Woz: Steve Jobs and I have never argued

20 years ago

“As the inventor of the Apple I and Apple II, along with Apple’s original software, Steve Wozniak is a living legend. Legendary, too, is his complicated relationship with Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, as well as the practical jokes that “Woz” played on colleagues in the headiest moments of the company’s formative years,” Hardy Green reports for BusinessWeek. “This fall, Wozniak will publish his memoir, I Woz: How I Invented the Personal Computer and Had Fun Along the Way, written with tech journalist Gina Smith (Norton).”

BusinessWeek associate editor Hardy Green interviewed Wozniak on May 20 at the book industry’s annual extravaganza, BookExpo America, in Washington, D.C. Here a re a few snippets:

Do you feel that your past has at times been misrepresented?
Woz: Yes. The press tries to make it look like I’m at odds with Apple. They made it sound like I left Apple because I was mad. But I was leaving to start a company that made a remote control — and I really remained an employee of Apple, too. To this day, they try to bring up big conflicts between me and Steve Jobs. But we have never argued — there’s not one person that has ever seen us in an argument. We are different types of people, but I’m a non-conflict person.

Do you feel that Jobs ever ripped you off, perhaps in the case of the game Breakout that you invented and he claimed credit for with Atari?
Woz: He was more concerned about money. In the case of Breakout, all he had to do was ask me. I had a job at [Hewlett-Packard] and didn’t need the money. He was always into business, and I was into designing. And that’s not a good vs. bad thing. Steve turned down doing the foreword for the book. But there’s nothing really bad about him in the book. He may have misinterpreted something.

How do you regard the state of innovation in the computer industry?
Woz: The industry is so mature at this point that there just isn’t that much room for innovation. There are lots of little companies around, but they don’t get noticed. Apple kind of owns the movie program, the photo program. There’s a lot of feeling that instead of 50 companies making computers, maybe there should be only a dozen and only room for a couple of operating systems. So there aren’t so many areas that haven’t been swamped.

More in the full article here.

Advertisements:
• Introducing the super-fast, blogging, podcasting, do-everything-out-of-the-box MacBook. Starting at just $1099
• Get the new iMac with Intel Core Duo for as low as $31 A MONTH with Free shipping!
• Get the MacBook Pro with Intel Core Duo for as low as $47 A MONTH with Free Shipping!
• Apple’s new Mac mini. Intel Core, up to 4 times faster. Starting at just $599. Free shipping.
• iPod. 15,000 songs. 25,000 photos. 150 hours of video. The new iPod. 30GB and 60GB models start at just $299. Free shipping.
• Connect iPod to your television set with the iPod AV Cable. Just $19.
• iPod Radio Remote. Listen to FM radio on your iPod and control everything with a convenient wired remote. Just $49.