Woz On Apple's Success

Frankenbuffer writes "The Globe and Mail today has a short interview with Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple. Steve muses on spinning off iPod as a separate division. He also questions the move to Intel." From the article: "Microsoft wants to get out of the whole image of the big, black Darth Vader evil guy ... Innovation is probably going on within the company, because any time you put smart engineers in places eventually they wind up talking and innovating no matter how much you try to hold them back. I hope Microsoft improves and becomes more like Apple."

Comments

Re:Woz is a good man

[jcr]

Here's a man who was used by Steve Jobs to launch a brand and didn't even get justly compensated

Woz made hundreds of millions of dollars. Without Jobs, he wouldn't have even left HP.

-jcr

Exactly!

[Mad Ogre]

I hope Microsoft becomes more like Apple too... and build a decent OS on a solid Unix core.

Re:Woz is a good man

[osgeek]

Exactly. The engineer in us all wants Woz to be the much-put-upon hero of the story, but looking at what Jobs and Woz did professionally *after* they were ousted is very telling. Woz tried his hand at a number of enterprises... none of which I can recall. I wonder why?

Jobs, on the other hand, started NeXT; and though we can bicker somewhat about its market success, it was eventually sold to Apple for $400M and was extraordinarily innovative for its time. Afterward, Jobs was the single-most-responsible reason why Apple had its turn-around. He brought Pixar to its successful heights. He envisioned, brought about, and championed changes to the way we think about computer styling, music players, and animated entertainment.

Wozniak sounds like a really nice guy. He was a brilliant engineer, no doubt. However, the real force behind his rise to success was the marketing brilliance of Steve Jobs. Jobs financially made Woz what he is today, and Woz should really be nothing but grateful. Slashdot probably is not the most receptive crowd to such heresy, but it is the truth.

Re:Why do people care about this guy? (serious inq

[typical]

He's the talented engineer that singlehandledly designed and built the Apple I as well as a great deal of Apple's later technology.

He built neat stuff because he loved doing it, not because he wanted to become really wealthy or something else. He is a good example of the archetypal hacker.

He loves high-tech practical jokes.

He's credited with pushing hard for two major aspects of computers where his impact had a lasting effect on the industry -- gaming capabilities and openness. He liked playing video games, and wanted them to be affordable and available to all kinds of people. He also wanted them to be expandable and something that people could reconfigure and build new systems out of.

He's a nice, funny guy, which contrasts with Jobs:

He [Jobs] was given the task of creating a circuit board for the Atari game Breakout. According to Atari Founder Nolan Bushnell, Atari had offered $100 to each chip that was reduced in the machine. Unfortunately (and admittedly), Steve [Jobs] had little interest or knowledge in circuit board design. He made a deal with Stephen Wozniak: the bonus would be split evenly between them, if Woz could create a circuit board with a minimal number of chips. Much to the amazement of Atari, Wozniak reduced the number of chips by 50. Unfortunately he had made the design so tight that it was impossible to reproduce on an assembly line. At the time, Jobs told Wozniak that Atari had only given them $500 (rather than $5000), and that Wozniak's share was thus $250.

Today, Jobs is a power broker and the Woz teaches computer science to kids and encourages people to be hackers and engineers. The Woz is a geek and Jobs is a marketer -- and we all want a friendly hero to love.

He and Jobs started Apple partly with money made from selling blue boxes (devices that let people get free calls at the time) so he has a bit of appeal to the pirate folks out there as well.

Basically, The Woz is the kind of guy that we all wish we had a lot more of in society, and wish that more people would emulate. That's why people like to hang on his every word. I attended a talk he gave once, and while I didn't walk away with my life changed, you get the feeling that this is a guy who really has figured out life and how to enjoy doing what he loves.