Overall, an enjoyable and inspiring memoir. He and co-author Gina Smith’s writing is very readable and conversational, which helps when he describes technical processes. Its about growing up in Silicon Valley at a watershed time for electronics and computing. Though Woz wrote this in 2006, it’s a good history of the early days of Silicon Valley from someone who was there and is likely to inspire readers to go out and find a way to make a difference, whether or not they choose engineering. iWoz is the story about a man filled with curiosity and drive. He also challenges some of the narratives that have built up around his early years with Apple, such as he and Steve Jobs building the Apple I in their garage (they only did the final assembly in the garage), or his leaving the company because he was dissatisfied (he had other ambitions, though he recognized that some employees were dissatisfied). iWoz: Computer Geek to Cult Icon: How I Invented the Personal Computer, Co-Founded Apple, and Had Fun Doing It 9780393330434, 2006023335.

Woz details the first motherboards he constructed, his experiments with phone phreaking and what it taught him about understanding systems, his work with Hewlett-Packard, and more, offering a candidness that’s refreshing for the reader.

iWoz: From Computer Geek to Cult Icon: How I Invented the Personal. He describes his ethical background and desire to develop products that improve the lives of ordinary people as well as the simple joy of solving the engineering problems necessary to accomplish that desire. He and Steve Jobs are the creators of the Apple I and II computers that established. In iWoz: Computer Geek to Cult Icon: How I Invented the Personal Computer, Co-founded Apple, and had Fun Doing It, Steve Wozniak recounts his life from his boyhood experiments engineering basic electronics with transistors through the early 2000s and seeing the changes in Apple with the iMac and iPod.

Iwoz computer geek to cult icon