Digging into it just now, an important distinction I initially missed is that they worked on the original arcade cabinet (all game logic implemented directly in hardware), which predated the 2600 and its software version by several years (by which time they had already founded Apple).
I saw an interview where someone asked woz about getting screwed out of a lot of the Atari money It was apparently new information to Woz, and he simply deflated a little, and muttered "not again, Steve..."
A piece of lore I never knew.
Digging into it just now, an important distinction I initially missed is that they worked on the original arcade cabinet (all game logic implemented directly in hardware), which predated the 2600 and its software version by several years (by which time they had already founded Apple).
lol. Woz did work on Breakout for Atari (Atari didn't know this). Jobs got most of the money (Woz didn't know this).
It's literally one of the "big prick" items of Job's history, along with disowning his own child.
I saw an interview where someone asked woz about getting screwed out of a lot of the Atari money It was apparently new information to Woz, and he simply deflated a little, and muttered "not again, Steve..."
It was heartbreaking.
I think you are dramatizing it a bit. Woz says he found out about it from Walter Isaacson's book.
https://youtube.com/shorts/MpuPbQ8TY-I
Not another Steve good, Woz bad myth.
With Woz at the helm, Apple would have gone the way of Commodore and Atari, it's a good thing he got out.
With Woz at the helm you probably would have ended up with a completely open hardware computer company.
What would have Jobs been?
So what? The world got more benefit from c64s and vic20s than all the iProducts together.
An Apple that made little more than the AppleII and ran it's course would have been a perfectly fine thing.
We would all be far richer for having 20 different companies in place of the Apple we got.
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