[soperj]

I truly hope that Woz is remembered as the guy behind Apple's early greatness and Jobs as just a dickhead who set us all back. Not just developers with his no compete bullshit, but everyone with his stupid no ports aesthetic. How are people supposed to learn to tinker when everything is locked down??

[cjslep]

I believe it was Steve Kent's The Ultimate History of Video Games Atari portion that really fleshes out Steve Jobs. The two anecdotes I remember are:

1. People in Atari generally considering him an oderous hairy hippie who once disappeared from work to go to India for self-enlightenment, but returned with Hepatitis.

2. He (Steve) was once offered $100 per transistor he could eliminate below the 100-transistor mark for an arcade game (I believe it was mid 150 count at the time), so he went to Woz and paid him on the order of $100 to eliminate the transistors (Woz was woefully unaware of the deal between Steve and Atari). Woz got it down in the low 30's or high 20's, Steve got the large sum of money and Atari wound up adding transistors back because while it worked they couldn't figure out how.

[tricolon]

> He (Steve)

I figured it out, but I just want to point out that there are three Steves to whom you refer.

[Cyph0n]

Holy shit. ~30 transistors make a game? Woz was a genius.

[defen]

I believe it was TTL chips and not transistors proper.

[twelvechairs]

> oderous

I assume you mean odious not odorous? (P.s. Shakespeare made this pun in 'comparisons are odorous')

[RogerL]

He was infamous for not bathing, and hence bad body order.

[j_baker]

I agree that Woz's contributions to Apple are greatly understated and Jobs's contributions are greatly overstated, but I think you're taking it a bit far. Jobs was clearly a dickhead, but it's difficult to dispute that he built Apple into a great company.

[eeeeeeeeeeeee]

Are you joking? Look at the developer community in OS X and iOS that are constantly tinkering and learning.

Jobs was absolutely an asshole, but to say he "set us all back" is preposterous.

[soperj]

You can develop on iOS? Can you do anything on iOS aside from what apple allows you? Not if someone hadn't figured out how to jailbreak the device.

[scott_karana]

Yes, I think it's really important to remember that the initial versions of iOS only allowed for JavaScript widgets, no applications at all!

Enterprising hackers who jailbroke the devices paved the way for the App Store as we know it: not Apple.

[autism_hurts]

You know that the simplicity Jobs rallyed for so hard early on is probably why computers are so successful in the mainstream, right?

[soperj]

No. In spite of his micro-managing engineers and developers managed to make great products that he advocated pretty packaging for. Apple has never made products for the mainstream anyway, they've always charged a premium which has put them squarely out of the mainstream.

[chc]

Woz wasn't even there for the time of Apple's greatest success. You don't have to like Jobs, but he did great things even without Woz.

[ProAm]

WIthout Woz there is no Jobs or Apple to know of. He is (arguably) the more important founder in regards to Apple.

[Ricapar]

By his logic: Why would you want to tinker with something that's already perfect?

[bobbles]

If Jobs wasn't there you never would have ever heard of Apple. Keep that in mind

[ProAm]

And without Woz there would be no Apple to hear of.