Steve Wozniak

Q: Hi Steve, do you have any advice for the generation of dreamers who want to change the world with new ideas for computers and beyond?

A: [...] Don't expect success from the start. Go as far as you can making it perfect before you share it or seek funding. Have a working model or demonstration before you seek venture money. You could get funded and spend $100K on a video demonstration and then own less of your company and need further funding sooner. Or you could work hard to make a video for free, in your home (garage), and be that much better at the deal you finally work. And expect that many of your first tries will go nowhere. But they will get you experience toward the big one. You should have a job or live at home so you can work on your own passions on your on time. That implies not being too social or partying. Make good things when you are young and you've covered your needs for life.

Q: What advice could you offer young designers and aspiring innovators getting into programming? How do you think the web will affect products to come in the next ten years?

A: If you have college courses in CS, buy the books and spend day and night the few days before class going through the books and taking notes and answering questions and programming examples before the first class even starts. If you really want to do this in your life, that's what you should do, not just wait for the education to be handed you. Those who finish at the top will always be in high demand. You can learn outside of school too but you have to put a lot of time into it. It doesn't come easily. Small steps, each improving on the other, is what to expect, not instant understanding and expertise.

Q: Steve, any books that have inspired you or helped you along with your career? Or anything that is in your opinion a must read for someone interested in Computer Science?

A: Just the normal literature. I doubt that Farewell to Arms or Lord of the Rings inspired me this way. I got every computer manual I could at University bookstores and read them even if I'd never get a chance to touch that computer or run that programming language.

Q: Hello, Steve! We all know how successful you are. I would like to know what was the point at which you felt that "yes, I am successful"? What does success mean to you? Any advice on achieving guaranteed success in life?

A: I worked out lifetime philosophies of truth and happiness in high school and early college years. I worked out a few keys for my own life but they wouldn't necessarily work for someone else. Because I spent a lot of quiet inner hours, walking home from school for example, thinking out this philosophy, it was my own creation and much more important to me than any ideas that could have been shoveled my way, by parents or church or books. I had success for life based on my own internal keys and didn't need money or Apple or fame. In fact, those latter things fight it a bit. One of my philosophies was to be open. So I don't hide. I'm only one person and when thousands of people want me (email) I can't answer them all but I spend a lot of time trying. One of my keys was that if I'm open and truthful, I won't do things that I myself consider bad and wrong. You might get a clue why this fights what's needed in running a company. But it's great for an engineer.


Q: Hi Steve - who has had the largest influence on your career and why? 

A: My EE father had a brain and a heart. I wanted to be like him. He also spoke of pranks at Cal Tech.

My high school electronics teacher wrote his own lessons based on the equipment we had (better than any local college) and was the best teacher. He saw that I knew all the electronics (I'd had a ham license since 11 years old) so he arranged for me to visit a company in Sunnyvale that had a computer I could learn to program. We had no computer in our school.

Actually, the movie was largely a lie about me. I was an engineer at HP designing the iPhone 5 of the time, their scientific calculators. I had many friends and a good reputation there. I designed things for people all over the country, for fun, all the time too, including the first hotel movie systems and SMPTE time code readers for the commercial video world. Also home pinball games. Among these things, the Apple I was the FIFTH time that something I had created (not built from someone else's schematic) was turned into money by Jobs. My Pong game got him his job at Atari but he never was an engineer or programmer. I was a regular member at the Homebrew Computer Club from day one and Jobs didn't know it existed. He was up in Oregon then. I'd take my designs to the meetings and demonstrate them and I had a big following. I wasn't some guy nobody talked to, although I was shy in social settings. i gave that computer design away for free to help people who were espousing the thoughts about computers changing life in so many regards (communication, education, productivity, etc.). I was inspired by Stanford intellectuals like Jim Warren talking this way at the club. Lee Felsenstein wanted computers to help in things like the antiwar marches he'd orchestrated in Oakland and I was inspired by the fact that these machines could help stop wars. Others in the club had working models of this computer before Jobs knew it existed. He came down one week and I took him to show him the club, not the reverse. He saw it as a businessman. It as I who told Jobs the good things these machines could do for humanity, not the reverse. I begged Steve that we donate the first Apple I to a woman who took computers into elementary schools but he made my buy it and donate it myself.

When I first met Jobs, I had EVERY Dylan album. I was a hardcore fan. I had bootlegs too. Jobs knew a few popular Dylan songs and related to the phrase "when you ain't got nothin' you got nothing to lose." I showed Jobs all my liner notes and lyrics and took him to record stores near San Jose State and Berkeley to buy Dylan bootlegs. I showed him brochures full of Dylan quotes and articles and photos. I brought Jobs into this Dylan world in a big way. I would go to the right post office at midnight, in Oakland, to buy tickets to a Dylan concert and would take Jobs with me. Jobs asked early on in our friendship whether Dylan or the Beatles were better. I had no Beatles album. We both concurred that Dylan was more important because he said important things and thoughtful things. So a Beatles fan was kind of a pop lamb to us. Why would they portray us in the movie as Dylan for Jobs and Beatles for me?

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.

Also, note that the movie showed a time frame in which every computer Jobs developed was a failure. And they had millions of dollars behind them. My Apple ][ was developed on nothing and productized on very little. Yet it was the only revenue and profit source of the company for the first 10 years, well past the point that Jobs had left. The movie made it seem that board members didn't acknowledge Jobs' great work on Macintosh but when sales fall to a few hundred a month and the stock dives to 50% in a short time, someone has to save the company. The proper course was to work every angle possible, engineering and marketing, to make the Macintosh marketable while the Apple ][ still supported us for years. This work was done by Sculley and others and it involved opening the Macintosh up too.

The movie shows Steve's driving of the Macintosh team but not the stuff that most of the team said they'd never again work for him. It doesn't show his disdain and attempts to kill the Apple ][, our revenue source, so that the Macintosh wouldn't have to compete with it. The movie audience would want to see a complete picture and they can often tell when they are being shortchanged.

And ease of computer came to the world more than anything from Jef Raskin, in many ways and long before Jef told us to look into Xerox. Jef was badly portrayed.

And if you think that our investor and equal stock holder and mentor Mike Markkula was Jobs' stooge (and not in control of everything), well, you have been duped.

Jobs mannerisms and phrases are motivational and you need a driver to move things along. But it's also important to have the skills to execute and create products that will be popular enough to sell for more than it costs to make them. Jobs didn't have that success at Apple until the iPod, although OS X deserves the credit too. These sorts of things people would have wanted to see, about Jobs or about Apple, but the movie gives other images of what was behind it all and none add up.

Q. What advice would you give to somebody starting out in technology as a career?

A. Don’t start unless you like mathematics to begin with -- mathematics and logic science. If you find yourself wanting to learn more and more about that area, especially if it gets toward technology, try to get some early starter kits. My suggestion is to do like I did in the old days, which is to start with electronics, where you actually hook little resistors, transistors and parts together with wires. Secondary to that, if you are more interested in software than hardware, you could start with a Raspberry Pi or the Arduino. There are tons of books about do-it-yourself projects. Make sure that your parents will support you with money to buy little pieces; that makes such a difference.