Of course he would. He was a regular hacker. If you've read Steve Jobs' biographies they all describe Woz wanting to keep things open and hackable and Jobs pushing through for the vertical integration they have now. Woz made the altruistic decision most of us would've "preferred" but Jobs made the decision to create the most valuable company in the world instead. Hard to say who was right, really.
Woz also got into hacking about computers at an ideal time. Not long before then it would have been impossible to build a sophisticated computer in your garage. Years later, miniaturization has continued to progress and many things that were once relatively simple to replace have become much harder.
When most parts on a computer were through-hole components and relatively large integrated circuits that could easily be hand soldered, the skill required to participate in the repair process was much lower. Today, even relatively open hardware like a desktop PC has a ton of added complexity that would make people far less likely to ever want to attempt a repair on their own. While I've reflowed solder on a faulty GPU in the oven before, that's not exactly a good idea. A person is usually going to replace the things that have been component-ized like the RAM, GPU, SSD, motherboard, etc. rather than try to actually repair them.
Granted, when a component like that breaks on a PC you can just pop it open and replace it, rather than having to find a specialist to repair a laptop or phone where all the parts are glued in or soldered. While I can sympathize with people that do want that (there are projects out there trying to bring products in this category to market), I'm personally okay with that being the niche that it is. Most people didn't hack their computers back then and to this day most people don't hack on their computers.
There probably should be components available for experts like Louis Rossman who can replace these parts. There probably should be schematics available so they can more easily make these repairs and they can have businesses like his who can specialize in doing these sorts of repairs (they already do exist, clearly). Companies like Apple absolutely should not be using any sort of DRM to prevent use of third party hardware components in repairs. Going out of your way to make your devices difficult to repair is unethical. But I think we're well past the point that someone without specialized skills should be able to expect to repair any device that they purchase.
During a public Q&A back in 2017 I asked Woz what he thought about control Apple asserts on their "i-device" hardware. My question was to the effect of "What do you think about how I don't own my iPhone or iPad the way I owned my Apple II?" His answer referenced the openness of the Apple II but also included (not verbatim) "sometimes proprietary is the right thing" in reference to the Apple "app store" and the locked-down nature of the iOS device ecosystem.
To have Woz-- the hacker's hacker-- answer like that was really shocking to me. (I was really, really sad to hear one of my childhood heroes answer in that way. I know, I know-- don't meet your heroes...)
In this recording his position sounds a lot more reasonable. It makes me glad to have such a well-respected voice out there driving conversation about this topic.
As an aside: I recorded my question and Woz's answer (albeit via my phone in my breast pocket, so the audio quality isn't very good) back in 2017. This was from his October 30, 2017 visit to Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. I didn't find a recording available online with a quick search, so here's this:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lLz56N2PKCmPIGrzt1WT9n4B08P...
Little too late here. But also better late than never.
The annoying part is how HN users want right to repair, but not enough to pick such options. I hate to say corporate marketing is stronger than the human brain.
Related: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hVjvKQ5CXY | A message & thank you to Steve Wozniak by Louis Rossmann the Right-to-repair advocate and organizer.
>He also credited an open platform with the success of the Apple II, which he said had shipped with schematics and designs.
It had been, he said, the only source of profits at Apple for the company's first decade.
"How was Apple hurt by the openness of the Apple II?"
Right to repair would be massively improved by a full repeal of the DMCA. Tragically it will never happen.
Of course he would. He was the brains behind Apple, the guy who could design a computer out of his bedroom and seems to have kept that tinkerer mindset.
Thanks Woz! Great that you promote right to repair and also help better environmental foot print of electronic. Also it foster hackability.
What about the right to repair software? Or the software that runs somewhere on the hardware to make it work? There is so much firmware running on our hardware in some closed off environment and it plays an integral role in making the hardware work. Sometimes it even emulates other hardware components to save costs. To the OS it appears like the real thing, but it's just implemented in firmware code.
Today, if there is a bug in your firmware you are pretty much hosed even if there is nothing wrong with it, physically. Some manufacturers are better than others, but some are so bad that flashing anything but some signed firmware image will just produce a brick. Most things that require this firmware to be uploaded at runtime reject unsigned firmware. So again, if there is a bug in there and whoever made it doesn't exist or doesn't care, there is basically nothing you can do.
For that reason I think that anything that requires firmware, or has a mechanism to update firmware should be required to allow loading custom firmware somehow. Maybe make it a switch, or require blowing a fuse and voiding the warranty, but it should absolutely be possible to do.
Problem is that this is fundamentally incompatible for a lot of hardware with the way DRM is implemented. For example, on Intel systems the motherboard firmware is involved in handling HDCP and there is something similar going on with HD Audio. Same with the GuC/HuC firmware for the iGPU. It't involved with handling hardware decoding and handling HDCP. No way that could be opened up without making the DRM scheme useless.
So how do you repair that vulnerability in your CPU when it's already out of support? If you could at least load unsigned microcode you could at least patch it yourself, but you can't, so your CPU remainins unfixable broken even though it's physically fine.
Similar things could be argued for regular software, but in the case of hardware repair it goes, or should go hand in hand with repairability. Otherwise you are quite limited in what kinda thing you can repair.
Woz seems like a good guy IMO. Too bad the company he started is pretty much a worst offender in this case but it is a good move by him that gives the industry a strong signal that they're doing something very unethical.
I think of it as right to existence and functioning for the device...
And right of access for the device-human configuration.
It's feasible, and not even very difficult, to make information on a website accessible to every browser since Mosaic, for example. And that's exactly what I do.
If your site has a "browser not good enough" message on it for some visitors, I think you should be just a little bit ashamed of yourself for giving up.
I think it is the difference between hack and craft.
Woz is a good guy, respect to him
I think is a matter of time til they just boo the hell out of Tim Cook in one of those poncy presentation Apple does every now and then.
poncy Someone, something or somewhere which is overpriced, over styled, over rated, or thinks more highly of itself than it deserves.
BBC as a source? You ignored my direct source...
Apple founder Steve Wozniak backs popular thing to stay at the spotlight at all costs
'Apple co-founder
Why didn't he take over Apple as Steve Jobs died?
UPDATE: this is another comment which got heavily up-voted first and heavily down-woted shortly after. I always find such fluctuations curious.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27770302