8 ms·

TL;DW: He's very supportive, and talks about how things used to be fixable and have plans included on paper, "open source". He says Apple II shipped with compl

TL;DW: He's very supportive, and talks about how things used to be fixable and have plans included on paper, "open source". He says Apple II shipped with complete schematics and source code listings.

hellbannedguy 5y ago
I sometimes wonder what the world would look like if Woz got his wish to not bury the Apple II (Which had a huge amount of ports for tinkerers/electronic maker type enthusiasts). I was too young for the Apple II, but as a kid I saw a father working with his in his garage. He was always inventing something, and connecting it to the Apple. In a way, it was one if the first Raspberry pi's? Kinda?
- ekianjo 5y ago
  The Commodore 64 was much more akin to the Raspberry Pi's. You didn't have to be rich to have one.
  - zabzonk 5y ago
    From wikipedia, the introductory price was: > US$595 (equivalent to $1,596 in 2020) Slightly more than a Pi. I could not afford one back then, particularly when you factored in the floppy disk drive prices.
    - tyingq 5y ago
      There were some price wars later where the C64 and some other 8 bit PCs became reasonably affordable.
    - Narishma 5y ago
      Still 3 times cheaper than the Apple II.
      - gfxgirl 5y ago
        same as Mac vs Windows today. Cheapest Mac Laptop $999. Cheapest Windows laptop $199, $299? https://www.amazon.com/Laptops-Under-500-Computers-Tablets/s?rh=n%3A565108%2Cp_36%3A2421886011 https://www.amazon.com/Laptops-Under-500-Computers-Tablets/s... posted from a mac
        iratewizard 5y ago
        Windows does manufacture a few laptops, but most are not Windows machines. They are machines that choose to license Windows for the OS component.
        tbihl 5y ago
        Microsoft would be the manufacturer.
    - swiley 5y ago
      I'd liken some of the smaller z80 machines and "trainers" to the raspberry pi. But the reality is nothing quite like the pi existed back then. Computing was significantly more expensive than it is now.
    - ekianjo 5y ago
      it was the most popular computer of its time. you need to compare with how expensive computers were at the time otherwise your figures are meaningless.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
    Really there were a lot of contenders for this title in the 8-bit micro age. I'd say I miss it, but I was too young to be a part of it. Sometimes I think I was born a generation late.
  - blooalien 5y ago
    Ah, the C= 64! Another great old machine. Did things no other personal computer of it's time could do. And Commodore Amiga was amazing, too. I miss Commodore hardware sometimes. Still tho, gotta love that toys like Raspberry Pi and Arduino (and other similar stuff) have been reviving the old-school "hacker" and "maker" mentalities. Downright amazing some of the nifty stuff people been building lately with them single board computers and other such components.
dgb23 5y ago
He goes over some fun and inspirational stories about that yes. But it's much more than that: "In a lot of people's minds power over others equates to money and profits. Hey, is it your computer, or is it some companies' computer?" He talks about companies trying to control and inhibiting repair and modification and compares it to the liberating and creative experience that he had and how that lead to him building the apple. He also compares the situation to a previous phone monopoly and how standardization and freedom lead to innovation. The message is really strong and important and goes beyond what I assumed is going on with this movement. The Right to Repair isn't just about being able to fix things yourself. It is about fundamental freedoms that enable creativity, innovation and efficiency.
- em-bee 5y ago
  in other words, the Right to Repair movement is doing for hardware what the Free Software and Open Source movement is doing for software.
  - nicoburns 5y ago
    It's partly this. It's also partly about restoring the kind of rights one is supposed to get under the first-sale doctrine: ownership over the thing that you have bought.
    - II2II 5y ago
      The right to repair has nothing to do with open source and it is probably best to avoid conflating it with open source. It is going to be difficult enough to pass legislation to enable the access to components and schematics, as well as to prevent the implementation of technical barriers intended to make independent repair (and modifications) illegal. The reason why we reached this abysmal state of affairs has more to do with consumer apathy, a set of property rights for producers that were naively reasonable, and a twisting of laws that were intended for other purposes. Put in other terms, the Apple II was not open source. The schematics were freely available, at least some of the ROM's source code was available, there were no barriers to repair (if I recall correctly, there were no custom chips/components), and people were free to modify the hardware. Yet you could not make copies, straight-up or modified, without being sued by Apple. A cleanroom approach would have to be taken to make something compatible. The world seemed to be okay with that. Things like schematics and code served supported repairability, which was an expectation of consumers back then, so the vendor voluntarily provided it. That being said, a true open source approach to hardware would have still been frowned upon back then.
tqwhite 5y ago
The reason it was fixable is because almost nothing worked correctly for very long once it left the factory. It was not a golden age. Our TV was out for a month once because my dad could not figure it out.
- Sunspark 5y ago
  Why didn't he just call a repairman?
GuB-42 5y ago
I am not surprised. I mean, that's the guy who signed a Hackintosh. He has always been the hacker in my view, when Jobs was the businessman.
dpkonofa 5y ago
I hate to be that guy but this sounds very much like "old man recounts tales of how things were 'back in my day' to youngsters". The Apple II was not anywhere near as complex as the computers and devices we're talking about now and it wasn't wrapped up in the patents and chip licenses that nearly every piece of technology today is wrapped up in. You can't even have a DSP (digital signal processor) that would be repairable or that you could include schematics for without vioating any number of patents held by third-parties or patent trolls (and I'm not, in any way, saying that patent trolls aren't the spawn of the devil). Apple wanted to make FaceTime open sourced and they couldn't because of a patent troll. I don't even think we can get into the complexity of today's hardware systems without running into any number of reasons why that stuff can't be "open-sourced". It's great that super-techy people want to be able to repair their own devices (and there's no reason currently why you can't) so I feel like the current right to repair movement, and especially people like Louis Rossman, are doing a huge disservice to the ideas behind people's actual rights to repair devices they buy when they conflate them with "open-source" and completely ignore the fact that 99% of people don't care. Unless they find a way to show people what the upsides and downsides of the current situation are objectively, they're never going to get the support they need. As it stands, they're being misleading at best and downright lying at worst to try and push a narrative that gets to the end goal and, as soon as the lies come out, it'll push the momentum backwards instead of carrying it forward. The number of people with expertise to actually fix most of these issues with these complex devices is incredibly small and dwindling and opening that up to anyone and everyone without some kind of plan in place is just going to spectacularly backfire.
- foerbert 5y ago
  I'm not sure I understand why a schematic would violate a patent. As far as I'm aware, patents do not exist to make information secret, but to provide a temporary exclusive legal right in exchange for making the information public.
  - dpkonofa 5y ago
    A schematic, in and of itself, may not violate a patent but providing a means for someone to create a part that requires software that's patented may open up people and companies to litigation that would kill them. Qualcomm, for example, holds patents for any number of chips that are in mobile devices from any tech company. A phone manufacturer, more than likely, wouldn't be able to provide schematics for their device that would include any details of how to repair that chip without having to defer to Qualcomm as it itself is only licensing that technology for production of their devices. Patents provide that exclusive legal right but, in most cases, don't extend that right to licensees. The whole situation is a mess.
blooalien 5y ago
My first personal computer was an Apple II+, and let me tell you, those schematics and other available information made it crazy hackable. I wired and coded all kinda fun features into that thing that it wasn't technically even supposed to be capable of, and it was hella fun doin' it. :)

TL;DW: He's very supportive, and talks about how things used to be fixable and have plans included on paper, "open source". He says Apple II shipped with complete schematics and source code listings.

hellbannedguy 5y ago

I sometimes wonder what the world would look like if Woz got his wish to not bury the Apple II (Which had a huge amount of ports for tinkerers/electronic maker type enthusiasts). I was too young for the Apple II, but as a kid I saw a father working with his in his garage. He was always inventing something, and connecting it to the Apple. In a way, it was one if the first Raspberry pi's? Kinda?

ekianjo 5y ago
The Commodore 64 was much more akin to the Raspberry Pi's. You didn't have to be rich to have one.
- zabzonk 5y ago
  From wikipedia, the introductory price was: > US$595 (equivalent to $1,596 in 2020) Slightly more than a Pi. I could not afford one back then, particularly when you factored in the floppy disk drive prices.
  - tyingq 5y ago
    There were some price wars later where the C64 and some other 8 bit PCs became reasonably affordable.
  - Narishma 5y ago
    Still 3 times cheaper than the Apple II.
    - gfxgirl 5y ago
      same as Mac vs Windows today. Cheapest Mac Laptop $999. Cheapest Windows laptop $199, $299? https://www.amazon.com/Laptops-Under-500-Computers-Tablets/s?rh=n%3A565108%2Cp_36%3A2421886011 https://www.amazon.com/Laptops-Under-500-Computers-Tablets/s... posted from a mac
      - iratewizard 5y ago
        Windows does manufacture a few laptops, but most are not Windows machines. They are machines that choose to license Windows for the OS component.
        tbihl 5y ago
        Microsoft would be the manufacturer.
  - swiley 5y ago
    I'd liken some of the smaller z80 machines and "trainers" to the raspberry pi. But the reality is nothing quite like the pi existed back then. Computing was significantly more expensive than it is now.
  - ekianjo 5y ago
    it was the most popular computer of its time. you need to compare with how expensive computers were at the time otherwise your figures are meaningless.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
  Really there were a lot of contenders for this title in the 8-bit micro age. I'd say I miss it, but I was too young to be a part of it. Sometimes I think I was born a generation late.
- blooalien 5y ago
  Ah, the C= 64! Another great old machine. Did things no other personal computer of it's time could do. And Commodore Amiga was amazing, too. I miss Commodore hardware sometimes. Still tho, gotta love that toys like Raspberry Pi and Arduino (and other similar stuff) have been reviving the old-school "hacker" and "maker" mentalities. Downright amazing some of the nifty stuff people been building lately with them single board computers and other such components.

dgb23 5y ago

He goes over some fun and inspirational stories about that yes. But it's much more than that: "In a lot of people's minds power over others equates to money and profits. Hey, is it your computer, or is it some companies' computer?" He talks about companies trying to control and inhibiting repair and modification and compares it to the liberating and creative experience that he had and how that lead to him building the apple. He also compares the situation to a previous phone monopoly and how standardization and freedom lead to innovation. The message is really strong and important and goes beyond what I assumed is going on with this movement. The Right to Repair isn't just about being able to fix things yourself. It is about fundamental freedoms that enable creativity, innovation and efficiency.

em-bee 5y ago
in other words, the Right to Repair movement is doing for hardware what the Free Software and Open Source movement is doing for software.
- nicoburns 5y ago
  It's partly this. It's also partly about restoring the kind of rights one is supposed to get under the first-sale doctrine: ownership over the thing that you have bought.
  - II2II 5y ago
    The right to repair has nothing to do with open source and it is probably best to avoid conflating it with open source. It is going to be difficult enough to pass legislation to enable the access to components and schematics, as well as to prevent the implementation of technical barriers intended to make independent repair (and modifications) illegal. The reason why we reached this abysmal state of affairs has more to do with consumer apathy, a set of property rights for producers that were naively reasonable, and a twisting of laws that were intended for other purposes. Put in other terms, the Apple II was not open source. The schematics were freely available, at least some of the ROM's source code was available, there were no barriers to repair (if I recall correctly, there were no custom chips/components), and people were free to modify the hardware. Yet you could not make copies, straight-up or modified, without being sued by Apple. A cleanroom approach would have to be taken to make something compatible. The world seemed to be okay with that. Things like schematics and code served supported repairability, which was an expectation of consumers back then, so the vendor voluntarily provided it. That being said, a true open source approach to hardware would have still been frowned upon back then.

tqwhite 5y ago

The reason it was fixable is because almost nothing worked correctly for very long once it left the factory. It was not a golden age. Our TV was out for a month once because my dad could not figure it out.

Sunspark 5y ago
Why didn't he just call a repairman?

GuB-42 5y ago

I am not surprised. I mean, that's the guy who signed a Hackintosh. He has always been the hacker in my view, when Jobs was the businessman.

dpkonofa 5y ago

I hate to be that guy but this sounds very much like "old man recounts tales of how things were 'back in my day' to youngsters". The Apple II was not anywhere near as complex as the computers and devices we're talking about now and it wasn't wrapped up in the patents and chip licenses that nearly every piece of technology today is wrapped up in. You can't even have a DSP (digital signal processor) that would be repairable or that you could include schematics for without vioating any number of patents held by third-parties or patent trolls (and I'm not, in any way, saying that patent trolls aren't the spawn of the devil). Apple wanted to make FaceTime open sourced and they couldn't because of a patent troll. I don't even think we can get into the complexity of today's hardware systems without running into any number of reasons why that stuff can't be "open-sourced". It's great that super-techy people want to be able to repair their own devices (and there's no reason currently why you can't) so I feel like the current right to repair movement, and especially people like Louis Rossman, are doing a huge disservice to the ideas behind people's actual rights to repair devices they buy when they conflate them with "open-source" and completely ignore the fact that 99% of people don't care. Unless they find a way to show people what the upsides and downsides of the current situation are objectively, they're never going to get the support they need. As it stands, they're being misleading at best and downright lying at worst to try and push a narrative that gets to the end goal and, as soon as the lies come out, it'll push the momentum backwards instead of carrying it forward. The number of people with expertise to actually fix most of these issues with these complex devices is incredibly small and dwindling and opening that up to anyone and everyone without some kind of plan in place is just going to spectacularly backfire.

foerbert 5y ago
I'm not sure I understand why a schematic would violate a patent. As far as I'm aware, patents do not exist to make information secret, but to provide a temporary exclusive legal right in exchange for making the information public.
- dpkonofa 5y ago
  A schematic, in and of itself, may not violate a patent but providing a means for someone to create a part that requires software that's patented may open up people and companies to litigation that would kill them. Qualcomm, for example, holds patents for any number of chips that are in mobile devices from any tech company. A phone manufacturer, more than likely, wouldn't be able to provide schematics for their device that would include any details of how to repair that chip without having to defer to Qualcomm as it itself is only licensing that technology for production of their devices. Patents provide that exclusive legal right but, in most cases, don't extend that right to licensees. The whole situation is a mess.

blooalien 5y ago

My first personal computer was an Apple II+, and let me tell you, those schematics and other available information made it crazy hackable. I wired and coded all kinda fun features into that thing that it wasn't technically even supposed to be capable of, and it was hella fun doin' it. :)