Wozniak book signing book report

All: For those who might not have been aware, Steve Wozniak was in New York last night for a book signing at a Barnes & Noble. I attended this signing and I thought I'd provide a book report of sorts for those who haven't yet been (the last one was in Philadelphia about a month ago). I arrived not knowing what to expect and there were only about 25 people in the gallery at 5:30 (the presentation began at 7pm). This event was competing with the Christmas tree lighting at Rockefeller Center, so I figured, hey, it shouldn't be too crowded. Yeah, right. While I was waiting, I grabbed a copy of iWoz and began reading. My report on the book itself is at the end. There were about 150 seats and by 7pm, 175 people were there. I'd say about 80/20 male/female ratio, from a 9 year old girl with a cello strapped to her back to about 55. Ethnically, it was a pretty diverse crowd. Steve arrived on-time and after a short intro, began his speech. I don't think he stopped to breathe. He spoke constantly for 45 minutes. In spite of his stated shyness, he was a very gracious and engaging speaker. You can tell that his mind is running far ahead of his mouth. Yet, in his speech, you can hear a boyish quality that conveys such excitement about computers and amazement as how he, as the "other Steve" with the engineering brains, created the first color personal computer that could be connected to the TV, and, by his accounts, lit the rocket on the nascent personal computing industry (I think he actually said something like "how we started the industry"). I bet that if the guy from Barnes & Noble didn't keep him to a clock, he would have told stories until closing at 10pm. I spent only a few minutes with Woz. He signed my Woz book, an original instruction manual from my Apple II (which he pawed over, not having seen one in years), and we talked momentarily about my Altair Emulator project. There were people there who brought old computers for him to sign (which he did). Most people just had their books signed. Now, onto the book itself. While I was waiting for the presentation to start, I began reading around the middle of the book and in an hour and 20 minutes time, read almost 100 pages. The book is an easy read and is in a conversational style that after hearing Woz speak, one can easily see how the book was created...he told the stories and Gina Smith, the co-author, wrote them down, preserving his familiar, conversational style. This isn't fine literature, and Steve readily admitted that he's not much of an author. But, if you think of it more as you and Steve sitting at a bar talking about old times, you will enjoy it. Since I began in the middle at a random spot, I didn't read about Steve's early years. He did allude to his childhood in his presentation, and this is where most people will discover the "I didn't know that." facts about Woz. I picked-up the story around the time of Steve creating the Breakout game for Atari. The back-half of the book is filled with common Woz stories about Breakout, the 500 machine purchase from The Byte Shop, his drive for elegance in design (and reduced parts count), and hacking a Shugart floppy drive to make a very elegant floppy controller system. There were some brief mentions of fights with Jobs, like over the number of slots to put in the Apple ][ and the failure of the Apple ///, but any disagreements with the other Steve were treated gingerly. I'm sure there are kernels of rare or never-heard Woz stories in there, but in the pages I read, I didn't really see any. Rich