Make:

Woz on eWeek with a nice nod to MAKE on the Apple II's 30th Bday! (Pictured here Woz @ Maker Faire! photo by sidstamm)...

Woz said that one of the problems with commercial software is that it's overloaded. "It can be good or bad," he said, and the user has no say. "If you use the program you make," he said, "you're the master of yourself--you use theirs, you're more of a slave to how they do things."

"We wanted the Apple II to be a teaching device," Woz said, "a course in how chips are put together to make a computer, how software is made and works. I'd grown up learning computers not from classes or books but by seeing how other people did things."

He added, "I think [the Apple II] helped a lot of people fall in love with technology."

Still, Woz said, he didn't want to condemn those who don't, or can't, program. He said he understands those who just want to, say, make music using a commercial music application rather than taking the time away from music in order to learn to programming.

When asked what is one of the most positive things he's seen come about from the Apple II's birth, Woz said, "I think of some of the kids I met who started companies while still in school--making oscilloscopes, modems and so on. It happened in the hundreds or thousands in the early days of the Apple II--all these people who, like me, were excited by technology and could do it for almost nothing with an Apple II."

Does he see anything like that today?

"I'm seeing a resurgence in do-it-yourself," Woz said, pointing to the subculture growing around MAKE magazine, a quarterly devoted to DIY projects.

"These things have no practical use, but these are the people who are going to stumble on the next big thing someday," he said.