These videos were submitted initially to Tuaw where a reader by the name of Vince Patton notes that he’s in the process of making sure all of the tapes are transferred and that watchable video is produced from the source material. These videos are all being displayed at Patton’s YouTube channel where you can enjoy them in kind – we’ll also be embedding each of them in this post, of course.

First you’ll see an epic moment in the history of computing that you’ll be glad you took the time to click. Here Woz leads the club in the Pledge of Apple Allegiance, complete with the following lines:

I pledge allegiance
to the logo
of corporate marketing in Cupertino.
And to the computers
for which it stands:
one notion
under Jobs -
indispensable
hardware and software for all.

Make sure you commit that one to memory, dear readers.

Next you’ve got Woz speaking on pranking a hotel, hacking a Video on Demand box, and re-numbering a telephone. Immediately following that, you’ll find a video about additional pranks and wild times Woz had as a college students, including a choice note about how he’d used a TV jammer more than once.

A bit of a break from Woz for a moment, you’ve got Randy Wigginton speaking about the aversion of a near disaster 6 days before the original launch of Macintosh. He goes through the heart-pounding several days before Macintosh had to be launched as a software package, explaining that at 2 o’clock in the morning on the day they had to send the final build out at 6 o’clock in the morning (four hours later), the situation should very well have given their team all panic attacks: “nothing worked.”

Once again with Woz you’ll find a description of how the Apple II was created. This should enlighten your life even if you never used that magical machine, complete with its massive floppy disk drive and connectivity with the epic Koala Pad. This machine was many users of my generation’s first encounter with an Apple product, as the big A had a rather important link with grade schools at that time.

With one good turn comes another – next you’ll see Woz speak about the creation of the Apple I (which of course was created before the Apple II). Inside you’ll have found a fabulous note about how the Apple I worked with 4k dynamic RAM built-in even though it was more difficult to design for – and how no other system worked with that advanced feature for a year (or even two) after they’d done it. This is an absolutely unthinkable situation today.

Below you’ll see Woz speak on how Steve Jobs formed Apple Computer knowing full well he’d have to lose some money before he made any.

Woz returns with more information about how he was put on probation at the University of Colorado for “Computer Abuse”. Such is the life of a young genius, yes?

Finally, (for now), you’ll see Woz recall the point at which he was forced to quit his job at HP and put his efforts toward Apple full-time. This is an iteration of the story of Apple’s creation that we’ve never seen before today, spoken by none other than one of the two men who founded the company. Consider that for a moment, won’t you?

We’d like to thank Patton for his work in translating this all to digital video this week and look forward to the rest of the media without a doubt. Let us know if you hear any other hidden treasures in your viewing of these clips, too!

Taking to Twitter to make the announcement, Trent Oster, founder of Beamdog, confirmed that a native version of Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition would make an appearance. Not only that, but multiplayer support will be cross-platform compatible: players using the iOS, PC, and Mac OS versions will all be able to play together.

Right now, there’s no solid release date for Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition, with the promise that it will appear this summer. The updated version of the classic PC game will revamp the graphics, and add touchscreen controls for the iPad. The game isn’t expected to cost more than $10, with Beamdog COO Cameron Tofer saying it would be “crazy” to charge more.

Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition will include the original game as well as the expansion pack, Tales of Sword Coast. New missions and a new party member will also be added. An enhanced edition of Baldur’s Gate II: Shadows of Amn is expected later this year.

[via nexus404]

Speaking to Wired, Linus Torvalds said:

Unix for the biggest user base: that was the pitch. He wanted me to work at Apple doing non-Linux things. I said no.

Torvalds disliked Mac OS, particularly the Mach kernel. He asked Steve Jobs if the Mac OS kernel would be switched, and was told that it wouldn’t. Later on, Linux would become the core for several mobile operating systems, including Android and webOS.

Despite Torvalds reservations, he has said in the past that he admires certain aspects of what Apple has accomplished. He has also praised Steve Jobs for his abilities to push the company through difficulties, as well as making radical ideas work. However, he has also expressed dislike in the direction Apple has taken in other areas, such as the tight control of media, saying that what they’re doing is “worse than what Microsoft ever did.”

[via Tom's Hardware]