These are a few of Woz's favorite things
His picks range from an IBM programmable punch-card machine to the Honeywell Kitchen Computer (above) to an original version of Pong. Of course, the last item on that list is the iconic Apple 1, the computer Woz and Steve Jobs built and sold out of a garage. It's neat to browse through the eclectic list of older technology. It makes you wonder what today's Macbook Airs and Apple TVs will eventually inspire.
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Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak enchanted members of a press tour late last week with the nine gadgets that proved most influential on his...
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I hate to say it but I find the Woz pretty boring doesn't he have a baseball or NFL team to run?
December 06 2010 at 6:18 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyThe Apple 1, Pong, etc were *experiments*, works in progress that were rough around the edges and and encouraged the people who used them to tinker and do things that had not yet been done.
A MacBook Air or an Apple TV is a finished mass-market consumer appliance. While it's *possible* to tinker with them, that's not what they're designed for, so I don't expect we'll see nearly the same kind of inspiration to come from them. That's going to come from places where the real geeks of today are playing, not from products you can buy at the mall.
It's a bit tricky to answer "how many MFlops" because it depends quite drastically on the mix of instructions.
If we take the marketing view ("peak MFlops") the answer is "5 MFlops" -- 2.5 add/subtract, 2 multiply, a bit over 0.3 divide.
HEHE! Yes, I know, it's a little bit tricky to answer my question as I've asked it... it's in the nature of the MFLOPS to be tricky because each computer had his own instructions and are quite different among them... but even with that particularity, many people say that the CDC 6600 is around 1 or 10 MFLOPS (obviously someone of this two is mistaken) and I soposed that it was an historical fact (e.g. that CDC said that, even it wasn't true, in 1965).
To be more clear, I tried to look for that historical fact, instead of calculating it, to compare the CDC 6600 with the IBM STRECH. But if there isn't such info I'll go for the hand-calculated "peak MFLOPS".
Sorry, guys; that is NOT the Honeywell Kitchen Computer in the picture you are showing now.
That's the dual CRT operator's console of a Control Data Machine.
That picture is of the Control Data 6600, not the Honeywell Kitchen Computer.
December 06 2010 at 2:46 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply:O
Yes! it's a CDC 6600 one of the first (or even the first) successful super-computers. It appeared in 1965. One of his developers is the famous Seymour Cray, who will lead Cray Inc. and design some of the most legendary supercomputers :) Another interesting fact about this computer is that it is probably the root of RISC architecture.
I learnt that teaching a Computer History course* but I couldn't establish if it's computing power is 1 or 10 MFlops... the literature it's contradictory. Anyone who knows it for sure????? I would love your help :P
*if anyone is interested you can find my slides at Slideshare [in Catalan, I promise future translation :P]
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TUAW (or The Unofficial Apple Weblog) is a website devoted to tips, reviews, news, analysis and opinion on everything Apple.
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