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 enlarge | Authors: Steve Wozniak, Gina Smith
Publisher: W. W. Norton
Category: Book
List Price: $25.95
Buy Used: $3.08
You Save: $22.87 (88%)
New (45) Used (39) Collectible (5) from $3.08
Avg. Customer Rating:  96 reviews
Sales Rank: 14806
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.5 x 1.5
ISBN: 0393061434
Dewey Decimal Number: 621.39092
EAN: 9780393061437
ASIN: 0393061434
Publication Date: September 25, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
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| Customer Reviews:
 Disappointed August 29, 2007
5 out of 7 found this review helpful
Steve Wozniak is interesting because he helped found Apple. This book is not about that time in his life. It covers it, but only minimally. Less than a quarter of the book covers this time period. In fact, it is over half done before Apple even really gets mentioned. Instead, this book is about Steve Wozniak himself. It's about his high school science projects, his pranks, and his philosophy of life. Steve is a little different than other people and it comes through in this book. He talks very highly of his accomplishments and often frames them as more important or unique than they really were. He did good work, but not all of what he claims he was first to do was he truly first.
I love Steve Wozniak, but this book was just too much about the small things in his life to be interesting to me.
 Fun and interesting August 12, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This is a very enjoyable book that tells a fascinating story, one most of us are only vaguely familiar with. Wozniak comes off likeable. There are laugh out loud segments. You don't have to understand all the computer stuff (although the writer makes the stuff understandable)to grasp the thrill of the ride.
A must read for every engineer August 1, 2007
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
Its a book with which you can relate to very easily if you're an engineer. At the end it gets boring when he starts talking about how Apple became big but its the part on how he starts off and how difficult it was for him to get to making computers that makes for a very interesting read. Certainly a book I would recommend every engineer to read!
An interesting overview of the history, but a tad banal July 17, 2007
2 out of 5 found this review helpful
The story Woz is telling is engaging and makes iWoz a very enjoyable read, but the structure of the book itself and the method of telling his story just feels like it's either being told to an eight year old or it feels like the author needs to write the subject down to a very basic level. iWoz is filled with phrases like, "I was so proud," "We were so excited," and "I was very excited." Even I feel redundant and excessive just mentioning it but I'm not exaggerating to say that nearly every topic includes several statements like this. As other reviews have said, it doesn't take long - only a few paragraphs - to feel like Woz is bragging and the book is just an expression of ego.
If you can look over this, it is an entertaining overview of his life as an engineer, the early days of personal computing and the beginnings of Apple.
 Interesting, but Steve is not a role model July 16, 2007
8 out of 18 found this review helpful
This book is interesting because it gives an answer to
the following questions:
1) Does Steve Wozniak live up to his status hardware genius?
2) Could he be a role model for engineers?
Lets start with the latter.
Being an electrical engineer myself, I'm always looking for examples
of successful fellow engineers who 'made it'. These people
can serve as an example showing that one of the best professions
is the world is also 'cool' and rewarding.
The nerdy and introverted image of engineers is detrimental
in attracting young people to the profession.
Unfortunately, Steve Wozniak's autobiography confirms every
conceivable prejudice about nerd engineers. He is shy, he
kicks on geeky pleasures, he's immature, and
probably has never read a real book in his life. His
political insights (e.g. on the war in Vietnam) are shallow
at best....
With Steve Wozniak as role model, no sane kid will consider
a career in engineering, unfortunately.
The writing is awfully bad. The book reads like the
unfinished first version of a manuscript.
His ghostwriter writes on her
web site that she deliberately picked the style to
reflect the way that Steve talks. Wrong choice: She
should have protected
him for this rambling disaster and she should have
pushed through on some key details. One example:
The fate of the other people who were on board the
airplane that Steve crashed is not properly mentioned.
It makes the Woz appear as a self-centered person.
Now to the original question: is 'the Woz' indeed a genius,
or was he just at the right spot at the right time?
After reading the book, it appears to be the latter.
Though there are not many technical details in the book,
it is clear that the projects he pets himself on the back for are
quite simple, even for 1970ies standards. They are well
in the reach of averagely competent hardware geeks. His key
'apple' idea was to combine the TV-graphics of the 'pong' game
with a microprocessor, essentially making a one
of the early graphics cards for a computer.
He was one of the first, but likely not the only one
who made this (though the book suggests otherwise).
In 1975 the time was simply ready for this, all it needed was
the entrepreneur spirit of Steve Jobs to make it happen.
In the 1980ies the automatic logic synthesis revolution has
made Steve Wozniaks digital hardware speciality obsolete.
It appears that he has not kept up with the field.
Steve Wozniak was clearly a very competent engineer in his time.
However badly written this book is, it is still very interesting to
get some glimpses of his side of the story.
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