Aarthi Ramamurthy

I finally finished reading iWoz today and to tell you the truth, the book is written as if Steve Wozniak simply narrated his life's story and someone just took notes and made copies of it and left it on the bookshelves. The language usage is down to earth and the book itself is very inspiring.

The book starts off with his childhood where Woz talks about his gang of 'The Electronic Kids' and their adventures in building circuits and gadgets. It moves on to give a very interesting account of Blue Boxes and phone phreaking (Captain Crunch anyone?) and Homebrew Computer Club and then to him designing Apple I and II (this is described in great details - fantastic read). Woz says the book was mainly written to clear a lot of misconceptions (such as the fact that he never quit Apple, he is still on Apple's payroll to this day).

Woz is your friendly, neighborhood geek who loves playing pranks (and good ones at that!), loves electronics and engineering and "whose head mostly floats in happiness even today" (paraphrased). The book also talks about his '81 plane crash and subsequent loss of memory, his life later on at Apple and CL9. He also narrates his version of the music concerts funded by him to "make people smile and have a good time" and his love for teaching.

Throughout the book, Woz sounds like a good natured, excited kid talking about computers at length (though you might think that he tends to brag at times). If you have read books such as "iCon" or watched the movie "Pirates of Silicon Valley", you'll probably know a lot of the facts in this book.

Enough said! You can read a good deal about him at his site here. Definitely worth a read, whether you are a geek or not.

And oh, the "Woz Way" is actually a street in San Jose, named after Woz.

Update: Changed the image since I didn't like the old one. Also listed out the names of related book and movie (I had mentioned them earlier as "this book and this movie") on request from a very fussy reader :).

Labels: Apple, iWoz, Steve "Woz" Wozniak