I retired from personal blogging in July 2008.
But you can find me over at http://blog.xero.com.
Steve Wozniak founded Apple Computers with Steve Jobs.
Woz has been one of my hero’s for almost 25 years. Back when I was 15 at Napier Boys High School, Bob McCaw established a computing class. Computers were new to schools then and we had Apple II’s. The school couldn’t afford many computers so Bob created a club where parents would buy a $100 share in a computer, which came into the classroom and the computer could be taken home in the weekends. I think each Apple II was about $1200 then. (I got a chance to take Bob out for lunch a year or so ago and say thank you which was very cool).
I was hooked and used to often take an Apple II home, put it on the dining room table and program. It seemed to me to be completely cool that you could bring a computer home. As the Mac, MacPlus, MacSE and Lisa came out I was all over it.
I learnt to program in Basic on the Apple II, skills not forgotten even when I didn’t do much programming at University. I remember loosing months to Hypercard which really was precursor to how we work with web based applications now.
Later working for Ernst & Young I picked up Visual Basic and Access, really only using those programming skills learnt at school.
So Woz’s wonderful Apple machines were what created my passion for computing and programming and indirectly led to the creation of many new jobs, lots of export revenue but most importantly a career I absolutely love.
The IT world is completely crazy, hugely fun and creates amazing experiences. If anyone had said even a few months ago that I would meet Woz and have him IN MY CAR, I would have said “what are you smoking” but here he is!
The technology world sometimes is just ridiculous.
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