This book is for folks geekier than me, but I’m grateful for geeks like Woz.

This book is not for everyone! If you are not a digital hardware engineer you might want to subtract 1 star. If you are not a geek subtract two stars! After all how many memoirs do you know have a description of how a floppy disk data separator works . (Hint: it's a prom based finite state machine! Bring back memories any of my former colleagues?).

Woz was sort of a hero of mine. He designed the first popular all-in-1 PC that wasn't a kit, the Apple II. I had an Apple II and also schematics for it. Periodically, due to careless add-in board insertion it used to malfunction. I would borrow a scope , troubleshoot the circuit and replaced the bad part. This is what passed in those days for relaxation.

In some ways my career and Woz's had some parallels. We both designed microprocessor boards. Our companies used floppy disks and a non-IBM data format for them. His buddy Steve Jobs used to prototype his designs using wire-wrap. Some of my designs were wire-wrapped. The Apple II was designed before there was programmable logic. So Woz had to use his TTL data book to design a computer circuit with the least amount of parts. I also had the Texas Instrument TTL Data book. In fact I wore out my first copy because I thumbed through it so much.

We both didn't understand company politics. I was astounded that Woz had a boss in the Apple II division (after all he single-handedly invented the Apple II.) This is because he didn't want to go into management.

The other thing that impressed me was Woz's altruistic streak. Apple management did not give early employees stock but Woz did. Good for him. Engineers work very long hours and I am glad that in some cases they were rewarded with equity in the company.

Although the other Steve was not featured prominently in this book, Woz did touch on their complicated relationship. Woz developed a game for Atari, breakout that he managed to pull of in 4 days! Atari was where Steve Jobs was working at the time. However, Jobs did short change Woz when Atari paid for the job. Obviously this hurt Woz quite a bit and it underscored who Steve Jobs was as a person.

As you can tell , overall I enjoyed the book and would definitely recommend it to my friends,technical and otherwise.

I'm not sure Steve Wozniak could have done a better job at writing an autobiography. It turned out to be everything I had hoped for when I downloaded this audiobook. From his early life, he picks out all the most interesting moments and the moments that would become most relevant in leading to his legendary engineering career. He goes into satisfactory detail in the most salient portion of the book: the development of the Apple I and II computers. He often goes too deep into technical details for the non-technical reader, but this is a blessing and one of the great highlights for the technically inclined. I had feared that once we got into the Apple IPO that things would become uninteresting to me but I found myself still fairly invested.

From the wild west days of early silicon valley many legends have sprung up, spun around, and settled into their final forms. These stories are often exaggerated, contested by involved parties, or entirely fabricated. Woz gets space to set the record straight all throughout this book and it's extremely nice to hear his perspective on some of these legends we've all heard (those of us plugged into the history of the valley, that is).

On the audiobook: The narrator (Patrick Lawlor) must have really studied some Woz interviews because he just nails the delivery of the lines in this book. He really understands the tone that Woz must have intended when writing this book and I really appreciated that. I did notice the first speako (like a typo but for narration) I've ever heard in an audiobook though, which was a fun little thing to catch. The speako was regarding a FORTRAN compiler which the narrator referred to as a "complier". Love it.

What a goody-two shoes. I was not very impressed – a little light on the insights. The only areas he went into detail was on some discoveries – like when he built a middle school science project that used logic circuits, the original Apple II board, his work with Attari, and his design for a universal remote. He went through two divorces and raised two kids and we have a total a few paragraphs on these events. The one area I wanted to know more about was the start up of Apple. He goes into some detail on the Homebrew club, but very little on Apple from Apple II release to the IPO. He basically uses the book to give his high level life strategy – be a good engineer, correct a few errors (Steve Jobs screwed him, but at different times than the press had right), and wax on about the beauty of good electrical circuit design.
The one area I like was his description of growing up. He was very out there – youngest Ham Radio operator – his parents bought him a ham radio kit when he was 12 because he wanted to do it and spent three months getting licensed. Then his dad spent about $2K worth of equipment and how he and his dad built the kit over the next three months. He also designed computers on paper (circuit diagrams) since electrical chips were too expensive too buy – he did this for fun in high school – like doodling.

I had high hopes for an autobiography by Steve Jobs’ partner and a character in his own right. I was correct about the character part: even using a ghostwriter’s input, this is a singularly unpretentious book. His tone is a unique mixture of awed youth and full-on engineering geek, in the best sense of both. He deflates some myths— no, Apple didn’t fire him; no, he wasn’t in it for the money— and fleshes out his part in the creation of Apple’s early successes. The iconic products that we all know, like the iMac and iPhone, were created after he left the engineering department, so we’re left to learn about his invention of the first personal computers and a few peripheral items. His abilities and motivations are rendered clearly and I enjoyed learning about his loves and even his dislikes. This may be best appreciated by other engineers, however, who might get excited by transistors and logic gates.

I think Woz would be really fun to hang out with, but a writer he is not.

An awe-inspiring and a witty account. The book is written quite honestly and is filled with humorous anecdotes. While reading, sometimes it feels you're listening to a 12 year old talk . It may seem verbose to some as he digs deep into the intricacies of all the astonishing work he did. A must read for all budding engineers. It's not only about his love for computers , personal life or apple, it's about essential life lessons, rules to live by.

This book is a very difficult read. I have tremendous respect for Woz, but this book was so poorly written and had such a conceited narrative that I struggled big time. I can't believe he had a co-author. This book grates on my nerves because of the writing style. I've tried to read it twice now unsuccessfully. iWoz is pretty arrogant and annoying.

I actually heard Wozniak speak at Berkeley more than a decade ago and had always been curious to learn more about him. And while I've read a ton of material about Steve Jobs, this was a fascinating portrayal of Wozniak by Wozniak. I wrote some of my thoughts over on my blog and it was less of a review and more me just quoting some of the things I loved from the book:

"You know, it’s strange, but right around the time I started working on what later became the Apple I board, this idea popped into my mind about two guys who die on the same day. One guy is really successful, and he’s spending all his time running companies, managing them, making sure they are profitable, and making sales goals all the time. And the other guy, all he does is lounge around, doesn’t have much money, really likes to tell jokes and follow gadgets and technology and other things he finds interesting in the world, and he just spends his life laughing. In my head, the guy who’d rather laugh than control things is going to be the one who has the happier life.”

That pretty much sums up the feel and attitude of the book as he is a man who has lived and still lives his philosophy by one simple word: laughter.

http://tieryas.wordpress.com/2013/10/...

My reviews are in — today marks the end of the second book I've ever read in my life. I might not be a frequent reader and I might never have read any of those fictional and fantasy stories. But these stories about visionaries that puts ding in the universe and change the world for us to make it a better place to live are, in my opinion, must readable.

After living a novel with Steve Jobs in his official biography, this book about Steve Wozniak was no less than a novel. And then Woz speaking of his life for himself. And justifying and correcting all those wrongs spread about his life and Apple as he's always believed in honesty. “Extreme honesty. Extreme ethics, really. That’s the biggest thing he (his dad) taught me. He used to tell me it was worse to lie about doing something bad under oath than it was to actually do something bad, even like murdering someone. That really sunk in. I never lie, even to this day. Not even a little”.

I think this was unique in its own way, as Woz has spoken for himself throughout the book and not an author telling a story about Woz. I mean what can be more genuine, right?

We can read about Jobs and his life everywhere. There are gazillions of documentaries about him on YouTube, articles around the web, books and whatnot. But what we may have never noticed is the story of this introvert genius behind the first digital bluebox, the revolution of the PC world and the universal remote control. If it weren't for him, Jobs would've never found Apple. He really was the genius behind Apple I and Apple II computers that people now buy for thousands of dollars in auctions and see them at the museums.

Infact, I myself started reading this book the day after I met him in February this year. I mean, I thought, if that one day could have his influence on me so much, how charismatic will his biography be. And it really was. It made me think broadly about my future that led me change what I'd planned for my future, which ofcourse, well is not the only reason. But Woz happening to me this year really changed things around.

Sure, the book's got all the engineering material about the things he's worked on and I mightn't have understood half of those things. But the justifying of things like how Apple never started in a garage but only Hewlett-Packard did, how Woz never left Apple and is on the payroll to this day and how he started Cloud 9 because he just loved working with a small team to invent something new and not because the things he wasn't happy about at Apple, how Jobs was never fired from his own company but he quit because of some "power struggle with the board", how iMac and iPod were already in the "design phase" when Jobs got back to Apple as an advisor in 1995. The lessons his father taught him about how “engineering is the highest level of importance you could reach in the world, that someone who could make electrical devices that do something good for people takes society to a new level”. The stories about his commitment to things and relationships. And then the outro of the book containing the summary of the things and the lessons that he's learned, conveying them to all the people out there who wants to change the world for the better with their own little invention. These stories, even to their slightest details, just blew if off. They're educational, motivating, surprising, and whatnot.

I never believed the fact that reading books can so change your lives but if it can have influence on me. I promise, it can change your lives for the better, too.

To end it with a few of my fave quotes from the book:

“Things are facts or things are lies.”

“Humans learn better than rats. Only the rats learn it quicker.”

“It’s funny how when you’re up so late at night for so long your mind can get into these creative places, the kind of creative places that come to you when you’re halfway between asleep and awake.”

“As an inventor, you have to see things in gray scale.”

A man behind Apple, real gem.

For anyone thinking about reading this book, I would highly recommend doing the audio version. While Woz is a engineering genius, he is not an English major. If you are a person who requires perfect grammar, then this book is probably not for you. But, if you like history of technology and are curious about a huge icon in the tech world, then give the book a try. Sure, like most autobiographies and memoirs, it is pretty self congratulatory and a little over the top in some parts. Autobiographies are like that. I think sometimes people want them to be these humble experiences but would you be humble in the retelling of your story. Probably not.