Stephen Gary (“Woz”) Wozniak / b. 1950 / California, USA / Electronics Engineer, Computer Programmer, Inventor, Co-Founder of Apple Computers, Inc.
Apple
Creative things have to sell to get acknowledged as such. Steve Jobs didn’t really set the direction of my Apple I and Apple II designs but he did the more important part of turning them into a product that would change the world. I don’t deny that.
“General Questions Answered,” Letters, woz.org, August 15, 2000; reprinted in Steve Wozniak, with Gina Smith, iWoz: Computer Geek to Cult Icon: How I Invented the Personal Computer, Co-Founded Apple, and Had Fun Doing It (2006).
The transition to a GUI, and eventually to one close to a Macintosh, was a far greater step than refinements since. Some of these are just simple alternatives, which can’t be over-valued due to increasing the complexity of having less consistency in how things are done. Others of these are more akin to rearranging the furniture. The great change was in becoming a modern GUI machine. In that sense, virtually every machine is a ‘Macintosh’ now.
“General Questions Answered,” Letters, woz.org, August 15, 2000; reprinted in Steve Wozniak, with Gina Smith, iWoz: Computer Geek to Cult Icon: How I Invented the Personal Computer, Co-Founded Apple, and Had Fun Doing It (2006).
All of a sudden, we’ve lost a lot of control,. We can’t turn off our internet; we can’t turn off our smartphones; we can’t turn off our computers. You used to ask a smart person a question. Now, who do you ask? It starts with g-o, and it’s not God.
Interview with Mark Milian, “Apple’s Steve Wozniak: ‘We’ve lost a lot of control,'” cnn.com, December 8, 2010.
Our first computers were born not out of greed or ego, but in the revolutionary spirit of helping common people rise above the most powerful institutions.
Interview, “An Evening with Steve Wozniak at Margaret Court,” Margaret Court Arena, Melbourne, Australia, theculturetrip.com, July 27, 2016.
. . . a lot of people confuse that story with Apple’s, saying that we started Apple in a garage. Not true. HP started in a garage, true. But in the case of Apple, I worked in my room at my apartment and Steve worked in his bedroom in his parents’ house. We only did the very last part of assembly in his garage.
Steve Wozniak, with Gina Smith, iWoz: Computer Geek to Cult Icon: How I Invented the Personal Computer, Co-Founded Apple, and Had Fun Doing It (2006).
Computer Design as Artistry
Artists work best alone. Work alone.
Steve Wozniak, with Gina Smith, iWoz: Computer Geek to Cult Icon: How I Invented the Personal Computer, Co-Founded Apple, and Had Fun Doing It (2006).
It had to be that artistically perfect, because it represents yourself when you do a great design.
Interview, “Steve Wozniak Debunks One of Apple’s Biggest Myths,” bloomberg.com, December 4, 2014.
. . . this early learning of how to do things one tiny little step at a time. I learned to not worry so much about the outcome, but to concentrate on the step I was on and to try to do it as perfectly as I could when I was doing it.
Steve Wozniak, with Gina Smith, iWoz: Computer Geek to Cult Icon: How I Invented the Personal Computer, Co-Founded Apple, and Had Fun Doing It (2006).
I hope you’re as lucky as I am. The world needs inventors–great ones. You can be one. If you love what you do and are willing to do what it really takes, it’s within your reach. And it’ll be worth every minute you spend alone at night, thinking and thinking about what it is you want to design or build. It’ll be worth it, I promise.
“General Questions Answered,” Letters, woz.org, August 15, 2000; reprinted in Steve Wozniak, with Gina Smith, iWoz: Computer Geek to Cult Icon: How I Invented the Personal Computer, Co-Founded Apple, and Had Fun Doing It (2006).
Hacking
A lot of hacking is playing with other people, you know, getting them to do strange things.
Keynote address, 5th HOPE (Hackers on Planet Earth) Conference, New York City, July 10, 2004.
Happiness
Years ago, I was thinking about the definition of success in business, and I had a moment–just seconds long–where I compared that kind of life to one of playing pranks with my friends. Life is not about extrinsic symbols of success; life is about how happy you have been. So my formula was created right then. H = S – F: Happiness equals smiles minus frowns. As with my designs, I like the simplicity of that formula. From then on I’d do what I could to build humor and fun into all my productive work. As for frowns, I would not argue. If someone has different beliefs, they are right in their world and I am right in mine. The only person I had to convince was myself. This carries over to the way computers and more could be designed.
Interview with Micah Solomon, “Steve Wozniak On How To Launch A Startup, Give A Keynote Speech And Be Happy,” forbes.com, September 27, 2017.
Hardware
When you don’t have the hardware resources, you have to take advantage of what you have inside the chip.
Steve Wozniak, with Gina Smith, iWoz: Computer Geek to Cult Icon: How I Invented the Personal Computer, Co-Founded Apple, and Had Fun Doing It (2006).
Patience
And thanks to all those science projects, I acquired a central ability that was to help me through my entire career: patience. I’m serious. Patience is usually so underrated. I mean, for all these projects, from third grade all the way to eighth grade, I just learned things gradually, figuring out how to put electronic devices together without so much as cracking a book . . . I learned to not worry so much about the outcome, but to concentrate on the step I was on and to try to do it as perfectly as I could when I was doing it.
Steve Wozniak, with Gina Smith, iWoz: Computer Geek to Cult Icon: How I Invented the Personal Computer, Co-Founded Apple, and Had Fun Doing It (2006).
Personnel
Wherever smart people work, doors are unlocked.
Keynote address, 5th HOPE (Hackers on Planet Earth) Conference, New York City, July 10, 2004.
Platforms
I’m surprised at the extent of the bigotry. But it really plays out when companies or schools take a side and prohibit the other platform at all. We Mac users should be good even when the other side is bad. We should do what we can to accept the other platforms. All the best people in life seem to like LINUX.
“General Questions Answered,” Letters, woz.org, August 15, 2000; reprinted in Steve Wozniak, with Gina Smith, iWoz: Computer Geek to Cult Icon: How I Invented the Personal Computer, Co-Founded Apple, and Had Fun Doing It (2006).
Social Impact
When we started Apple, Steve Jobs and I talked about how we wanted to make blind people as equal and capable as sighted people, and you’d have to say we succeeded when you look at all the people walking down the sidewalk looking down at something in their hands and totally oblivious to everything around them!
Post on reddit.com, March 16, 2016.
Woz on Woz
I wanted my own computer my whole life.
Interview, “Steve Wozniak Debunks One of Apple’s Biggest Myths,” bloomberg.com, December 4, 2014.
I also like to ride Segways. How much fun that is! Anybody think that’s fun? I hope so… There’s an awful lot of people in the world that sneer at Segways because other people are having fun. There must be something bad about it. But I always tell people, that hey, these Segways are so environmentally conscious. I carry four of them in the trunk of my Hummer.
Keynote address, 5th HOPE (Hackers on Planet Earth) Conference, New York City, July 10, 2004.
Some great people are leaders and others are more lucky, in the right place at the right time. I’d put myself in the latter category. But I’d never call myself a normal designer of anything.
“General Questions Answered,” Letters, woz.org, August 15, 2000; reprinted in Steve Wozniak, with Gina Smith, iWoz: Computer Geek to Cult Icon: How I Invented the Personal Computer, Co-Founded Apple, and Had Fun Doing It (2006).
I never lie, even to this day. Not even a little. Unless you count playing pranks on people, which I don’t. That’s comedy. Entertainment doesn’t count. A joke is different from a lie, even if the difference is kind of subtle.
“General Questions Answered,” Letters, woz.org, August 15, 2000; reprinted in Steve Wozniak, with Gina Smith, iWoz: Computer Geek to Cult Icon: How I Invented the Personal Computer, Co-Founded Apple, and Had Fun Doing It (2006).
Soldering things together, putting the chips together, designing them, drawing them on drafting tables—it was so much a passion in my life. And to this day, I’ll go stay at the bottom of the org chart being an engineer, because that’s where I want to be.
Interview, “Steve Wozniak Debunks One of Apple’s Biggest Myths,” bloomberg.com, December 4, 2014.
If you read the same things as others and say the same things they say, then you’re perceived as intelligent. I’m a bit more independent and radical and consider intelligence the ability to think about matters on your own and ask a lot of skeptical questions to get at the real truth, not just what you’re told it is.
Steve Wozniak, with Gina Smith, iWoz: Computer Geek to Cult Icon: How I Invented the Personal Computer, Co-Founded Apple, and Had Fun Doing It (2006).
As soon as he said it was okay to do engineering, that really freed me up. My psychological block was really that I didn’t want to start a company. Because I was just afraid. In business and politics, I wasn’t going to be a real strong participant. I wasn’t going to tell other people how to do things. I wasn’t going to run things ever in my life. I was a non-political person and I was a very non-forceful person. It dated back to a lot of things that happened during the Vietnam War. But I just couldn’t run a company.
“Interview: Steve Wozniak,” foundersatwork.com, 2009.