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"The Apple II was the first time arcade games were in color" - Woz

I think Galaxian was the first arcade game to have multi-colored sprites. That's probably what Woz was referencing.
 
I believe it’s a hmongolation of
The first “Color Computer “ that could play arcade games .

Multi colored sprites weren’t really a thing in 1977

General purpose PCs without dedicated hardware didn’t really play “arcade” games at that time either. (apple 2 was released before the VCS)
 
rmay635703 said:
(apple 2 was released before the VCS)
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The Fairchild Channel F was released in November 1976, before the Apple II, and it was in color. And color S-100 video cards like the Dazzler likewise predate the Apple II and had games written for them. And let's not forget the Compucolor 8001, also released in 1976 and, yes, had some games written for it.

Arcade game consoles with color tubes go back to at late 1973. So... yeah, I have no idea what this statement is supposed to mean. Here's a Byte magazine article from October 1975 by Don Lancaster describing a circuit for generating NTSC color with a computer interface, is Woz now trying to claim that no, he invented the color computer just like he also invented the video terminal? Jeeze, gribby grabby much?
 
... Wow. I could only make it about a minute into that video before I couldn't take it anymore. I think I have to bow out of this discussion because this is way over the "If you can't say anything nice..." line.
 
Eudimorphodon said:
The Fairchild Channel F was released in November 1976, before the Apple II, and it was in color. And color S-100 video cards like the Dazzler likewise predate the Apple II and had games written for them. And let's not forget the Compucolor 8001, also released in 1976 and, yes, had some games written for it.

Arcade game consoles with color tubes go back to at late 1973. So... yeah, I have no idea what this statement is supposed to mean. Here's a Byte magazine article from October 1975 by Don Lancaster describing a circuit for generating NTSC color with a computer interface, is Woz now trying to claim that no, he invented the color computer just like he also invented the video terminal? Jeeze, gribby grabby much?
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I have no idea why he would call an Apple 2 a Color arcade, as it clearly wasn’t

So Agreed, I was attempting to explain his thought process.

The channel F wasn’t a PC and it didn’t use multicolored sprites (I owned one)
It did use a bitmapped display of all things which even at the extremely low res must have cost a lot to produce.
Sad Fairchild didn’t know how to market to 3rd parties, the machine was more capable in some ways than the vcs but a meh game library and constipated marketing likely killed it.

Arcade machines also aren’t PCs (generally unless you use a DEC PDP and say that was a home computer)

S100 was sort of a home builders kit and no one configuration was mass produced in 1977, games of a sort existed but many s100 systems were non-graphical, the one s100 I own can take black and white pictures but has trouble manipulating the video display directly , rather a kludge at best.
 
NeXT said:
OOOooOOOOoooOOOOOoooOOOOO

Reality Distortion Field

OOOooOOOOoooOOOOOoooOOOOO
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I don't know why I do these things to myself, but I managed to make it to within a minute of the end of that clip and, holy cow.

To be blunt, Woz has lost it. He's spent the last 20 years since Apple became cool again listening to all this trash pop history about how these two Silicon Valley Messiahs changed the universe and he's become completely swallowed up in it and lost any connection he had to reality. He literally takes credit for inventing the keyboard-driven microcomputer and gifting it to mankind. (I'm sure the claim at 3:11 that he was a "Hero" at the homebrew computer club will be... interesting, to some of the folks here...) Also of note is how suddenly he's claiming in this video no, wait, he did build the prototype Apple I using a Motorola processor he bought from work, not the 6502 he bought in San Francisco...

I'm sorry, the guy is either delirious or a deliberate liar, and nothing he says should be taken seriously.
 
Eudimorphodon said:
I don't know why I do these things to myself, but I managed to make it to within a minute of the end of that clip and, holy cow.

To be blunt, Woz has lost it. He's spent the last 20 years since Apple became cool again listening to all this trash pop history about how these two Silicon Valley Messiahs changed the universe and he's become completely swallowed up in it and lost any connection he had to reality. He literally takes credit for inventing the keyboard-driven microcomputer and gifting it to mankind. (I'm sure the claim at 3:11 that he was a "Hero" at the homebrew computer club will be... interesting, to some of the folks here...) Also of note is how suddenly he's claiming in this video no, wait, he did build the prototype Apple I using a Motorola processor he bought from work, not the 6502 he bought in San Francisco...

I'm sorry, the guy is either delirious or a deliberate liar, and nothing he says should be taken seriously.
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I probably can't bring myself to watch it. There's a reason my bookshelf doesn't have "iWoz" among my otherwise pretty decent collection of Apple II books and references. I think your post puts it better than I could at this point.

I love my Apple 1 clones and apple II machines, but I don't have much interest in recent Woz-ings in the world.
 
But everyone knows that Steve Jobs invented the microprocessor, just the same way that Elon Musk invented the EV or Nikola Tesla invented alternating current. /snark
 
I wonder how Woz's scammy unaccredited not-really-a-school "University" is doing these days. Betchya interviews like this where he claims to have invented the color blue and gave you and the whole the world daytime are useful for driving customer engagement. Someone with a jaded view of human nature might almost come to the conclusion that his ridiculous exaggerations are calculated and intentional... But, no, Woz would never be like that, he's just that fun loving joker with a heart of gold.

sigh.
 
Yeesh. I was hoping maybe he was just choosing words poorly or something.. but yeah. My problem is I like Woz. If it were Jobs making those claims I'd just wave it off as the usual Jobs/Apple arrogance. I just thought Woz wasn't like that. What I would have liked for that video is for the interviewer to get in there and really press him ("what about the Dazzler, what about this computer, this arcade? What do you mean yours is first?").

As a side note, this kind of thing is what makes doing any kind of documentary so difficult. When I did my first couple for youtube, I thought having access to primary sources was a boon. Instead I learned that people tend to change their stories a bit (or a lot) as they get older. Sometimes it's just poor memory, sometimes burnishing credentials to enhance your legacy before you check out, sometimes settling scores with other people in your field. It's a real challenge to get the story straight, and especially when videos like this come along and make you wonder for just a second if everything you thought you knew was wrong.
 
falter said:
I just thought Woz wasn't like that.
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I really hate to put it this way but... why?

That's not meant to be snide, it's just... yeah, I'll be honest, I used to think he was the nice underrated one myself, fully aware of his positive reputation of being a nice/slash/fun guy, kinda bumbling, humble, a true nerd, whatever. And maybe he is as long as the subject of the moment isn't him. But... man, I remember way, way back reading some interviews he did back in the 80's being kind of shocked at how nasty and self-centered he was about his technical work in the 1970's. I mean, really hurtful and dismissive, never giving even an ounce of credit to anybody, total hero in his own mind kind of stuff. I actually ran into some of this stuff before iWoz came out and I tried to write it off as him having been coached by Jobs to push the company line that Apple was created/staffed by unique and precious unicorn geniuses and whatnot, but... I dunno, I'm sure you've read iWoz, it's exactly the same attitude 20 years later. And it seems to be getting worse the longer time goes on; he keeps telling the same hero's journey story but, yeah, the details keep morphing, dates keep changing, and he harps harder and harder on how he was this super genius who invented all this s**t in high school and it's amazing these idiots finally caught up enough with him to give him the microprocessor that, yeah, he invented in high school and don't you forget it...

Anyway... I dunno, him being "like that" is really hard to miss once you scratch the surface at all. And, *shrug*, maybe there's some at least partially forgivable reason for it, I know there's all this speculation about him being on some kind of spectrum or whatever, and frankly the first minute of that video where he's going on about how "the colors in the sine wave" could translate to computer numbers as if it's a thing that nobody could have ever thought of before the concept revealed itself to his Beautiful Mind frankly makes that theory kind of hard to dismiss. But one thing this hero complex of his, wherever it comes from, makes completely crystal clear is that Woz is a highly unreliable narrator of his own story.

This is a man who's been living in a bubble his whole life; anything that enters his bubble he owns, and whatever happened outside of it was useless and/or unimportant. Whether it's malicious, calculated, or just how he's wired, that is what it is.
 
It's probably time to let the statements speak for themselves and move onto something else.
 
One word. Blowhard.

No excuses.

He did do something great at the time. It was an amalgamation of other ideas that came before, like all art and technology. The dazzler used the same method to get color, and I'm sure there were some at the Homebrew club.

You could just be humble and accept that it was a clever computer, just very expensive (and that was probably not his decision). If it was sold for an affordable price, just think what would have changed in the market!

Chuck Peddle (another blowhard, but not to this degree- his may have been senility toward the end) said he went and helped Woz get his computer running.
 
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Eudimorphodon said:
The Homebrew newsletter for November 1975 mentions that the Dazzler was demonstrated at the club meeting on the 12th, that it had been in the "design freeze" stage for a couple weeks at this point, and if club members wanted to buy a debut copy they'd offer a bulk discount.
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I've been trying to nail down when the SWTPC Gt6144 was actually designed and prototyped. I feel like it might be close to the Dazzler. I've still yet to encounter another person who claims to have one.

There aren't any other 'graphics cards' that came before the Dazzler right? I'm saying graphics as opposed to video card.. Im assuming the VDM-1 takes the ribbon there.
 
falter said:
Im assuming the VDM-1 takes the ribbon there.
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That may not be a great assumption, unless you specifically mean "commercially available S-100 Bus video card".

Dig through the Homebrew computer newsletters. In mid-1975 there are mentions of both what became the VDM (the "tom swift terminal") and John Suding (aka, The Digital Group guy)'s "TV interface". And of course the guys at Sphere were building their computer... and there's also a mention of a 4004-powered video terminal built in 1974. (With a couple games built into it, no less.)

The thing I'm failing to find in any of those issues of the Homebrew Computer Club is any mention of the day they crowned one of their members the title of Hero God of Computer Invention and gave him a medal for gifting them all the idea of interfacing a computer to a video display. Maybe it was before they started keeping a newsletter because it seems like club members had TVTs interfaced to their computers pretty much from the beginning. I guess they must have just had the TVTs lying around and never made the mental connection before.
 
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Heh yeah I totally forgot about Dr. Suding's 'packet #1' card for the Mark 8. That's unforgivable for me as a major dg fan. Man I would kill to have one of those for my dg collection. But so far Bryan Blackburn is the only guy I know of who has one. I think someone actually did a replica of it recently if I'm not mistaken. I believe that came out in 1974, well before the Altair was even announced. So that is a good contender. Tom Swift - that was only a set of design guidelines, wasn't it? I don't think any actual schematic emerged until Bob Marsh asked Felsenstein to take the video component and develop that into the VDM-1.

That reminds me - I've read in some places that Woz did produce some kind of TV Typewriterish terminal prior to the Cream Soda computer, possibly around the same time or shortly after Don Lancaster's. One source, which I cannot find now, claims it was actually produced. Never seen a pic of one though. Supposedly this was borrowed from for the Apple-1.
 
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