# Steve Wozniak

Stephen Gary Wozniak (born August 11, 1950), also known by his nickname "Woz", is an American electronics engineer, computer programmer, philanthropist, and technology entrepreneur. In 1976, he co-founded Apple Inc. with business partner Steve Jobs, which later became the world's largest information technology company by revenue and the largest company in the world by market capitalization. Through their work at Apple in the 1970s and 1980s, he and Jobs are widely recognized as two prominent pioneers of the personal computer revolution.

## Quotes

* Steve Jobs doesn't use a Mac, and won't, because it's too crappy in his opinion.
** Commenting on Steve Jobs's stewardship after his return to Apple, before the release of Mac OS X, MacTech Vol. 14 No. 5 (May 1998)
* I went drinking with Gray Powell and all I got was a lousy iPhone prototype.
** On a T-shirt making fun of Powell's plight, after having lost a next-generation iPhone prototype, as reported in "Woz has fun with leaked iPhone T-shirt" at cnet news (23 April 2010)

### 5th HOPE conference (2004)

    The Fifth HOPE (Hackers on Planet Earth) Conference, Saturday keynote speech (10 July 2004)
* Wherever smart people work, doors are unlocked.
* 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.
* A lot of hacking is playing with other people, you know, getting them to do strange things.

### Woz.org files

* 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.
** "Letters-General Questions Answered" p. 1
* 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.
** "Letters-General Questions Answered" p. 96
* 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.
** "Letters-General Questions Answered" p. 96
* 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.
** Explaining his comment that now "Every PC is a Macintosh", "Letters-General Questions Answered" p. 105

### iWoz (2006)

    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.
** p. 12
* If you love what you do and are willing to do what it 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.
** p. 300

### Bloomberg Business interview (2014)

* It had to be that artistically perfect, because it represents yourself when you do a great design.
* I wanted my own computer my whole life.
* 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.
** Steve Wozniak Debunks One of Apple's Biggest Myths - YouTube

## Quotes about Wozniak

* Did you really invent the computer, or am I being pranked right now?
** Stephen Colbert on The Colbert Report (28 September 2006)

## External links

* Woz.org Steve Wozniak's Website
* Steve Wozniak, Genius of Apple
* Collection of more than 20 Interviews with Steve Wozniak
* An interview with Steve Wozniak
* Interview at Slashdot.org