All the movies focus on Steve Jobs… how can we forget that presentation of the iPod or the impressive presentation of the iPhone? For me the best two he has done in his (unfortunately) short life. However, if Steve Jobs was the "Ying" of Apple, we have another Steve who was the "Yang" and that is Wozniak. Lately the good old Woz, affectionate nickname with which he is known, is addicted to being on the covers of magazines and newspapers for increasingly curious statements and actions. We are going to introduce you to Steve Wozniak so you can meet the one who was the founder of Apple.
Where does Steve Wozniak come from?
Stephan Gary Wozniak, born in Sunnyvale, United States of America on August 11, 1950, we are faced with a true character, but the reality is that in the beginning we were not faced with such an eccentric profile. Despite being an American citizen, his father was of Polish origin and his mother of German origin, they ended up in the United States fleeing the war. Since he was young, he was a lover of mathematics and especially electronics, developing a special affection for the radio (do you remember the good Dustin in Stranger Things?). Thus, Wozniak's university and self-taught training was constantly growing, always in contact with computers, radios and consumer electronics.
It was in his college days (1971) when a mutual friend introduced him to Steve Jobs, the commercial mind of Apple, and that is that good old Jobs went to university but did not seem too interested in studying. They both took their first "steps" using the bluebox, a device that simulated the tones of the telephone to deceive the telecommunications company and make totally free calls. While Woz was a lover of free software and technology, Jobs convinced him to sell the Bluebox and that was his first commercial success.
Back in 1976 Wozniak had seen his knowledge rewarded and started working at Hewlett-Packard (HP), which at the time was a real merit if we take into account that both HP and IBM monopolized the computer and printing sector. It was there that Woz created his first personal computer, however, his contract with HP required him to offer all his ideas to the company. Surprisingly, HP refused to mass-produce a personal computer and that's when his friend Jobs began to convince him that selling it was going to be a good idea. By then Wozniak had already left his studies without completing.
Steve Jobs, my best friend, would take my designs and turn them into products.
It was in the same 1976 when Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak founded Apple, However, the successful businesses that Jobs had trumpeted from the rooftops had one factor in common: Wozniak was the engineer behind those products, the true thinking mind capable of bringing ideas to life. For years Apple's successes were constant, in fact later failures such as the Apple III and the Apple Lisa were released, while it was only Wozniak-designed products that kept the company afloat.
The strained "love hate" relationship with Jobs
Steve Wozniak has never made bad statements about Steve Jobs, but the reality is that he has not made good statements either. Wozniak declared himself a lover of free software and upgradeable hardware, quite the opposite of Jobs, who created the idea of the closed environment that Apple has maintained to date.
When we started with Apple, Jobs didn't even know about the existence of personal computers. In reality, he did not intend to bring that technology closer to people, nor did he care about the benefits they could offer to society, he only knew how to make things and sell them for more money.
The conflicts between Jobs and Wozniak over the price of products, the famous "distortion of reality" by the CEO of Apple and the fact that despite being friends they had very distant principles were dynamiting their relationship. While Jobs acted as relentless CEO, Wozniak dedicated himself to working as one of Apple's and he stayed out of business matters, in fact they never really interested him too much.
The accident that changed everything
On February 7, 1981 Steve Wozniak and his girlfriend, Candi Clark were in a plane crash that he owned. No one was seriously injured, but Wozniak lost his short-term memory and his recovery was quite long. This removed him from Apple's board of directors for those four years, and he only did it to tell Steve Jobs that he was leaving the company. The thinking head and the artisan hands of Apple were definitely gone in 1985. The rest is history. A few months later, the Apple board manages to get Steve Jobs to resign from his post and 12 years of bad results are concatenated that almost bankrupt the company.
Since then Steve Wozniak has devoted himself essentially to education and philanthropy. He makes constant talks at the University and is dedicated to inspiring new generations. Nonetheless, Steve Wozniak is still on Apple's payroll, receiving approximately $ 50 a week. And is that Despite leaving the leadership of Apple, good old Woz reserved a good handful of shares in the company he founded in 1976 and that they have generated the engineer a fortune of approximately 100 million dollars.
How to get to know Wozniak in depth
Despite everything, he loves to leave controversial statements such as that "Apple has lost its way" or that it is "the zero patient of Coronavirus in the United States of America." Nevertheless, We leave you a few recommendations so that you can know the work of Wozniak and Apple, in fact, according to him, the film that is closest to reality is the first on the list.
- Movie: Pirates of Silicon Valley
- Movie: Jobs
- Book: Steve Jobs
- Book: Steve Jobs - Lights and Shadows of a Genius
We hope you liked getting to know a little more about Wozniak, the true core of Apple, the thinking mind behind Steve Jobs.