Comment by andrewstuart
7 hours ago
People are crediting Woz here with great things but not going far enough.
Woz invented the consumer personal computer.
That is one of the greatest inventions in human history, perhaps the greatest.
7 hours ago
People are crediting Woz here with great things but not going far enough.
Woz invented the consumer personal computer.
That is one of the greatest inventions in human history, perhaps the greatest.
Well, that's a highly contested claim. There was quite a bit of prior art.
>Woz invented the consumer personal computer.
Definitely had a hand in it. If you want to dime out the singular technical innovation that Woz contributed that really changed everything, IMO it was figuring out how to make the Apple II do color on the cheap. That was the real competitive differentiator at the time that made personal computers attractive to consumers, and cheap enough to contemplate for folks without a garage full of electronics equipment.
Some might say he gets too much credit. For example this Woz quote
“It was the first time in history anyone had typed a character on a keyboard and seen it show up on their own computer’s screen right in front of them.”
seems pretty believable, especially if you don't know the names Don Lancaster or Jonathan Titus. Woz might not have at the time, and indeed Lancaster was not first either.
As far as I know, Don never had a computer and the Mark-8 used LEDs.
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