Animatronic Steve Wozniak comes to Epcot Center ride, animatronic Steve Jobs nowhere in evidence
Last week, I blogged a story about the re-opening of the Spaceship Earth ride at Epcot Center, and the supposed inclusion of a Steve Jobs animatronic in the scene depicting the invention of the Apple Computer -- and the omission of Steve Wozniak.
Looks like the rumor had it exactly backwards. Look at these photos of the newly opened Spaceship Earth: the scene in question appears to contain a robotic Steve Wozniak, leaving Steve Jobs out entirely. Where's Jobs? All around you, I suppose -- he's the largest shareholder in Disney after all. Link
(Photo credit: Photo cropped from a larger pic at Lifthill.com)
Update: Confirmed! It's Woz -- check out this referrer from an internal Disney blog pointing at the Lifthill post; the Disney blog post's title is "Boing Boing reports it correctly Wozniak at Spaceship Earth."
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Bizarrely, he appears to be working at a plywood prototype Macintosh -- a computer Wozniak had nothing to do with. Notice the disk slot, just like an early Mac. Wozniak was the brains behind the Apple II, and was long gone from the company by the time its flagship product was released years later.
This charmingly reminds me of the dinosaurs segment of the ride -- sort of a "Back To A Bygone Era When Nerds Had Yet To Rule The Earth!"
I wonder how it is known that Mr. Jobs is Disney's largest shareholder. I believe Cory when he says it, and I do find a BusinessWeek news story reporting such, but SEC filings say that Bob Iger, Thomas Staggs, and Alan Braverman are the largest direct shareholders, while the biggest institutional holders are all I-banks like Fidelity and Barclays.
You need to knock the extra " off of the end of this link:
..."larger pic at Lifthill.com)"
The most striking thing about those images is the fact that Disney's designers have gone to such great lengths to capture the messiness and realism of the garage. The past, it seems, is so much less shiny than the future.
I can only wonder if riders in the 60s had any idea that their chrome-plated tomorrow would contain so many greasy pizza boxes...
Odd, but cool. I think Steve Jobs knows that people know who Steve Jobs is; the guy is overexposed. Try to explain to average folks who Steve Wozniak is, and they don't get it. This is great because it at least places Wozniak in a public context buy does not automatically create a polarizing "Jobs vs. Wozniak" debate.
Actually, the plywood box distinctly looks a lot more like a Lisa 2 or Macintosh XL (which was essentially a Lisa that could run the Macintosh Operating System)
Granted, Woz didn't have anything to do with the Lisa either.
I really do like the gritty realism of the new sets, however. Kudos to Disney for making it realistic!
I wonder how it is known that Mr. Jobs is Disney's largest shareholder.
According to the Stock Ownership section of Disney's most recent proxy statement (available at http://sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1001039/000119312507006127/ddef14a.htm#toc80653_36)
"Based on a review of filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Company is unaware of any holders of more than 5% of the outstanding shares of Disney common stock other than Steven P. Jobs..."
The specifics of Steve's Disney holdings are disclosed in detail at http://sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1001039/000119312506103741/dsc13d.htm
He owns over 138 million shares of Disney, and got most (if not all) of them when Disney bought Pixar.
woz FTW!
Does this say anything about the Jobs. I imagine they approached him first, they must have, and for him to say, 'Nah, go ahead and do Woz, he actually did the work' is pretty big.
Thank you Micah! Now I know to go to Schedule 14A when trying to corroborate Yahoo's claims of ownership (which are evidently gleaned through some unreliable mechanism from Sched 3 and 4).
I'm surprised that that cardboard proto-computer isn't being held up by whalers. Whalers on the moon!