Anytime Woz comes up, I can't help but think of this sentence that he wrote, way back on Google+, sometime in 2013, after the release of the Jobs film:
"And when Jobs (in the movie, but really a board does this) denied stock to the early garage team (some not even shown) I'm surprised that they chose not to show me giving about $10M of my own stock to them because it was the right thing. And $10M was a lot in that time."
It always makes me sad that Wozniak, the real brains behind the operation get completely ignored in favour of Jobs who was just a salesman.
Similarly to Dennis Ritchie who worked on the C programming language and Unix, and dies a week after Jobs gets completely ignored and yet arguably has had more impact than someone who's just known for arguing about tech not being pretty enough
Jony Ives and others like him saved Apple, not Jobs. Jobs was still making silly decisions that his team had to subvert or redirect in order to build the new, successful era of Apple.
Jobs had a long-term vision in the future of Apple as a consumer electronics company, as opposed to a techie company. The explosive growth of Apple in the 2000s and 2010s would never have happened if Apple hadn't matured out of being the company that made the Apple II line.
Jobs is the one who killed the Newton when he returned.
Apple could have launched in iPhone like product years ahead of when they did if they kept that branch of the company afloat. That would have been a real 'visionary' move. Instead, they were forced to differentiate themselves in a crowded marketplace by emphasizing little design flourishes and style.
Job's only real contribution is managing to gaslight (a.k.a, his "reality distortion field") the entire industry into thinking he had any real insight or ability beyond that of a typical middle manager with a cluster-b personality disorder.
Computer companies getting into consumer electronics is a result of average consumers wanting devices that behave more like and interact with computers. It's not the result of some messianic insight that no other company had.
We can't speculate on what a Apple Prime would have done without Jobs. But we do know that his single mindedness about making arbitrary changes cost them several years in the 80s and led to the slump in to the 90s.
I wanted a IIgs when I was younger, until someone told me about the Amiga. I also looked at the Atari ST. They were both cheaper and much more powerful. (I went with the Amiga. )
You are right. The CPU speed was lame. They also dragged their feet giving the IIgs a decent OS. If they released a souped up IIgs (Apple IIx or whatever) back in 1984, do you think the Mac would even exist?
It would have been exposed as being a dead end with no backwards compatibility. The GS was essentially a completely different architecture from its predecessors anyway. Compatibility was maintained with the Mega2 chip. Apple wouldn't have been stuck for a couple of years with barely any software on their "flagship" product.
The GS would have killed the Macintosh if they raised the clock speed, gave it some higher video resolution modes, and developed something like the Macintosh Toolbox in ROM for it.
If that is true, then I appreciate him more as business man and leader. The 2 GS was late to the game and a dead-end. In '83 us geeks would have killed for that machine, but in '87 after Atari ST and Amiga were released two years prior?
I recall folks around then asking me if 'we' (as in, computer science students) were having any kind of review of Jobs' contributions to the field in his memory
They were fans, so not pleased when I told them one could know every single thing there is to know about CS and never hear his name once
I'm not demeaning his achievements, but the general cultural view of Steve Jobs is of a technical and scientific genius that he was very likely not. Who knows? He might have been above average, even gifted, but there is not much to show for it
In Civilization 5, Steve Jobs was a "Great Merchant". This sparked some debate too, at the time. The game also had "Great Scientist", "Great Artist", "Great Engineer", and "Great Prophet". Given his huge following, I guess the latter would have been an appropriate category too.
I agree that Jobs is overhyped, but his contributions via NeXT were pretty considerable, no?
I mean, the vision was for a powerful yet affordable computer for use in Higher Education. This seems like quite a noble goal given the technological limitations at the time.
The hardware? Not so much. The other workstation vendors of the era (Sun, SGI, HP, DEC...) ran rings around NeXT. The 680x0 platform NeXT chose was approaching obsolescence by the early 90's.
So sometimes I'm confused. Is Jobs a salesman or a product guy? We know the famous rant from Jobs about salesmen / marketing people ruining companies. Some people even refer Jobs as the great marketing guy.
Jobs was all of that and more. Modern personal computing wouldn't exist without his insistence at making "Computers for the rest of us". There were many quite pissed at Apple for selling pre-assembled, ready to use computers. It was thought that unless you could assemble your machine you didn't deserve it.
Heck you see a lot of that attitude today in many open source projects.
And that's just one way he pushed modern computing into what it is today. Did he perform every detail himself? Nope - that would be absurd. But he took things that until that time no one else correlated, and he correlated and pushed for them. Often with amazing presence. And it wasn't willy-nilly, either.
I mean just look at the way he handled this OpenDoc troll:
How many can compose themselves and deliver that kind of a response that quickly? Not many.
So yeah, those who try to dismiss Jobs as just a marketing or product guy are only displaying their profound ignorance. I don't think Jobs was perfect - far from it. But he certainly did make a dent in the universe, and many others too - perhaps it is a good thing that people like Jobs are pretty rare but there is no doubt we would all be a lot poorer if he hadn't existed.
Exactly. Like many great teams they complemented each other beautifully - Apple would not have started without both of them bringing their strengths and playing them off each other.
Life is NOT a zero sum game.
Freaking cancel culture - no one is willing to expend any effort on nuance or deep thought. It's either yes/no, good/bad - zero room for discussions of the space between. How boring.
I think the ending aged like milk, i.e.: "Steve Jobs capitulating to Microsoft".
First of all, it's simply a mischaracterization, and second, today we interpret that moment very differently to the way it's portrayed in that movie. Steve Jobs turned Apple around spectacularly and went on to create the company with the highest market capitalization in the world, surpassing even Microsoft for many years.
Other than the ending, that documentary does a better job representing Steve Jobs' life than recent biographical movies.
There should be a documentary that covers Steve's life in his NeXT years.
I think that is a fair criticism in retrospect. I also think that the ending was exactly on point with where people thought Apple and Microsoft were going at the time the movie was filmed and released (1999 release).
I would love to see a documentary about NeXT. I feel like there is a missing component in the YouTube technology discussion which is actual documentary films. If you go and look up NeXT computers, there are people talking about something they bought on ebay, there is old footage of steve jobs pitching next computers, but there isn't any sort of scripted narrative documentary told via old footage, current interviews, etc. This is true basically across the space of technology videos on youtube. It's not limited to NeXT. Ironically, I made something like this for scientific models. Maybe if I want this, I should hunt down people willing to tell stories on camera and make it myself. lol.
> there isn't any sort of scripted narrative documentary told via old footage, current interviews, etc.
I suspect this is because of the economics of youtube. I don't think there is enough money in it for niche documentaries to be profitable. Either it's quick cheap solo stuff, or it's big documentaries but with a nice broad appeal (e.g. Vice or food stuff)
Yeah I thought about that. I never thought about monetizing it because you could take lots of found footage from youtube anyways and then build a narrative from additional interviews. I guess it requires so much effort that it ends up becoming a job though.
Such a good movie. I have a copy on my machine, and I'm sometimes sad that it's a 4x3 analog cable TV broadcast before HD. On the other hand, the fact that it's so good despite the constraints speaks to how well made it was.
The Pirates of Silicon valley DVD was the first item I've ever bought on Amazon. This was circa 2001, I was 15 and living in Europe. Ordering something from the US over the internet and having it delivered 2 weeks later was very exciting back then. I also had to 'hack' my DVD player to circumvent the region lock.
Anyway, my point being is: there is a 572p 16:9 version available on DVD.
Mentioned in the CNN doc is the trick Jobs played on Woz in their first business deal. Jobs told Woz that Atari had paid them $700 to build the game Breakout and paid him half, or $350. But in fact Atari had paid them $7000, not $700.
Yet even after learning this, Woz continued working with Jobs and later co-found Apple. That says a lot about both men.
It's always interesting to think about who has had the more successful, fulfilling life between Woz and Jobs.
Jobs had far more financial success, and was involved in the release of far more products, was far more famous than Woz, but died young and had...complicated relationships with everyone in his life.
Woz cashed out when he had enough to enjoy doing whatever he wanted for the rest of his life, organized music festivals, taught kids about computers and technology, played with cool gadgets, seems to be beloved by everyone who ever knew him, and is still going strong at 70.
> It's always interesting to think about who has had the more successful, fulfilling life between Woz and Jobs.
“You smell like a toilet.” This is what Steve Jobs told his daughter Lisa Brennan-Jobs while on his deathbed, she wrote in her new shocking tell-all memoir about her bumpy relationship with her father.
“I was afraid of him and, at the same time, I felt a quaking, electric love,” she wrote.
In her memoir, titled “Small Fry”, Brennan-Jobs says that a lot of her memories with her father were not a typical father-daughter relationship. She talks of him denying paternity despite a DNA match, not sending financial help to her and her mother, and saying mean things to her in the little times that he spent time with her.
Steve's own parents abandoned him (gave him up for adoption) when he was young and so Steve was raised by foster parents. His foster parents seemed to have been really nice people, but perhaps Steve might have had difficulty connecting with his first biological daughter because he couldn't connect with his own biological father. Just speculating of course ...
Even if he couldn't have connected with her emotionally he could so easily have looked after her financially as she grew up. To have left his daughter in poverty when he was so wealthy is just the pits. I can't admire a man like that.
He just seems like someone who was incapable of enjoying anything he couldn’t perfect, including people. I wonder how he viewed his daughter, someone directly from his own matter but so alien to himself.
If that is true he was very shortsighted because he was far from perfect himself. I wonder is that he hated his daughter's mother and couldn't stand the thought of a daughter who was half her's. The daughter didn't count. Anyway he could hurt her was a way of hurting her mother, all the way to his deathbed.
The "putting dent in universe" SV meme (i.e. being a big player and constituting a big change, without that much regard for ethics) needs to die. Consider that Hitler has also put a pretty sizeable dent in the universe... I think we should be more specific about the nature of the change, i.e. we should be explicit that it's a change for the better.
This is the correct answer. I doubt either man chose his path as such, their paths chose them.
Steve Jobs acted the way he did because that's the kind of person he was. Some of us have worked for people who have styled themselves (and maybe even literally described themselves) as being like Steve Jobs. Invariably they're not, and this is just a key for them to unlock their inner asshole and bestow it on others around them. They create a toxic work environment that does not end up producing the next ipad.
Likewise there is a lot to admire in Woz's life, but for someone not naturally wired that way to try and emulate it, it just wouldn't work.
Steve Jobs had won and he knew what effort to put in to get where he got. And he probably got fulfilling moments here and there but his drive to succeed must come with some downsides. Woz on the other hand calmly followed his passion and was probably always fulfilled for he did what he liked.
Jobs always reminds me of John Lennon. I honestly don’t understand how either man could care so little for their own child through their formative years. I’m glad both men tried to fix things (very late). Both also died far too soon.
One unpopular opinion about Jobs is: he pursued absurd, unsustainable and likely unhealthy diets.
One of his diets was a poorly designed "fruitarian" diet consisting of eating one kind of fruit for weeks, or drinking excessive amounts of fruit juice like Odwalla carrot juice... or sometimes, just fasting for long periods of time.
Very few people live like this, so there is not much medical literature about the implications of this lifestyle. I think this could have contributed to his health decline.
Jobs attempted to defeat his cancer initially through diet alone. His cancer was operable and potentially curable, but he wasted too much time chasing fringe diets and it cost him his life:
I don’t think he believed himself to be a master of everything but I get the clear impression he was leaning into an eastern/Indian spiritual tradition and likely even believed himself to be spiritually enlightened or on the cusp of enlightenment. So he thought he could heal himself, and possibly didn’t mind dying. After all, his last words were “Oh wow! Oh wow! Oh wow!”
I was in hospital recently for acute necrotizing pancreatitis (not fun, it will be a long time healing, if ever—fingers crossed).
I have to stick to a low- to non- fat diet (~ 30g or less a day) and occasionally have to skip eating altogether for half a day to several days if I'm feeling discomfort or pain. In hospital I wasn't allowed to eat anything for days. Just some water or fruit juice and, thankfully, hydromorphone.
Trying diets isn't very surprising. Even pancreatitis seems to vary in what diet will work for people. It sounds like some have to avoid fibre, others need more fibre. Some can go back to eating fats without straining the pancreas and some can't go near any. It's awful, especially because of how unpredictable and difficult the pancreas can be. It's not totally out-there to just try things related to diet as a last ditch attempt, if you ask me—but it's also not based on clinically-proven science either. (Except for fats and alcohol in the case of pancreatitis). Further, there is a dearth of layman information and community for pancreatic illnesses which can be disheartening and probably inspire just trying anything.
But during my experience everything I've heard about pancreatic cancer is that it's essentially a death sentence—and a horrible one. (Cursory look at the US National Cancer Institute—relative survival rate after 5 years is about 10%)
Different beasts. Trying a diet treatment for potentially-curative pancreatic cancer is surprising - as it’s effectively suicidal.
Pancreatic cancer is curable if it’s caught soon enough. (And I seem to recall that Jobs’ disease was thought to be atypical in some positive way, although details were obviously limited.) The problem is that due to the anatomy of the region, the disease is often advanced before symptoms are noticed, or noticed and thoroughly investigated.
I'm not saying he was right to experiment with diet. I was just saying it's hardly surprising given what we do know about pancreatic treatments and the dearth of public and accessible information.
Much of the information out there is either garbage or medical research papers. Most information on any pancreatic illness involves diet/digestion and potential surgery.
This stuff has been on my radar because unfortunately severe cases of pancreatitis can precede chronic conditions[0], cysts, tumours, and potentially even pancreatic cancer.
Jobs seems to have had a liver transplant. That says a couple of things. If the cancer had spread to his liver his chances were not good. His cancer was of the islet cells. Islet cells are the part of the pancreas that regulate blood sugar levels. So immediately he was staring down diabetes with surgery and removal of a large portion of them. There are surgeries (we've looked at them as possible futures) to transplant islet cells to the liver in order to try and avoid becoming diabetic if part or all of the pancreas has to be removed.
So this is a completely uneducated guess and only speculation, but if he was looking into islet cell transplants[1] prior to pancreatic head removal then he may have wanted a healthy liver first. Information relating to those details hasn't been made public to my knowledge. Most of the information surrounding his health seems as if it was measured in its releases. Also that he had a Whipple procedure it sounds like he was also having more traditional treatments.[2] Diet is also a part of treatment and symptom management and, from personal experience, the diet is pretty well the same as that for pancreatitis.[3]
Being that he lived 7 years after what is publicly known to be his diagnosis, he beat the average by a couple of years. That puts him in the 90th percentile of all pancreatic cancer deaths (at least according to the present figures I mentioned before which don't differentiate between types of pancreatic cancer).
Pretty sure I remember reading that he was literally days from death from liver failure, when he finally got his liver transplant. I therefore suspect it wasn’t trying to get a normal liver for some sort of experimental islet-cell transplant – it was just about survival. Whether his liver was failing due to metastatic cancer or complications of the Whipples’, who knows – but I suspect the former, considering what ultimately happened.
You’re right he beat the odds, time-wise... but this is what being a billionaire with a team of world-class oncologists at your beck and call will do for you. He had full genome sequencing of his tumour before it was widely accessible, and it’s reasonable to assume that based on the results of this, his team will have tried a variety of atypical and possibly experimental treatments.
The fruit diet is definitely suspect, but fasting is a practice that humanity has used (to great effect) for thousands of years. If anything, fasting should be practiced more, by everyone.
Not speaking about Woz vs Jobs specifically of course. But, having a longer life is not necessarily better than having a shorter successful life. I would rather die at 60 with no regrets than live to be 90 with a lifetime of regrets.
People here seem to be very close minded with regards to this. But I agree, living longer is not necessarily better. They didn’t even say that it was always the case, just that it might not be. Geez.
“Death is very likely the single best invention of life”
Steve said that. You don’t have to agree. But you can’t deny that these people who might not have lived very long have changed things: Alan Turing, Albert Einstein, John von Neumann, and Steve Jobs. To definitively declare that you must live long to live a fulfilling life is insulting to those who haven’t the opportunity.
Let him who crawls enamour'd of decay,
Cling to his couch, and sicken years away:
Heave his thick breath, and shake his palsied head;
Ours - the fresh turf; and not the feverish bed.
While gasp by gasp he falters forth his soul,
Ours with one pang - one bound - escapes control.
Let’s say I really wanted to compete in a triathlon, have kids and see them grow up and have families of their own, be a surgeon, etc.
How many of those could I do starting at 60? There are lots of life choices it’s easy to make at 25 that are not easy to make 65.
Even something as simple as 3 month cross country road trip. My parents retired at 55 and did that twice. My parents are still independent, but with their eyesight and hearing going they couldn’t decide at 75 to hop in their car and spend three months on the road.
Changing your mind, repentance, and learning are extremely important and possible for all 90-year-olds except for the severely demented. I've known one 89-year-old who changed her mind on a very important (negative) core value she had her whole life.
Healthspan and lifespan of people is continuously improving, and I am hopeful the science has just started. Maybe in 2100 people will be as able at 70 as they're at 30 now. Maybe many people will grow old and unable, but then scientific development will let them cure themselves, and have a second life of sorts.
Kind of cherry-picked there from the set of things 60 is too old to start. What about having 30 more years to fix a wrong you once committed, repay a debt, help give some worthy person or cause a boost?
At 60 years old, unless I stayed in shape, I doubt I would be able to run half marathons in a decent time, enjoy a decade of being a fitness instructor, fail miserably at real estate and marriage and recover from both (reset my career, get remarried, and still have enough time to rebuild my net worth), etc.
I lost a large part of my net worth between those two things - but I had the income to both enjoy life and to recover.
Everything I mentioned above happened between the time I was 25-35. Some good, some bad but I don’t regret any of it.
I wouldn’t take nearly the risks in my 60s that I did in my 30s. If I broke a bone in my 20s while doing some of the crazy stuff I did, I could heel. Not so much in my 60s.
I got a chance to start over with a new family making better choices in my 30s. I was still young enough at 35 to run with my sons, take them to the gym with me. At 85 not so much.
Are we really arguing that there are opportunities you have between 30-50 that you can’t make up for between 70-90?
Would you rather have been Steve Jobs or Ronald Wayne?
Are there any CEOs that reached such levels of success without being at least a bit nasty - nasty to their employees, friends and family? Makes me wonder if being nasty is a requirement ...
The CEO of Stripe, Patrick Collison, is pretty widely regarded as being a sweetheart, and at the age of 31 he’s already got almost 50% of the net worth Jobs had when he died. Arguably then, he’s far more successful for his age, and far kinder. There’s many other examples too, so this toxic “CEOs have to be assholes to succeed” trope should really die. Jobs was more likely successful in spite of his sometimes cruel idiosyncrasies, and almost certainly not because of them.
In this regard, I think there are some similarities between Woz and Paul Allan, the co-founder of Microsoft. Although Bill Gates have certainly changed over the years.
>Midgley's legacy has been scarred by the negative environmental impact of leaded gasoline and Freon. Environmental historian J. R. McNeill opined that Midgley "had more impact on the atmosphere than any other single organism in Earth's history", and Bill Bryson remarked that Midgley possessed "an instinct for the regrettable that was almost uncanny". Use of leaded gasoline, which he invented, released large quantities of lead into the atmosphere all over the world. High atmospheric lead levels have been linked with serious long-term health problems from childhood, including neurological impairment, and with increased levels of violence and criminality in cities. Time magazine included both leaded gasoline and CFCs on its list of "The 50 Worst Inventions".
>Midgley died three decades before the ozone-depleting and greenhouse gas effects of CFCs in the atmosphere became widely known. In 1987, the Montreal Protocol phased out the use of CFCs like Freon.
depends on how you measure impact. If you're a teacher and you educate thousands of kids that arguably has more of an impact than being successful at selling a lot of gadgets, it's just not compensated as handsomely. To take it to the extreme, you can be a world famous celebrity for a decade or two but a few years after you retire nobody remembers who you are.
from the article
>"But something felt wrong. After a day of talking, I was often exhausted and unfulfilled. Two hours spent with one person who wants to “pick my brain” is two hours I could have spent making something that could be useful to the whole world, including that one person.
Then people in America started emailing to ask why I’d been so silent. No new articles? No new projects? Nothing?So there’s the trade-off. When I’m local-focused, I may be useful to my community, but I’m not being as useful to the rest of the world."
the real problem here is mistaking the gratification one gets from github stars with the real impact one can have over a lifetime, and it doesn't always feel gratifying. Help one person instead of writing a thousand blog posts, don't confuse being well known with being genuinely useful.
He created the App Store fiefdom which taxes developers more than their government. It also compelled them to price their work at less than the cost of a cup of coffee.
He turned the general purpose computers in most Americans' lives into locked down, tightly controlled "experiences". (The iPhone, which lacks the ability to install whatever you want.)
He created an expensive laptop that isn't user upgradable.
His company is now suing a mom and pop healthcare app for having a logo shaped like a pear, which seems par for the course.
He sold status and glamour, and he wasn't a very good person. You can praise him if you want, but I think he's the epitome of selfish and don't consider him a role model. If you have to behave like that to win, it isn't worth it.
Gates, for all of his flaws, is doing really good work to make this world a better place. I look up to him instead.
People seem to forget 90s Bill Gates. He was terrible and spiteful. There's no reason Jobs wouldn't turn into the current Bill, if he was able to live that long.
Woz for a simple start. Seriously, Jobs was great at selling himself. There are literally millions of people alive today having more impact than Jobs, it's an insult to all of them to think he had such a massive impact.
He didn't work at Apple, but had a lot to do with
them for a while in the early days.
He thought that Woz was a true intuitive genius.
One of the best he had ever met.
He did in a short amount of time what would take
a team of others a long time.
He had such a creative mind about how things could
be done differently, more efficiently more elegant.
He was far away from being a businessman.
My dad thought that was a sign of sanity.
He got increasingly disillusioned with the financial
aspect and seeing how it impacted other people at Apple
(or did not)
He decided to get out it.
He had lots of money already. (He did).
Dad thought that Woz would have preferred to give
exciting solutions away and see what became of them.
He followed his heart and has (I think) enjoyed his
life a lot more than most who just keep chasing more
and more of it.
I am sure he was happy his Apple stock kept incrasing
in value :)
Was that truly Woz own pure and simple choice or was it influenced by his accident?
Did it change his ability to perform like he did before and thought it wasn't worth it to continue? Did it change his personality? Brain damage aside, did coming close to death by his own hand changed his outlook on life?
He never left Apple behind completely. Sure it ended up great but if not for the crash maybe what happened wasn't what he really wanted at the time.
I've always been amazed at Woz's annus mirabilis from 1976 to 1977. At the age of 26, he designed a commercial micro computer from scratch, which had sound, color output, an OS, Integer BASIC, all the peripherals, programming guide, and more.
Think about this. At the beginning of 1976, Woz got hold of a 6502 chip for the first time. By March, he had the Apple I running. By April, he and Jobs (and briefly, Wayne) started Apple. In July, they started selling Apple I kits, and by August, Woz had completed a prototype of the Apple II. By April of 1977 (only one year later!!) they were at the West Coast Computer Faire with the full-fledged Apple II computer as we know it today. It continued in production in one form or another until 1993.
This was a tour-de-force of focus, efficiency, innovation, hard work, and plain brilliance that is almost unbelievable today. Think about what you've accomplished in the past year, and compare. Woz deserves all the credit he gets.
Woz was an amazing genius as a young man and turned into a lovable character when older, but really hasn't done anything besides that since. Which is OK, lots of people peak when young (most mathematicians), but still those accomplishments ended. Jobs was a horrible person for much of his life but turned Apple into the world's most successful company from a start in the grave (I know I was in the grave before he returned) and created technology that changed the world. One succeeded early and late (but not in the middle) and one succeeded early and enjoyed the success). Who leaves the bigger legacy? Jobs. Who is loved by all? Woz. Which is greater is not really fair to anyone.
Considering his fame, brand recognition, and interests in education, it's pretty plausible to me that he got sort of "scammed" by the people who proposed woz u to him. If you read up on them, they're unsavory for sure.
It's a bad mark, for sure, but basically the only bad mark on an otherwise impeccable record. I feel like you certainly get one. So no, I don't think he was trying to scam people. He certainly didn't seem happy about the situation or try to smooth it over.
I went to elementary and middle school (Blossom Hill and Fisher Middle respectively) in Los Gatos, where Woz resides. I remember he donated the Mac lab at Fisher (and I think Blossom Hill too?). My memory of this is a little hazy, but I'm fairly sure Fisher had introductory programming classes that I took also, which I'm sure he had a part in. This would have been around 1999-ish when that was fairly uncommon. I wasn't a theater kid, but Woz was also well known for being a big sponsor of the theater program as well, and I remember kids in the theater program at Fisher often got cool tech gifts courtesy of Woz (like the Game Boy Color before it came out in the US).
It's probably hard to attribute this to one thing growing up in Silicon Valley in the 90s, but I consider Woz a big part of why I'm a software engineer today. And as an adult, he's one of the engineers who I most admire both professionally and personally as a kind, curious, and generous person.
I was at a table alone in a room with him, we were both at some Ted Nelson event and we had gotten there early.
I talked to him for about an hour and honestly had no idea it was him. He just came across as a jolly tech guy. Totally friendly and down to earth. There was crafts service there so when he got up to get something to drink, he brought back something for me, you know, just like some nice guy.
It was only later when people were giving him such reverence and acted flustered around him asking for photographs that I was like "wait, is that ... Steve Wozniak?!"
There are some people I can admire for their success, some people I can admire for their generosity, some people I can admire for their passions, etc. etc. Woz, for me, is the person I can admire for all of those qualities at once. He's just a great person overall. I'm excited for this event! It sounds super fun.
When I was university student (~ 2012), Woz was traveling Europe visiting Macdonald's (:D) in lots of countries including Slovakia. Shared it on the internet, probably Twitter.
One of my classmates tracked him and successfully asked for a photo with him. nice guy
Good to see https://signedbywoz.com/ is still up and running. I've had the signed Apple II schematic hanging in my office for over five years and I unexpectedly find it to be a constant source of inspiration.
I saw Woz at the Delta Sky Club in Madrid and gave him what was probably a too enthusiastic "Hello!" He said "hi" while trying really hard not to look at me.
I realized then that it must be exhausting to have so many people want to talk to you. It ain't easy being Woz.
I had seen Woz at the Computer History Museum at Mountain View. Much as I wanted to meet him and take a picture with him, I saw him politely turn down a woman who had walked up to him with what I'd assume was a similar request. It must be tiring, like you mention. I decided not to bother him.
I got him to sign my first-gen Intel MacBook Pro at a booksigning in DC in about 2006. I know that doesn't really even make sense, but he was glad to do so. Still have it.
I got my MBP signed by Woz almost 10 years ago, remember there was a conference in San Jose where everyone was lining up to take a picture with him, I just asked him for his autograph on my MacBook Pro. It's very old now but I kept it mostly because of the signature, will be posting a picture during the Woz birthday challenge :)
I can highly recommend Woz's biography iWoz [0]. Released in 2006, so before Jobs died. It's a fun read of the story of a young Woz that most off all just wanted to tinker with computers. I recognized a lot of my own youth in that story. Fun times.
I found a lot of chapters seemingly targeting a young audience, then other chapters had a decent amount of technical stuff and seemed targeted at very knowledgeable audience. I think it struggled in that regard. But I still loved it and will reread it many times :)
Probably over-generalizing here and may get downvoted.
I am always suprised how much effort rich people put into birthdays. I remember growing up that birthdays weren't really a thing when we were poor, but as we became more middle class, we celebrated with cakes and eventually decorations came in. I once got invited to a birthday party at a special venue and thought, wow! this is grander than a wedding.
The inverse was also true, if someone did not celebrate their birthday they felt so sad, like no one cared about them and made a big deal about it. On the other side we were brought up with "well, no one cares about you other than your family, so be nice to each other and don't expect much from life, you get what you sow".
Anybody able to identify all of the different covers of "Go your own way" in that video? I feel like I can hear Dolores (of Cranberries fame) even singing a version I'd not heard before.
I like Wozniak too and find him very inspiring but in a different way than Jobs - who was all about outwinning himself. Wozniak is a good soul type of guy, it wouldn’t even suit him to be in the same limelight as Jobs.
"And when Jobs (in the movie, but really a board does this) denied stock to the early garage team (some not even shown) I'm surprised that they chose not to show me giving about $10M of my own stock to them because it was the right thing. And $10M was a lot in that time."