Woz's New Startup 193
Several readers noted that Woz has a startup called Wheels of Zeus. He's come out of "Semi Retirement"
to work on a new wireless handheld sort of thing. Not a lot of details,
but it certainly could shape up to be interesting. Specifically
mentions GPS. Supposedly Woz.com
will have data eventually, but currently is just really slow
and redirecting to Woz's personal page.
hmm (Score:1)
Oh well, I guess if anyone could come up with something truly innovative, it would be him...
Re:hmm (Score:2, Funny)
Re:hmm (Score:1)
That's because no one has done it right so far. Battery life on an IPAQ or Jornada is to short to make a useful GPS(for me anyway.) It should be able to last a weekend without needing to be recharged.
I use a Palm Pilot, GPS, cell phone, and MP3 player separately. If someone combined all those things into a single device that was still small and had a good battery life I would definitely snap it up.
Hmmm... (Score:1)
Oh that poor server. If it's already slow, having a link to it posted on the front page of
I was wondering when this would happen (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I was wondering when this would happen (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I was wondering when this would happen (Score:2)
Given that the last Apple product in which Woz had any input (AFAIK) was the now-fifteen-year-old IIGS, probably not.
Guard your wheels, man! (Score:1, Insightful)
Learning their lesson (Score:1)
This project is in its early stages. However, I wonder if and when the business/marketing plan for this thing is developed that woz will consider the lessons learned from Apple pricing themselves out of the market?
from the NYT article (Score:2)
appears that unlike the first Apples, Woz plans on licensing [nytimes.com] these things at first. proving he has at least learned something!
Re:Learning their lesson (Score:2)
A plea to Woz (Score:5, Interesting)
PLEASE INNOVATE!!! Don't do the standard all in one hand held, do something unique...well hell, something Woz like even
Re:A plea to Woz (Score:4, Funny)
Agreement. My dog has a deal in flight with the cat next door to produce a handheld wireless GPS widget, prototyping from stuff I left in the garage last summer. We get three or four VCs knocking at the door each day, but then she loses her composure and starts barking real loud, and they go away. Everybody is doing some slight variation on this theme.
Come on now, this is Wozniak. Maybe he can't do the insanely-ingenious thing himself any more, but I'd hope he could identify and hire somebody who still can.
Re:A plea to Woz (Score:4, Funny)
Our lawyers will be in touch shortly regarding your flagrant misuse of our trademark.
Ford Prefect
Chief Counsel
Microsoft Corporation
A plea to you (Score:2)
Children playing with loaded guns again... (Score:1)
Way to go. Knowingly posting a link to a site that was already slow in the first place. Do you hate Woz, or something?
WOZ up (Score:5, Funny)
You don't find your scheduler, you say, "WOZ happening."
The reason you can't find anything at the website woz.com is because you didn't say, "WOZ it do?"
WOZ, I'm not funny today? WOZ the matter? WOZ wrong with you?
Re:WOZ up (Score:2)
"Oh, you think I'm funny? That I'm here to amuse you? You mean funny like a clown?"
Danger (Score:1)
Re:Danger (Score:1)
Cool, Now Apple Can Compete With Dell! (Score:4, Funny)
I can just imagine Steve Wozniak on TV in an elf costume as he shouts, "Dude, you're gettin' an Apple!"
Hmmm, OK, maybe not...
Re:Cool, Now Apple Can Compete With Dell! (Score:1)
Re:Cool, Now Apple Can Compete With Dell! (Score:2)
Woz is on Apple's board of directors and I'll bet he get's to see, try out, and probably even suggest improvements to all of Apple's newest toys before they're announced..
Re:Cool, Now Apple Can Compete With Dell! (Score:2)
Re:Cool, Now Apple Can Compete With Dell! (Score:2)
standards (Score:1)
Yet Another Wireless Thingy (Score:2)
I'd love to work with the Woz (Score:1)
Re:I'd love to work with the Woz (Score:1)
Re:I'd love to work with the Woz (Score:1)
How about auto-sensing wireless LANs, bluetooth-compliant, solar powered, MP3/DVD-playing (uploaded into the device of course, no discs), web server (why the hell not?), with a voice module that can use the integrated cell phone to call and place orders, make appointments, order movie tickets, call in sick..
Oh yeah, and a GPS receiver.
Re:I'd love to work with the Woz (Score:1)
using wireless GPS, i could call my wife and tell her that i am stuck in traffic, and that i'll be home in 10 miles. or i could email the boss and say, sorry, i'm going to be late for the 8:30 this morning, i'll be in the office in 8.25 miles, but traffic is really slow right where i am.
Re:I'd love to work with the Woz (Score:1)
Other less impressive things to do is searching for things based on your location. Say you're on vacation and you get a wicked headache. It would be nice to find the closest drug store and have your perscription sent there if you have a particular alergy. There are a lot more things you can do with location technology.
Re:I'd love to work with the Woz (Score:1)
What about having the PDA tell you to do things when you get to a particular /place/ rather than a particular time, e.g. 'next time I'm in the supermarket, remind me to get some washing powder'?
There may be all sorts of possible wireless e-commerce ideas, for instance calling a cab and not knowing where on earth you were - you could go to a web page and they could find you.
If you're really weak-willed, you could set the PDA up to make a guess at whether you're really doing what you said you wanted to do, or if you've actually gone for a beer instead.
Just some ideas....
Re:I'd love to work with the Woz (Score:1)
"No, Bob, I'm not going to go jogging with your PDA so that it thinks you've earned another Heineken. You need help."
--
Benjamin Coates
does anyone remember (Score:4, Interesting)
The company was called CL9... you can read about it here [google.com] in google's cache (since his site is slashdotted at the moment).
The devices and company were a complete failure as I recall... I don't think he's done any notably successful product since the Apple ][, so I don't hold out high hopes for this new venture either.
Re:does anyone remember (Score:2)
He pretty much went into retirement after that. Short story, Apple II, plane crash, amnesia, quit Apple
Re:does anyone remember (Score:3, Interesting)
garyr
and yes - I'm talking out my ass, but this is slashdot after all.
Re:does anyone remember (Score:2)
Re:does anyone remember (Score:2)
I can see it now - parents attaching widgets to their children so they can track them when they go to the mall
"Honey, I lost Jeffy in Walmart. Can you go to the car and get the GPS system?"
Ha Ha only serious (Score:2)
Egomaniac, but... (Score:2)
Cleaver (Score:1, Redundant)
Re:Cleaver (Score:1)
Re:Cleaver (Score:2)
Re:Cleaver (Score:1)
Cleaver [sitcomsonline.com]. Proper Noun. The family surname in the tv show "leave it to beaver".
Clever [m-w.com]. Adjective. marked by wit or ingenuity
Inside (Score:1)
More often than not I lose my everyday things (keys, wallet) inside the house, where GPS doesn't work.
Oh well
Re:Inside (Score:1)
What could the device be? (Score:3, Funny)
Must be some babe killer device, that you pop into your babe magnet car. Using GPS, the device automatically points you to your next laison, while spitting out details like her name, what persona you used to get into her pants, any offspring you might have sired with her.
Not what I expected from Woz, but hey, it might be a big hit.
Re:What could the device be? (Score:1)
Re:What could the device be? (Score:2)
No one thinks he's making a vehicle for the gods. It was a joke.
I know that "humor" is something that resides in those parts of the brain that evolved millions of years after we diverged from the reptile, so I may be being unfair. Nevertheless, it is amazing how an organism that has learned how to type in English could lack the ability to detect sarcasm in the suggestion that the device under discussion was intended to aid in the efficient seduction of females (much as the famously virile Greek god of thunder). Most sapient creatures would have seen this, laughed at the clear farce, and moved on. You, suffering from having a mere (though oddly savant) reptilian brain, could only be indignant that no one could see the obvious point that it was in fact ridiculous. And thus it becomes a source of irony (a concept I won't explain, as it would be impossible for you to grasp) that you would attempt to insult me by comparing me to someone whose brain is already tens of millions of years more advanced than your own. Now that you've given me the chance to laugh, go back to your basking rock before your brain cools off any more.
Re:What could the device be? (Score:5, Funny)
Must be some babe killer device, that you pop into your babe magnet car. Using GPS, the device automatically points you to your next laison, while spitting out details like her name, what persona you used to get into her pants, any offspring you might have sired with her.
The only catch is that for Wheels of Zeus to work this way you must approach unto her in the form of a bull or a swan or something.
Re:What could the device be? (Score:2)
That would only work if her name was "Leda", and she was skinny-dipping
Re:What could the device be? (Score:2)
Although your explanation was much, much funnier, I think that "Wheels of Zeus" was probably chunked out because it's acronym spells...you guessed it..."Woz." Maybe The Woz is going through a bit of a mid-life crisis and is looking to spice up his image?
Re:What could the device be? (Score:2, Funny)
hmm (Score:3, Interesting)
A report in the New York Times on Wednesday said Wozniak would not immediately announce what products he is developing. A spokesman for the company was not immediately available to comment further.
If he's interested in hyping up his GPS doo-hickey, perhaps he should tell us what it is.
If he's interested in hyping his stock, he should hang out [dekaresearch.com] with Dubya [enron.com].
Re:hmm (Score:2)
Re:hmm (Score:2)
NYTimes article has more stuff to it (Score:5, Informative)
... It plans to have its first products finished sometime next year.
While Mr. Jobs went on to found Next Inc., bought Pixar (news/quote), and then returned to Apple as its chief executive in 1997, Mr. Wozniak, now 51, has largely remained on the sidelines. That has made him unusual in a hothouse business and technology culture that is characterized by serial entrepreneurs, few of them walking away after either success or failure. Instead, he has occupied himself with private investments and has taught computer education for elementary through high school students in the Los Gatos, Calif., school district, where he lives.
The new company will not initially announce what products it is planning and Mr. Wozniak said this week it was likely that it would not at first market its own products. It will instead seek licensing and marketing arrangements with other consumer electronics and related companies.
He said one goal was to take technologies that are now costly and reduce them in price so they could be sold in consumer markets.
Mr. Wozniak said he had enjoyed simply being a consumer of new technologies for more than a decade. But last year, a friend visited and began talking about an idea that used G.P.S. in a strange way and he found himself excited by the prospects of doing something with this.
"Sometimes I say that and I'm not really serious," he remarked, "but this time I was really serious."
...
Mr. Galanos said his firm had been excited about both the company's technology idea and the possibility of backing Mr. Wozniak.
"After all how many times will Steve jump on something new again?" he said.
Re:NYTimes article has more stuff to it (Score:1)
Re:NYTimes article has more stuff to it (Score:1)
--
Benjamin Coates
Hero (Score:2, Insightful)
Thanks Woz from a slightly jaded 40 year old engineer
So that's what he's been up to, huh? (Score:1)
will definetly get you a lightning bolt in the head and a personal parking spot in Hades.
(Hades has a Kerberos authentication system, BTW)
best wishes for success (Score:2)
(former member of the Palo Alto Homebrew Computer Club)
Re:best wishes for success (Score:5, Interesting)
(former member of the Palo Alto Homebrew Computer Club)
Considering some of his outrageous hacks, I would not be surprised. One of his early characteristics was to do outrageous things in hardware or software. Here are a few examples.
1. The screen memory on the Apple II was not laid out in a linear fashion but in a crazy quilt to lower the chip count on the motherboard. This resulted in headaches in converting a cursor address to a screen location.
2. Woz's Apple II parallel card didn't use a bit in a PIO to handshake with the printer, instead the handshake line *changed the addressing on a PROM* which toggled the executing code back and forth between active code and a do-nothing loop - talk about self modifying code!!!
3. One of the earliest cards for the Apple II was a modem with a "blue box" on a card. Obviously this was never produced in quantity.
4. Woz's binary to decimal conversion routine using the decimal addition mode of the 6502 chip is a classic. Unlike the 8080 and 80x86, which have decimal adjust instructions that are added after an addition or subtraction, on the 6502, the processor is put into and later taken out of decimal math mode. This made the 6502 lovely for controling devices using packed BCD (binary coded decimal), something that the 80xxx family does not do nearly as well.
Why post links to already slow sites? (Score:3, Funny)
I'm sure slashdotting it will speed it up.
Milalwi
Server (Score:1)
Woz (Score:1)
Homepages of the Stars! (Score:5, Funny)
I feel like I bought one of those cheap "Homes of the Stars" maps roadside in Hollywood.
Re:Homepages of the Stars! (Score:2)
Sheer Speculation (Score:4, Funny)
A Seqway intregrated with Wireless PDA support with a Wireless Flight helmet heads up display for an outdoor wheeled version of Quake on a specially prepared field or arena.
The First Truely wireless sports experience.
Thus: "Wheels of Zeus"
The wireless pda could be used to facilitate score keeping, etc.
Re:Sheer Speculation (Score:1)
That is such a cool idea, actually. Finally, the Segway has a killer app.
Re:Sheer Speculation (Score:2)
Busines plan!
I don't have the connections. Go for it.
Re:Sheer Speculation (Score:2)
Maybe it's just me (Score:1)
WOZ-->iWalk (and know where I'm going)?
Maybe it's just me
Already a Zeus Wireless... (Score:2)
[OT] Woz on TV (Score:1)
Based on looks alone, I don't think I'd want these guys near children.
Good stuff, successful or not (Score:2, Interesting)
The man is a brilliant engineer. And at making new technology cost-effective and so commercially realizable.
Whether that translates into a business windfall? Well, I just hope he's having fun and feeling creative. Technically, good things are bound to come of it.
I hope the interface (from physical to graphic) is really useful.
And, if you expect me to read anything significant off of it, I hope the display is decent.
When are we ever going to fix displays? We've got horsepower enough -- how about something easy on the eyes and with more than a piddly few lines?
H2G2? (Score:2, Interesting)
That idea always appealed to me. It would be very nice to be able to leave small virtual GPS caches around for other people. And to get current information about any place in the world.
You really wouldn't need all that frequent updates, stopping by at an internet cafe once a week or so would do it easily. (Could be problematic if you're visiting California though.
Conflict of interest? (Score:3, Informative)
Since both companies are interested in producing whiz-bang handhelds, isn't him being on the board of one company and having his own, separate company some sort of raging conflict of interest?
~Philly
Cool toys (Score:1)
So, of course I'd want this feature in the Uber-PDA too.
Woah. Wuz Woz really a success? (Score:2)
Woz was the genius behind the Apple ][ - but was he behind the Mac? It's the Mac that really launched Apple, not their old line which weren't any more or less revolutionary than the competition at teh time (ie, the Compaq and IBM PCs, as well as the Pc Jr). Remember folks - Apple computers had command-line interfaces!
I don't think that Woz will be the Wireless Messiah. There's no guarantee of success, especially since he has spent the past few decades out of the loop.
IMHO, his name lends his cachet only because of association to Apple, and Apple brings cachet only because of Jobs
Re:Woah. Wuz Woz really a success? (Score:2)
Re:Woah. Wuz Woz really a success? (Score:2, Insightful)
Personally, I'm hoping the other Steve will give Woz access to the Newton stuff, so he can use it as the basis for his new wunder handheld. The Newton OS is still the best handheld OS out there (Not even PalmOS 4 comes close) and the hardware just needs to be shrunk. A smaller 2100 with GPS and wireless internally would rock. Don't forget the newton had a decent battery life (1 week of regular use on my MP130).
Hmmmm. Newton+iPod+GPS+Ricochet=Killer App.
A 2100 with 5Gb HDD, and GPS and Ricochet cards would be a good place for Woz to start.
The Crazy Finn
Re:Woah. Wuz Woz really a success? (Score:3)
Re:Woah. Wuz Woz really a success? (Score:2)
Re:Woah. Wuz Woz really a success? (Score:2)
You misread my point (Score:2)
The buzz about Woz is misplaced IMHO because it was the Mac which really launched Apple as a Serious Contender in the consumer market, to really challenge {IBM|Compaq|etc} - the Apple I and ][ for all their whiz-bangery were still in the infant days of computing where only the elite had them.
Woz had nothing much to do with the Mac - which was a quantum leap ahead of the old Apple line. Yet teh buzz in the media seems to imply association where there isnt any.
woz.com recent change of ownership? (Score:2)
I wonder if he had to purchase that domain from someone, or if it expired, etc.
Woz and numbers (Score:5, Funny)
He was always a fan of interesting numbers, people who had addresses like 1234 Main Street. For a long time he wanted a phone number with all ten (or at least seven) digits the same, but couldn't get one. Finally when the 888 toll-free area code came out, he was able to get a cell phone with the number (888)888-8888.
Soon thereafter, he began getting mysterious calls on his new phone. The phone would ring and there would be just silence, or strange (but not particularly rude) noises. These happened several times a day. Eventually, in one of those calls, he heard a woman's voice: "What are you doing with that? Put that down." followed by the other end hanging up.
He figured out that it was babies who were calling him. If a baby or young child picks up the phone, one of the most likely numbers to dial is the same digit over and over. Kids were picking up the phone and mashing the 8 button constantly.
I read this in a Wired interview (doesn't seem to be online) which ended with the line, "...the babies of the world were calling the Woz."
Re:Woz and numbers (Score:2)
Re:Woz and numbers (Score:2)
*Wheels* of Zeus (Score:2, Funny)
-russ
Judging by Woz's previous projects... (Score:2)
Re:In case you dont know (Score:3, Informative)
Re:In case you dont know (Score:2)
BTW: Let's end this post..
Re:Wheels Of Zeus? (Score:1, Redundant)
Re:Wheels Of Zeus? (Score:1)
Re:Wheels Of Zeus? (Score:2)
Re:Wheels Of Zeus? (Score:2)
World Otter eZtablishment
Excuse me?
Re:ATTN: Woz (Score:1)
It can always be done without a rewrite of the codebase. You just don't want to do it.