, to chair, to bed.)

Maybe a Ferrari is assembled by one person, but it certainly wasn't manufactured by one person. So that doesn't really count.

Now you're playing technicalities. No one since 0 AD has likely manufactured something solely by themselves, because a carpenter building a house wasn't making his own nails and hammers and saws.

One person can easily manufacture a whole vehicle, no question about it. A chinese man hand-built a (somewhat) replica Lamborghini in his basement; an Italian man built his own supercar sans the Audi V8 engine; and people regularly build small engines, and this guy built most of his own V8 bike engine: http://thekneeslider.com/archives/2010/04/15/bmw-with-694cc-...

So I'm sorry, but it's easily capable. I wouldn't argue automobiles, because by the simplest definition an automobile is very easy to self-manufacture given that a vehicle doesn't require windshields, doors, lights, indicators, anything.

One man today can still easily (with time) construct their own home from ground up. I helped lay a 30'x30' cement floor with nothing but a shovel, mixer and barrow. Beyond that the house is easy and I've literally done everything else from brick laying to electrical and plumbing to siding and framing.

Like I said, an average person cannot do these things today.

This quote rocks: "I wanted to accelerate the world's advancement in the social revolution that it would cause. So I gave away my designs for free."

"... I didn't design this computer to make a lot of money, I wanted to accelerate the world's advancement in the social revolution that it would cause. So I gave away my designs for free. But eventually, Steve Jobs came and said, 'Why don't we build it for (consumers)?' ..."

Closest thing I've read by Woz explaining the origin of the Apple business plan. Replace Woz with a herd of 'Woz-like' engineers and you get Apple now. Removing Woz meant Apple also removed the freedom it once had.

Irrelevant to most, but the tangled mess of network cables behind the "Woz" in the interview really ticks me off. I'd love to have a word with the network folks there.

It was filmed at the Computer History Museum, so it's like that on purpose. Though, it doesn't look like this is the one, I know that they have one of Google's original racks which looks about as messy. (as seen here: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/03/building-a-computer...)

That's a CDC 6600 arm you're looking at, not a rack. They were limited by wire length (longer wires increased latency).

I feel compelled to point out that Woz isn't Apple's anymore and hasn't been for a long time unless I'm completely missing something.

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