Steve Wozniak

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Steve Wozniak, also known as Woz, is a renowned American computer engineer, programmer, and entrepreneur, most famous for co-founding Apple Inc. with Steve Jobs. He designed the iconic Apple I and Apple II personal computers, which played a pivotal role in popularizing personal computing globally.

Key moments

August 11, 1950Born in San Jose, California, USA
1976Co-founded Apple Computer (now Apple Inc.) with Steve Jobs and Ronald Wayne, and designed the Apple I computer
1977Released the Apple II, the first mass-market successful personal computer
1985Left Apple Inc. to pursue other technology projects
2025Celebrated his 75th birthday and reflected on his career and charitable work

Technical Legacy and Innovation

Wozniak's design of the Apple II established many foundational standards for personal computers, including the use of a keyboard, display, and storage in a single unit. Unlike many early computing pioneers who focused on professional or hobbyist markets, he prioritized creating user-friendly machines accessible to ordinary people, a philosophy that shaped Apple's early identity.

Relationship with Steve Jobs

Their partnership was a classic combination of technical expertise and business vision: Wozniak handled the engineering and design, while Jobs focused on commercialization and brand building. Their collaboration led to one of the most successful technology companies in history, though their paths diverged later in their careers.

Post-Apple Career and Public Persona

After leaving Apple, Wozniak founded several technology companies including CL 9 and Wheels of Zeus, and remained active in tech education and philanthropy. He is known for his down-to-earth, anti-materialist public persona, often emphasizing that happiness and technical curiosity are more important than wealth or corporate power.

Cultural Impact

Wozniak is widely regarded as one of the fathers of the personal computing revolution. His work helped shift computing from a niche hobbyist activity to a global consumer industry, inspiring generations of engineers and entrepreneurs.

Overview

Steve Wozniak

birth name	Stephen Gary Wozniak
birth date	August 11, 1950
birth place	San Jose, California, U.S.
citizenship	American · Polish · Serbian
alias	Woz Berkeley Blue (hacking alias)‡R1R‡ Rocky Clark (student alias)‡R2R‡
alma mater	University of California, Berkeley (BS)
occupation	Entrepreneur · electrical engineer · programmer · inventor · investor

spouse	Alice Robertson (m. 1976-1980) Candice Clark (m. 1981-1987) Suzanne Mulkern (m. 1990-2004) Janet Hill (m. 2008)

years active	1971–present

children	3

callsign	ex-WA6BND (ex-WV6VLY)

website	woz.org

Stephen Gary Wozniak (born August 11, 1950), also known by his nickname Woz, is an American technology entrepreneur, electrical engineer, computer programmer, and inventor. In 1976, he co-founded Apple Computer (now Apple Inc.) with his early business partner Steve Jobs. Through his work at Apple in the 1970s and 1980s, he is widely recognized as one of the most prominent pioneers of the personal computer revolution.[3]

In 1975, Wozniak started developing the Apple I into the computer that launched Apple when he and Jobs first began marketing it the following year. He was the primary designer of the Apple II, introduced in 1977, known as one of the first highly successful mass-produced microcomputers,[4] while Jobs oversaw the development of its foam-molded plastic case and early Apple employee Rod Holt developed its switching power supply.[5]

With human–computer interface expert Jef Raskin, Wozniak had a major influence over the initial development of the original Macintosh concepts from 1979 to 1981, when Jobs took over the project following Wozniak's brief departure from the company due to a traumatic airplane accident.[6] After permanently leaving Apple in 1985, Wozniak founded CL 9 and created the first programmable universal remote, released in 1987. He then pursued several other business and philanthropic ventures throughout his career, focusing largely on technology in K–12 schools, which involved a 1990 initiative to place computers in schools in the former Soviet Union.[6]

He has received numerous awards and honors for his work in philanthropy and the tech industry, including an induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2000. As of June 2024, Wozniak has remained an employee of Apple in a ceremonial capacity since stepping down in 1985.[7] In recent years, he has helped fund multiple entrepreneurial efforts dealing in areas such as GPS and telecommunications, flash memory, technology and pop culture conventions, technical education, ecology, satellites and more. In addition to his American citizenship, Wozniak is also a Polish and Serbian citizen.

Early life

Stephen Gary Wozniak was born on August 11, 1950, in San Jose, California.[8][9] His mother, Margaret Louise Wozniak (née Kern) (1923–2014), was from Washington state,[10] and his father, Francis Jacob "Jerry" Wozniak (1925–1994) of Michigan, was an engineer for the Lockheed Corporation. Wozniak graduated from Homestead High School in 1968, in Cupertino, California.[9] Steve has one brother, Mark,[11] a former tech executive who lives in Menlo Park. He also has one sister, Leslie, who attended Homestead High School in Cupertino. She is a grant adviser at Five Bridges Foundation, which helps at-risk youths in San Francisco. Leslie said it was her mother who introduced activism to her and her siblings.

Career

Pre-Apple

In 1969, Wozniak returned to the San Francisco Bay Area after being expelled from the University of Colorado Boulder in his first year for hacking the university's computer system.[17] He re-enrolled at De Anza College in Cupertino before transferring to the University of California, Berkeley, in 1971. In June of that year, for a self-taught engineering project, Wozniak designed and built his first computer with his friend Bill Fernandez.

Predating useful microprocessors, screens, and keyboards, and using punch cards and only 20 TTL chips donated by an acquaintance, they named it "Cream Soda" after their favorite beverage. A newspaper reporter stepped on the power supply cable and blew up the computer, but it served Wozniak as "a good prelude to my thinking 5 years later with the Apple I and Apple II computers".[18] Before focusing his attention on Apple, he was employed at Hewlett-Packard (HP), where he designed calculators.[19]

Inventions

Wozniak is listed as the sole inventor on the following Apple patents:

US Patent No. 4,136,359: "Microcomputer for use with video display"[78]—for which he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
US Patent No. 4,210,959: "Controller for magnetic disc, recorder, or the like"[79]
US Patent No. 4,217,604: "Apparatus for digitally controlling PAL color display"[80]
US Patent No. 4,278,972: "Digitally-controlled color signal generation means for use with display"[81]

Other

In 1990, Wozniak helped found the Electronic Frontier Foundation, providing some of the organization's initial funding[82][83][84] and serving on its founding Board of Directors.[82] He is the founding sponsor of the Tech Museum, Silicon Valley Ballet and Children's Discovery Museum of San Jose.[6]

Views on artificial superintelligence

In March 2015, Wozniak stated that he had originally dismissed Ray Kurzweil's opinion that machine intelligence would outpace human intelligence. But over time, Wozniak had changed his mind: I agree that the future is scary and very bad for people. If we build these devices to take care of everything for us, eventually they'll think faster than us and they'll get rid of the slow humans to run companies more efficiently. Wozniak stated that he had started to identify a contradictory sense of foreboding about artificial intelligence, while still supporting the advance of technology.[85]

By June 2015, Wozniak changed his mind again, stating that a superintelligence takeover would be good for humans: They're going to be smarter than us and if they're smarter than us then they'll realise they need us ... We want to be the family pet and be taken care of all the time ... I got this idea a few years ago and so I started feeding my dog filet steak and chicken every night because 'do unto others'.[86][87]

In 2016, Wozniak changed his mind again, stating that he no longer worried about the possibility of superintelligence emerging because he is skeptical that computers will be able to compete with human "intuition": "A computer could figure out a logical endpoint decision, but that's not the way intelligence works in humans".

Personal life

Wozniak lives in Los Gatos, California. He applied for Australian citizenship in 2012, and has stated that he would like to live in Melbourne, Australia, in the future.[93] Wozniak has been referred to frequently by the nickname "Woz", or "The Woz"; he has also been called "The Wonderful Wizard of Woz" and "The Second Steve" (in regard to his early business partner and longtime friend, Steve Jobs).[94] "WoZ" (short for "Wheels of Zeus") is the name of a company he founded in 2002; it closed in 2006.[95]

Wozniak describes his impetus for joining the Freemasons in 1979 as being able to spend more time with his then-wife, Alice Robertson, who belonged to the Order of the Eastern Star, associated with the Masons. He was initiated in 1979 at Charity Lodge No. 362 in Campbell, California, now part of Mt. Moriah Lodge No. 292 in Los Gatos.[96]

Honors and awards

Because of his lifetime of achievements, multiple organizations have given Wozniak awards and recognition, including:

In 1979, Wozniak was awarded the ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award.[117]
In 1985, both he and Steve Jobs received the National Medal of Technology from US President Ronald Reagan, the country's highest honor for achievements related to technological progress.[39]
Later he donated funds to create the "Woz Lab" at the University of Colorado at Boulder. In 1998, he was named a Fellow of the Computer History Museum "for co-founding Apple Computer and inventing the Apple I personal computer."[118]
In 2000, Wozniak received the American Computer & Robotics Museum's George R. Stibitz Computing and Communications Innovator Award "for inventing the Apple I & Apple II computers & for co-founding of the Apple Computer Company."

In media

Wozniak has been mentioned, represented, and interviewed numerous times in media from the founding of Apple to the present.

Documentaries

Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine (2015)
Camp Woz: The Admirable Lunacy of Philanthropy – a 2009 documentary[153]
Geeks On Board – a 2007 documentary[154]
The Secret History of Hacking – a 2001 documentary film featuring Wozniak and other phreakers and computer hackers.[155][156]

External links

Steve Wozniak at Andy Hertzfeld's The Original Macintosh (folklore.org)

References

Geeta Dayal. Phreaks and Geeks Slate, February 1, 2013, retrieved November 22, 2017^
Harriet Stix. A UC Berkeley Degree Is Now the Apple of Steve Wozniak's Eye Los Angeles Times, May 14, 1986, retrieved November 22, 2017^
Steve McConnell. Steve Wozniak: Inventor and Apple co-founder

Apple formation and success

"Wozniak designed Apple's first products, the Apple I and II computers and he helped design the Macintosh — because he wanted to use them and they didn't exist." "Between Woz and Jobs, Woz was the innovator, the inventor. Steve Jobs was the marketing person." "Everything I did at Apple that was an A+ job and that took us places, I had two things in my favor ... I had no money [and] I had had no training." By March 1, 1976, Wozniak completed the basic design of the Apple I computer. He alone designed the hardware, circuit board designs, and operating system for the computer.[35] Wozniak originally offered the design to HP while working there, but was denied by the company on five occasions.[36] Jobs then advised Wozniak to start a business of their own to build and sell bare printed circuit boards of the Apple I.[37] Wozniak, at first skeptical, was later convinced by Jobs that even if they were not successful they could at least say to their grandchildren that they had had their own company. To raise the money they needed to build the first batch of the circuit boards, Wozniak sold his HP scientific calculator while Jobs sold his Volkswagen van.[37]

On April 1, 1976, Jobs and Wozniak formed the Apple Computer Company (now called Apple Inc.) along with administrative supervisor Ronald Wayne, whose participation in the new venture was short-lived. The two decided on the name "Apple" shortly after Jobs returned from Oregon and told Wozniak about his time spent on an apple orchard there.[38]

After the company was formed, Jobs and Wozniak made one last trip to the Homebrew Computer Club to give a presentation of the fully assembled version of the Apple I.[37] Paul Terrell, who was starting a new computer shop in Mountain View, California, called the Byte Shop,[39] saw the presentation and was impressed by the machine.[28] Terrell told Jobs that he would order 50 units of the Apple I and pay $500 each on delivery, but only if they came fully assembled, as he was not interested in buying bare printed circuit boards.[28]

Together the duo assembled the first boards in Jobs's parents' Los Altos home; initially in his bedroom and later (when there was no space left) in the garage. Wozniak's apartment in San Jose was filled with monitors, electronic devices, and computer games that he had developed. The Apple I sold for $666.66. Wozniak later said he had no idea about the relation between the number and the mark of the beast, and that he came up with the price because he liked "repeating digits".[40] They sold their first 50 system boards to Terrell later that year.

In November 1976, Jobs and Wozniak received substantial funding from a then-semi-retired Intel product marketing manager and engineer named Mike Markkula.[41] At the request of Markkula, Wozniak resigned from his job at HP and became the vice president in charge of research and development at Apple. Wozniak's Apple I was similar to the Altair 8800, the first commercially available microcomputer, except the Apple I had no provision for internal expansion cards. With expansion cards, the Altair could attach to a computer terminal and be programmed in BASIC. In contrast, the Apple I was a hobbyist machine. Wozniak's design included a $25 CPU (MOS 6502) on a single circuit board with 256 bytes of ROM, 4K or 8K bytes of RAM, and a 40-character by 24-row display controller. Apple's first computer lacked a case, power supply, keyboard, and displayall components that had to be provided by the user. Eventually about 200 Apple I computers were produced in total.[42]

After the success of the Apple I, Wozniak designed the Apple II, the first personal computer with the ability to display color graphics, and BASIC programming language built in.[39] Inspired by "the technique Atari used to simulate colors on its first arcade games", Wozniak found a way of putting colors into the NTSC system by using a US$1 chip,[43] while colors in the PAL system are achieved by "accident" when a dot occurs on a line, and he says that to this day he has no idea how it works.[44] During the design stage, Jobs argued that the Apple II should have two expansion slots, while Wozniak wanted eight.[39] After a heated argument, during which Wozniak threatened that Jobs should "go get himself another computer", they decided to go with eight slots. Jobs and Wozniak introduced the Apple II at the April 1977 West Coast Computer Faire. Wozniak's first article about the Apple II was in Byte magazine in May 1977.[45]

In 1980, Apple went public to instant and significant financial profitability, making Jobs and Wozniak both millionaires. The Apple II's intended successor, the Apple III, released the same year, was a commercial failure and was discontinued in 1984. According to Wozniak, the Apple III "had 100 percent hardware failures", and that the primary reason for these failures was that the system was designed by Apple's marketing department, unlike Apple's previous engineering-driven projects.

During the early design and development phase of the original Macintosh, Wozniak had a heavy influence over the project along with Jef Raskin, who conceived the computer. Later named the "Macintosh 128k", it would become the first mass-market personal computer featuring an integral graphical user interface and mouse. The Macintosh would also go on to introduce the desktop publishing industry with the addition of the Apple LaserWriter, the first laser printer to feature vector graphics.[46] In a 2013 interview, Wozniak said that in 1981, "Steve [Jobs] really took over the project when I had a plane crash and wasn't there."[6]

Post-Apple

After his career at Apple, Wozniak founded CL 9 in 1985, which developed and brought the first programmable universal remote control to market in 1987, called the "CORE".[39] Beyond engineering, Wozniak's second lifelong goal had always been to teach elementary school because of the important role teachers play in students' lives. Eventually, he did teach computer classes to children from the fifth through ninth grades, and teachers as well.[58][59] Unuson continued to support this, funding additional teachers and equipment.[54]

In 2001, Wozniak founded Wheels of Zeus (WOZ)[60] to create wireless GPS technology to "help everyday people find everyday things much more easily". In 2002, he joined the board of directors of Ripcord Networks, Inc., joining Apple alumni Ellen Hancock, Gil Amelio, Mike Connor, and Wheels of Zeus co-founder Alex Fielding in a new telecommunications venture. Later the same year he joined the board of directors of Danger, Inc., the maker of the Hip Top.

In 2006, Wheels of Zeus was closed, and Wozniak founded Acquicor Technology, a holding company for acquiring technology companies and developing them, with Apple alumni Hancock and Amelio. From 2009 through 2014 he was chief scientist at Fusion-io.[61] In 2014 he became chief scientist at Primary Data, which was founded by some former Fusion-io executives.[62] Silicon Valley Comic Con (SVCC) is an annual pop culture and technology convention at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center in San Jose, California. The convention was co-founded by Wozniak and Rick White, with Trip Hunter as CEO.[63] Wozniak announced the annual event in 2015 along with Marvel legend Stan Lee.[64] In October 2017, Wozniak founded Woz U, an online educational technology service for independent students and employees.

Though permanently leaving Apple as an active employee in 1985, Wozniak chose to never remove himself from the official employee list, and continues to represent the company at events or in interviews. Today he receives a stipend from Apple for this role, estimated in 2006 to be US$120000 per year.[39][67][68] He is also an Apple shareholder.[69] He maintained a friendly acquaintance with Steve Jobs until Jobs's death in October 2011.[70] However, in 2006, Wozniak stated that he and Jobs were not as close as they used to be.[71]

In a 2013 interview, Wozniak said that the original Macintosh "failed" under Steve Jobs, and that it was not until Jobs left that it became a success. He called the Apple Lisa group the team that had kicked Jobs out, and that Jobs liked to call the Lisa group "idiots for making [the Lisa computer] too expensive". To compete with the Lisa, Jobs and his new team produced a cheaper computer, one that, according to Wozniak, was "weak", "lousy" and "still at a fairly high price". "He made it by cutting the RAM down, by forcing you to swap disks here and there", says Wozniak. He attributed the eventual success of the Macintosh to people like John Sculley "who worked to build a Macintosh market when the Apple II went away".[72]

At the end of 2020, Wozniak announced the launch of a new company helmed by him, Efforce. Efforce is described as a marketplace for funding ecologically friendly projects. It used a WOZX cryptocurrency token for funding and blockchain to redistribute the profit to token holders and businesses engaged on the platform.[73] In September 2021, it was reported that Wozniak was also starting a company alongside co-founder Alex Fielding named Privateer Space to address the problem of space debris.[74][75] Privateer Space debuted the first version of its space traffic monitoring software on March 1, 2022.[76] In 2024, Wozniak sued YouTube in respect to a scam that was being circulated on the platform using his likeness. Later, he won after a San Jose appeals court ruled YouTube was liable for failing to combat it.[77]

Television

TechTV – The Screen Savers 2002-09-27 (Steve Wozniak and Kevin Mitnick a convicted hacker) Featuring an interview with Adrian Lamo

After seeing her stand-up performance in Saratoga, California, Wozniak began dating comedian Kathy Griffin.[161] Together, they attended the 2007 Emmy Awards,[162] and subsequently made many appearances on the fourth season of her show Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List. Wozniak is on the show as her date for the Producers Guild of America award show. However, on a June 19, 2008, appearance on The Howard Stern Show, Griffin confirmed that they were no longer dating and decided to remain friends.[163]

Wozniak portrays a parody of himself in the first episode of the television series Code Monkeys; he plays the owner of Gameavision before selling it to help fund his next enterprise.[164][165] He later appears again in the 12th episode when he is in Las Vegas at the annual Video Game Convention and sees Dave and Jerry. He also appears in a parody of the "Get a Mac" ads featured in the final episode of Code Monkeys second season.

Wozniak is interviewed and featured in the documentary Hackers Wanted.

Wozniak competed on Season 8 of Dancing with the Stars in 2009[166][167] where he danced with Karina Smirnoff. Though Wozniak and Smirnoff received 10 combined points from the three judges out of 30, the lowest score of the evening, he remained in the competition. He later posted on a social networking site that he believed that the vote count was not legitimate and suggested that the Dancing with the Stars judges had lied about the vote count to keep him on the show.[168] After being briefed on the method of judging and vote counting, he retracted and apologized for his statements.[169] Though suffering a pulled hamstring and a fracture in his foot, Wozniak continued to compete,[170] but was eliminated from the competition on March 31, with a score of 12 out of 30 for an Argentine Tango.[171]

On September 30, 2010, he appeared as himself on The Big Bang Theory season 4 episode "The Cruciferous Vegetable Amplification".[172] While dining in The Cheesecake Factory where Penny works, he is approached by Sheldon via telepresence on a Texai robot. Leonard tries to explain to Penny who Wozniak is, but she says she already knows him from Dancing with the Stars.

On September 30, 2013, he appeared along with early Apple employees Daniel Kottke and Andy Hertzfeld on the television show John Wants Answers to discuss the movie Jobs.[173]

In April 2021, Wozniak became a panelist for the new TV series Unicorn Hunters,[174] a business investment show from the makers of the series The Masked Singer.[175][176]

Steve Wozniak

WorldBrand briefing

Technical Legacy and Innovation

Relationship with Steve Jobs

Post-Apple Career and Public Persona

Cultural Impact

Early life

Career

Pre-Apple

Inventions

Other

Views on artificial superintelligence

Personal life

Honors and awards

In media

Documentaries

See also

External links

References

Zaltair

Zaltair

Apple formation and success

Plane crash and temporary leave from Apple

UC Berkeley and US Festivals

Return to Apple product development

Final departure from Apple workforce

Post-Apple

Honorary degrees

Feature films

Television