[dbish]

Woz is awesome and as an engineer I understand the urge to say he’s the main one who should be honored but we have to be realistic. Jobs ushered in 2 eras, only 1 with Woz. The personal computer and the computer in everyone’s pocket.

That’s not touching any of the other areas like helping to drive Pixar. Woz did not have a second act, which is perfectly fine and I deeply respect him but he doesn’t have quite the same cultural impact.

[engeljohnb]

Woz is a genius who invented the personal computer as we know it.

Jobs was a celebrity who was good at branding himself as a genius.

I don't consider a clever UI idea like a touch screen to be a work of brilliance, especially since he did zero engineering work, both for early and later Apple devices. Touch screen handheld devices would've come around with or without him, just maybe a few years later.

It should've been Woz.

[microtherion]

Woz was one of many people who designed microprocessor based computers in the 1970s (I recently started reading back issues of Dr. Dobb's Journal https://archive.org/details/dr_dobbs_journal_vol_01_201710, and the variety is astounding), and far from the first one, though he was very good at what he did.

What really set apart the Apple II from many of its peers is that it came preassembled, in a neatly designed case (though the Commodore PET and TRS-80 were pretty much released at the same time), and those esthetics were due more to Jobs than Wozniak.

Jobs did not write product code, or design boards, but he had a constant presence in the design of Apple's products and many (though by no means all) of his inputs changed the products for the better.

[dboreham]

> Woz is a genius who invented the personal computer as we know it.

History being written by the victors here, I believe.

He designed some clever things for example bit-banging the floppy interface which allowed the Apple 2 to have floppies at a lower price point than competitors. Another innovation of the Apple 2 at the time was its use of a switched-mode PSU. It was almost certainly the first personal computer to have that, but designed by Rod Holt not Woz. He didn't invent the switching PSU -- they were commonly used in portable test equipment at the time.

Having been alive at the time and paying attention, I disagree that Woz invented anything very significant. Definitely an important figure, and a clever guy though.

[SoftTalker]

> Touch screen handheld devices would've come around with or without him, just maybe a few years later.

They already existed. The iPod Touch was not the first one. It was certainly the most successful one though.

[mulmen]

Woz is alive.