Many people may well ask Steve who? When one talks about Apple Computer these days, the only Steve who is mentioned is Jobs. The other Steve isn't on the screen as it were.
Had there been no Wozniak, there would have been no Apple I. No Apple II. No company to put out all the nifty gadgets that people drool over. Ponder that.
Which is why, even though this column is predominantly devoted to FOSS issues, I decided to make an exception for Woz. After reading his autobiography — which has been published to correct many of the public perceptions of Apple and to give people their rightful place in history — one can't help but wonder how things would have been had Apple been the dominant player in the desktop space. As it well deserved to be.
In the book, titled iWoz and co-written with journalist Gina Smith, Wozniak's own simple style is used to describe his life and times, his days as an enthusiastic and nerdy kid whose intelligence bordered on that of a genius. That he goes into intricate detail about technical issues and often mixes up his metaphors only serves to emphasise his nerdiness.
From winning school science competitions to joining HP, Wozniak kept his focus on technology all the way through. Long before he had a chance to actually experiment with designing computers, he drew up circuitry diagrams in his room at home and had virtually built many PCs before he actually got to wrestling with components.
Apart from all the anecdotes about his childhood and the start of the computer revolution — which he says began in March 1975 at the Homebrew Computer Club — one thing stands out. No business leader today would provide the advice Wozniak does. You won't find words like synergy, incentivisation and strategic cluttering up the pages of this book.
The first meeting of the club inspired Wozniak to start designing the Apple I. All his inventions were presented at the club where he often stayed behind after meetings to explain his gadgets to others so they could benefit as well.
It is Wozniak's personal traits that make him so fascinating. Imagine someone using work-time to develop what would turn out to be the first home PC with sound, colour, high-resolution graphics and the ability to use game controllers. Imagine that person then going to their employer and literally telling them: "I used some of my work-time to develop this and I also used some company facilities. Hence I think that you should have the first shot at marketing the idea if you think it is a financially sound one."
In today's world, such a person would be termed an idiot of the highest order. Yet this is what Wozniak did at HP where he was an engineer. Fortunately, HP did not think his PC was a starter so he and Jobs — who was never his classmate but a few years his junior — started Apple to sell the Apple II, the machine which PC World recently described as the "machine that changed everything."
When there was a kerfuffle at Apple over the unfair allocation of shares, Wozniak sold some of his allocation cheaply so that others could be pacified. Once again, this marks him out as an oddball. An ethical one, though.
He is still an Apple employee — with a nominal salary — and makes some public appearances for the company. After leaving the company's fulltime employment in 1985, following a plane crash in 1981 which made him suffer amnesia for a while, Wozniak organised a couple of rock festivals and then turned to teaching children technology.
At the end of the book, he offers his thoughts on being a great engineer – never waver, see things in grey-scale, work alone and trust your instincts. That sounds like the words of a lunatic but then Wozniak is one – else he would never have come up with such great design.
