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Woz, Kottke, Hertzfeld discuss the 'Jobs' movie
John Vink, who was an Apple engineer between 1996 and 2012, managed to grab three of the people portrayed in the 2013 movie Jobs for a long discussion about the movie and Steve Jobs. It's an episode of John Wants Answers with Daniel Kottke, Andy Hertzfeld and Steve Wozniak. Kottke was a friend of Jobs from Reed College who traveled to India with the Apple co-founder, and later became an early Apple employee and Macintosh team member. Hertzfeld wrote much of the original Macintosh operating system software and later went on to co-found three companies, and Wozniak needs no introduction. The team tells some fascinating stories about Apple and Jobs, and it's well worth your time to watch the video for an Apple history lesson. [via The Mac Observer]
Early Apple employees comment on 'Jobs' movie
Jobs, this year's non-comedy Steve Jobs biopic, opened in theaters today. The film stars Ashton Kutcher and follows Jobs from his humble college days through his rise, fall and eventual return to power at the company he helped found. Reviews have been mixed on the film itself, but how do the people who were there at the beginning of Apple react to the film? Early Apple employees Daniel Kottke and Bill Fernandez spoke with Slashdot's Vijith Assar about what Jobs got right, and wrong, about their time with the company. Kottke worked with Apple on hardware, while Fernandez was a part of developing user interfaces for the company. Of the two, only Kottke has actually seen the movie, which he worked on as a script consultant. For his part Fernandez says he sees the film as a work of fiction and has no desire to see history reworked. So what did the filmmakers get wrong? The portrayal of Steve Wozniak. According to Kottke, this scene involving Jobs convincing Wozniak that home computers are the wave of the future while walking through a Hewlett-Packard garage "rings false." The complaint that people would rightly have about the film is that it portrays Woz as not having the same vision as Steve Jobs, which is really unfair. Woz's reply this morning was, "If I see it at all, I'm going to have to see it alone." The film also heavily dramatizes Wozniak's exit from Apple, a scene that Kottke sees as one of the film's best even though it has no basis in reality. Kottke says "that was a complete fabrication."
Early Apple employee Daniel Kottke on the Apple I, more
Apple employee #12, Daniel Kottke, talked to Avi Solomon of Boing Boing about his time working at Apple. The interview has captivating stories about Kottke's life in the early 1970s tech scene. Besides a long discussion of the influence of psychedelics on technology, Kottke also talks about Wozniak's hardware genius and Jobs's flair for design, which was starting to develop when he was working on the Apple I. Kottke says, It was brilliant of Steve to find Rod Holt to make a switching power supply, which was a lightweight power supply with no big heavy transformers, and to put the plastic case on it. So you could actually take the Apple ][ under your arm and carry it somewhere. We never really advertised that but it was part of the appeal. And Steve never forgot that. You can read more about Kottke and his early Apple adventures in the Boing Boing interview.
Meet Apple Employee #12 in California tonight
If you're a Mac geek in Menlo Park, California, listen up. TechShop on Independence Drive will host an evening with Daniel Kottke, Apple Employee #12, and the only employee to have worked on the Apple I, Apple II, Apple III and the original Macintosh. Mr. Kottke will speak on "The features that made Apple's products winners in the market place," and working versions of each of those classic machines will be on hand. It all starts at 7:00 PM PST. As TUAW tipster Taylor points out, Woz himself has a tendency to show up at these public "nerd events," but we aren't making any promises.Thanks, Taylor!
