The inventor of the personal computer, Woz to his friends, speaks

The Other Steve
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak talks about growing up nerdy, creating vs. managing and what surprised him most about the computer era.
By JEFFREY A. TRACHTENBERG (from the Wall Street Journal)

In the mid-1970s, Steve Wozniak built the Apple I and then launched Apple Computer Inc. in 1976 with Steve Jobs. Now, Mr. Wozniak has written a memoir, "iWoz: From Computer Geek to Cult Icon: How I Invented the Personal Computer, Co-Founded Apple, and Had Fun Doing It." The book, co-written with Gina Smith, a journalist, and published by W.W. Norton & Co., explains how a super smart kid with a fondness for transistors and diodes transformed business and culture.

Mr. Wozniak, 56 years old, doesn't mind telling readers he was usually the brainiest guy in the room -- as well as the most socially inept. Imagine this: His high school principal was actually furious after discovering a ticking electronic metronome attached to batteries labeled "contact explosive" inside a school locker. To create extra thrills, Mr. Wozniak had rigged the metronome "with a switched resistor to start ticking faster when someone opened up the locker door." After being caught, Mr. Wozniak spent the night in juvenile detention. "I shouldn't have smiled," he says.

Mr. Wozniak is still an employee of Apple Computer, representing the company at industry events, but sees himself primarily as a philanthropist and a teacher. (An Apple spokesman declined to comment on Mr. Wozniak's role.) Meanwhile, his old partner Mr. Jobs declined to write a foreword for the book. "He may have had a lack of time," says Mr. Wozniak. Most recently, Mr. Wozniak helped launch Acquicor Technology Inc. with two former Apple Computer employees. On Tuesday, Acquicor agreed to acquire Jazz Semiconductor Inc. for $260 million. Mr. Wozniak spoke to The Wall Street Journal's Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg from his home in Los Gatos, California.

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The Wall Street Journal Online: What has most surprised you by how personal computers have evolved and how people use them?

Carter Dow

Steve Wozniak

Steve Wozniak: It was hard to imagine the Internet, and how the Internet would play into our lives. For example, look how easily we do email, chats, blogs, Web sites. Back then, it was a bunch of people using a slow modem, typing words of text into bulletin board systems. Today computers have brought immediacy to virtually everything.

We didn't envision computers becoming storage areas for everything from music to movies. We knew that computers would have greater speed, and that disks would have greater density. We didn't know what that would mean in terms of which tools would make sense. The way computers are used at work, we did imagine. But we could not have imagined the personal computer would become so important at home. Almost everything you do in your life relates to it.

Also, we thought that when people had a problem, they would write a program and solve it. We thought an easy programming language would be the key. Instead, what happened was that other people wrote programs for you. Now we have to find a program that will help us do our job and figure how to use it. It's not that we're the masters. Everything is there for us. That was a change we didn't really see for a couple of years.

WSJ.com: You built your first computer while holding down a full-time job at Hewlett-Packard. In effect, you went back to work when you came home from work. What about a social life?

Mr. Wozniak: Actually when I came home from work I also worked on a lot of other projects. I did tons of other stuff that year. But I grew up as a nerd. I didn't think I'd have a social life. Also, that same year I had an asthma experience that I didn't put in the book. For one year my asthma treatment wasn't right and I had to sleep sitting up. I'd often get up in the night and work.

WSJ.com: Apple has had its share of ups and downs over the years. What has most surprised you about its longevity?

Mr. Wozniak: I'm not surprised by its longevity. Once a company has millions of customers it can hang on for decades, getting extra chances for rebirth. One of a company's greatest assets is customer loyalty. A lot of ups and downs are due to the competitive nature of the business. Apple quickly became a huge company, but we had one product. Now we have at least two major product lines so we're more immune.

From day one, Apple was so successful and had so many customers and created so much loyalty and had cash in the bank that there wasn't a fear that the company could disappear easily. I think of it more in terms of company culture and the feeling you get from its products. Do they still achieve a wow factor and excellence? That's very difficult to retain.

Companies that have made the best products in the world can make dogs -- like Sony Electronics now. But Apple products still generate the same feelings today as they did in the early days. They show leadership, they are first, they recognize which technologies will persist in the future. They're good at making products that you have an intense urge to own.

WSJ.com: You turned down a job at Atari by saying you would never leave Hewlett-Packard because it was so good to its engineers. What are your thoughts about recent revelations that Hewlett-Packard spied on board members and reporters?

Mr. Wozniak: It bothers me a lot less than the fact that H-P is not treating its engineers as well as it once did. They aren't as well respected. That bothers me much more than management trying to chase down leaks. Apple also took some extreme measures to stop people from talking in advance about products. And it helped. Early leaks to the world don't do a company any good.

Still, the methods H-P used weren't warranted; they didn't match the problem. You have to look at how bad things were. They might not have had to go that far. I'm a huge advocate of privacy and being honest. I'd have to look very carefully at this case.

WSJ.com: You eventually stopped working at Apple full time and launched a new company that made a universal remote. That business didn't succeed. Any regrets?

Mr. Wozniak: The product was excellent. And I liked the small company scenario. But I got to a point where I had my children and wanted to be at home all day and have time for them, and I didn't want to continue the company. The company needed more money and I decided not to do it. I wanted to be a retired dad. Even though the company was shut down, I gave the rights to one of the workers and he sold the remote under a different name for another 15 years. It totally worked.

WSJ.com: Throughout the book you emphasize your love of pranks and jokes. At one point you write that you own a roulette shocker -- four people stick in their thumbs, and one of them eventually gets an electric jolt. Do you use this for party tricks?

Mr. Wozniak: It has good sound effects as well. I've brought it to some engineering events. Hardware people will stick their figures in; software people say, 'No, no.' They won't dare. Hardware people know what it's liked to be shocked. That's one major difference between them and software people.

WSJ.com: Several times in your book you say that you never wanted to manage anybody, that all you wanted to do in life was to be a working engineer. Any regrets now that you didn't try to make your views more widely known inside Apple?

Mr. Wozniak: I'm happy with how it worked out. I think I did the most constructive things I could inside Apple, that I was better off doing what I was good at and letting other people do what they were good at. I had no experience in marketing. I was an engineer. If you don't know something, trust other people who have spent their life doing it. I'm glad I was able to build the computers and work on some great engineering projects.

WSJ.com: It seems like you've been inventing stuff since elementary school. What are you working on in your basement?

Mr. Wozniak: I have a few ideas, but there is so little time. For these projects to come to fruition you need 20 hours a day to invest. I have some I'd love to do. But I've always been accessible, and the world has caught up to me.

(Write to Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg at jeffrey.trachtenberg@wsj.com)