Woz Downplays the Significance of Apple's Startup Garage

mrspoonsi (2955715) writes "When thinking about the early days of Apple, most people who know even a little bit about the company probably picture Steve Jobs and cofounder Steve Wozniak busily brainstorming in a small garage in Silicon Valley. That's how the story goes — in fact, the garage where they famously started the company was even deemed a historical site last year. Wozniak, however, doesn't really see that location as a crucial part of Apple's history. "The garage is a bit of a myth," he told Bloomberg Businessweek's Brandon Lisy when asked whether the garage was important to Apple's story. "We did no designs there, no breadboarding, no prototyping, no planning of products. We did no manufacturing there." The garage served as a familiar location for him and Jobs in the early days, Wozniak said, but that's about it. "The garage didn't service much purpose, except it was something for us to feel was our home," he said. "We had no money. You have to work out of your home when you have no money.""

Comments

Apple cult

[Anonymous Coward]

Something not being significant is being significant news?

Spirit

[A10Mechanic]

What people like to believe in is the spirit of entrepreneurship that Apple and others emulated. The garage isn't so important, the idea of a garage is powerful stuff.

Re:Spirit

[GameboyRMH]

You say "spirit," I say "myth."

The idea is indeed powerful stuff. It wouldn't be so inspiring to realize that Apple didn't pull itself up by the bootstraps from a garage and that the real brains of the operation got a pittance compared to the smooth-talking asshole boss. Who wants a STEM education now?

More important garage

[ArhcAngel]

If it hadn't been for the hp garage there might not have been the tech to make the Apple garage possible.

Another Silicon Valley Garage Myth

[sudon't]

And so it is with a lot of these Silicon Valley garage stories.

Garage Myth

The Myth of Rags to Riches

[androidph]

Been hearing a lot of this story all the time, whether if it's the apple garage, or that guy getting declined by facebook and started a new company, or if it's this teenager who got bought out by yahoo... it's inspiring but is rarely really true. I confirmed it when one of my former boss went public and earned billions in one day. I read the news about it and it's the same pattern, it mentioned that this guy started working for a fastfood company and finally ended up earning billions in his tech IPO. But the true story is, this guy was already rich. His parents are already sits on the board of larger companies.Further, he started tens of startups that failed, and he then gets some funding again from his parents and siblings.

The bottom line, the key to success (I mean earning billions), is not working hard or have a great idea, the key is to have a rich family, because having rich friends is not enough. If you are poor but have a great idea, your rich "friends" will just steal it, they have money to spend on legal fees so they don't mind. Lastly, success is a lot like the lottery, you have to keep on trying till you hit the jackpot. And you have to have money to burn. Some of us win, most do not, but those who won, would not give credit to luck. They will tell that they had a system on betting, or they kept a number of years...

Lastly, I had a good (not great) idea before, and was invited by a TELCO company to demo it. After the demo, they simple ignored it and asked me if I had other ideas, and after some time, I saw an app just like mine in the appstore, with the screenshots showing the profile pic of the guy I demoed it to.

True Story