November 29, 2019 • 51 mins
Who is Steve Wozniak? What was Wozniak's role at Apple? What other ventures has Wozniak been involved in over the years? Join Chris and Jonathan as they explore the life and times of this iconic computer engineer and Apple cofounder.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios.
How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
I Heart Radio and I love all things tech. And
it is Friday. That means it is time for another
classic episode. And this episode published on January second, two
(00:28):
thousand thirteen. It is also Chris Palette's final episode as
a co host of tech Stuff. Chris and I created
tech Stuff back in two thousand and eight, and in
two thousand thirteen he decided to step away from the
show to focus on other things, and he definitely put
(00:51):
his imprint on tech Stuff. Tech Stuff would not be
the show it is without Chris Palette. This was the
topic he decided he wanted to cover as his final episode.
The wonderful wizard named was Steve Wasniak. I hope you
guys enjoy the curtain sweeps down, the spotlight goes out
(01:12):
on our beloved Chris Palette. It is his final tech
Stuff episode. This is not a joke. We may eventually
be able to get him back on as a guest,
but he's this is his his final episode as a
host of tech Stuff. And uh, and he got to
choose whatever topic he wanted. Unfortunately, almost all of them
were ones we had already covered. Well. Actually, it surprised
(01:35):
me that we didn't have a podcast on the person
that we wanted to talk about today. Yeah. We we've
mentioned him in several podcasts. Yeah, but yeah, we definitely
one of text more colorful characters, right, and that, of
course is the wonderful wizard named was was, yes, Steve
Stephen Gary Wazniak. Yeah, um, one of the co founders
(01:59):
of Apple. And he was born in on August eleventh,
nine and uh. He came from a family that was
technologically inclined. His dad was an engineer at a little
company called lockeed Martin. I feel like I've heard of that.
Yeah and uh and yeah he um. As a as
a kid, he became very interested in engineering and electronics.
(02:24):
Did you did you hear about what his favorite book
series was that kind of inspired him? Actually it was
the I looked at a lot of interviews. He's actually
if you've never seen an interview with Wozniak, he's a
very animated individual, well spoken, very passionate about what he does.
It's clearly he truly enjoys technology like there's no irony there.
(02:46):
He just loves it. And though he doesn't necessarily love
all the things that we do with technology or the
way that companies handle technology, he's not He actually is
not so not in such a big fan of big companies.
But we'll get an to that. But no, as a kid,
his favorite book series was the Tom Swift series. So
(03:07):
Tom Swift, if you don't know, he's a young man
who is a kind of an engineer who could build
just about anything in his own company. He would fight
evil and and solve mysteries and things of that nature.
And in fact, just as a tangent, Tom Swift plays
a role in a in a totally different technology has
nothing to do with Wozniak. Do you do you happen
to know what Tom Swift? It's actually his. Tom Swift's
(03:31):
name is lent in a way to this technology. Really. Yeah,
it's Taser. Oh right, Taser stands Taser's technically an acronym.
It stands for Thomas A. Swift's electric rifle. You know,
I think we mentioned that a long time ago when
we talked about the Taser. Yeah, I think so. But yeah,
he in an interview. He credited the Tom Swift books
(03:54):
as igniting his imagination at the idea of creating things
electronics and being able to have kind of, you know,
the equivalent of these adventures, and having a dad who
was an engineer at Lockeed Martin didn't hurt because it
turned out he had a really good person to go
(04:14):
to when those science fairs came up in elementary school.
Well yeah, yeah, and uh it certainly wouldn't have hurt
his interest in technology to have a family that understood
and supported those interests too. They go, oh, you know, hey,
this is something I like too, so you know, yeah,
(04:35):
we should uh stop clowning around, he said foolishly. I
was a a Tom Swift e nice, he's a he's
a Yeah, he had a He credited his dad and
some of his teachers in elementary school as really inspiring him. Essentially,
he said that, uh, you know, when he started to
excel at science, Uh, the teachers responded, and that just
(04:57):
drove him to make even more accomplishments in that area.
So by the time he was in sixth grade, he
actually built a fairly primitive but a working computer that
could play Tic tac toe and you know, we all
know from the documentary War Games that it's just a
short hop, skip and a jump from Tic tac toe
(05:17):
to thermonuclear war. Of course, you know, shall we play
a game? Thanks Whopper? Hey nice you remembered the name
and everything. Yeah, I've I've watched that documentary several times.
So the old cup modems where you actually had to
put the phone and I'm sure actually it's probably remembers
(05:39):
those days. Oh yeah, we'll get into that a little
bit too. Well. I was has also got a bit
of a mischievous streak in him. Um a bit, yeah,
a bit of a mischievous streak. That was a bit
of an understatement. Yeah, well to it well. In sixth
grade he also got his ham radio license, So obviously
he was very much interested in electronics and technology and
(05:59):
can indication all of these things would play a very
large role in his choices further down the line. And
according to laws, he said, he never took any courses
on building electronics or computers. He just learned how to
do that all on his own, at least at least
in the elementary in high school years. Once you get
to college, he actually was pursuing originally Uh. When he
(06:23):
when he first enrolled, he was pursuing a degree in
electrical engineering and computer science at the University of California
at Berkeley. Yeah, and that's that's sort of a lesson
for all of us. You know. Um, sometimes programming and
fiddling with electronics and those kinds of things can seem
really daunting, and it feels like, you know, you start
dabbling in and it feels like you need a degree
(06:44):
in computer science or electrical engineering to do these things.
You don't. You just have to have an interest and
get the right right place to start. And it also
helps to uh surround yourself within other fellow enthusiasts. Yeah,
and it didn't hurt that was is categorically a genius
in certain arenas, so that gave him a leg up
(07:06):
as well. But tales details. Yeah, Well, while in while
in the both in high school and in college, he
began to associate with other people who are really interested
in electronics and technology. Uh and uh he was part
of a homebrew computer club. Yes, that would be v
homebrew computer club. Yeah. Back back in the mid seventies,
(07:27):
um was was at the University of California at Berkeley.
Um and uh, he was he was interested in attending this, uh,
this nearby computer club, the Homebrew Computer Club, and uh
there were actually quite a few people of note who
are part of this UM. But they were interested in
before you get into the details of that kind of thing,
(07:49):
this group was really kind of interested in what you
could do with computers because, uh, in the mid nineties seventies,
we weren't talking about uh, machines like the Apple too,
where you had a monitor toing on top of a
computer with a keyboard and you would program stuff. I mean,
we were uh, they were interested in in the large
part and things like the Altaire, which had no monitor.
You you would read, um, the the output of this
(08:12):
device by the blinking lights or you know, in German
dust princing light, as many a many many jokes have gone.
But really, I mean, it wasn't It wasn't something that
the average person would probably be likely in picking up,
simply because there was kind of a barrier of entry.
It was hard to understand for people who were sort
of passingly interested in it. And we talked about the
(08:34):
IBM s and the machines that corporate customers would use
where you had punch cards and and you know, printing
and large storage devices and things like that. Well, yeah,
I mean those were far more easy in some ways
to understand because there were more ways to interact with
those machines, but they were also hugely expensive and took
(08:56):
up a lot more space than something like the Altair.
This is the kind of divice ice that got people thinking,
you know, I could have a computer in my house.
I could do things with a computer. I could program
this thing this, this could be fun. What could I
do with this? And that's really what this group was
all about. And there were other people, uh interested in
this as well, like a guy named Jobs, and I
(09:17):
believe a couple of guys named Alan and Gates to
show up in the logs, and there were there were
other people who interacted with all of those guys that
that floated in and out of that culture out there
in California around that time. Yeah, this is this is
the birth of the personal computer age. And we're talking
(09:37):
about the the very early days and uh and you know,
of course Bosniak plays a very large role in that,
but also uh he had other interests in in finding
out how stuff works, which you know we can appreciate, um,
like the phone system. He was, he was known to
engage in a little phone freaking now and then. We
(10:00):
actually have talked about phone freaking in the past. Essentially,
what phone freaking was was finding out how the telephone
system worked and then exploiting that knowledge by being able
to UH to create things that would allow you to
make free phone calls. Um. Usually it would involve recreating
a certain kind of tone that the phone would then
(10:23):
um not recognize the fact that you were dialing. It
wouldn't register that, so it act as if the line
had not been engaged, whereas you could actually make the
call for free. So UM, there are a lot of
different kits that you could do this with. There, of course,
was the famous UH whistle, Yes, UH, the the Captain
(10:45):
crunch whistle, or you could whistle into a phone and
with this particular toy whistle that came in the Cereal
and UH it would recreate the exact pitch you needed
in order to UH to hack the phone system. That
changed before too long and they had to start creating
electronic devices that could generate Normally it would be two
(11:06):
tones together to be able to UH to actually hack
into a phone system. Yeah. Well, um, if if you
haven't done any research into into phone freaking or listen
to the podcast from Man that was a long time. UM.
Basically that the deal was that they had the system
in place so that the phone company could do maintenance
(11:29):
work and the phone technicians out in the field could
use these certain codes. UM. In the case of one
of them, it was a high E played three times
and that would unlock the system. It was a very
analog system at that point. And uh, you know they
the phone company actually published information on this in their
Bell Technical Journal, which was available at your local library,
(11:52):
and certain people figured this out and any whistle. This
is famous because a famous phone freaker named Captain Crunch
named that because he realized that the toy whistle that
you found in a box of cereal, I'll let you
guess which brand, Um, yes, exactly. How How did you know? Um?
You could you could play exactly that note. That's all
(12:14):
you needed. You all you had. All you had to
do was know that the code and have that whistle. UM.
And of course Bell went nuts trying to get the
technical that copy of the technical Journal back off the shelf.
That this was a mistake to let that information get
outside the door of Bell. Yeah, that was not not
a great move. We published this, you're not supposed to
(12:37):
want to read about it. Yeah, but people who were
interested in electronics, I mean, clearly something as complex as
the telephone uh system would be fascinating to them, and
that included people like wasn't it Yes? Absolutely? And uh
it's it's famous that he and Steve Jobs were actually
building phone freaking systems for other people, um and and
(13:00):
trying to sell them, which they did on a small scale,
and that which kind of set the ground for for
their future endeavors together. They He actually did withdraw from
the University of California before completing his degree and began
to work for Hewlett Packard and was an an engineer there.
(13:21):
He actually worked specifically on designing calculators. Meanwhile, Jobs kind
of came up with this idea. Now, but when you
talk about Jobs in Wosniac, they had very different roles
when in those early days of Apple, right, Steve Jobs
was an idea guy, he was a business guy, and
(13:42):
he was a marketing guy most more than anything else.
He was a marketing genius. Yeah. I've been reading Isaacson's
biography of Steve Jobs, and I'm still not quite done
with it yet, but I have passed through the early
stages of Apple. There and apparently when they were working
on the Apple one, which was a very basic computer. UM.
(14:03):
As a matter of fact, you had the the very
early machines weren't really machines. They were a set of boards,
basically motherboards and pieces that you would assemble into a
case and use it as a computer UM, which sold
for as Jonathan likes to point out, the sum of
six sixty six dollars and sixty six cents. Wozniak likes
(14:25):
repeating digits. Yeah. Apparently, well, according to them, it had
nothing to do with the symbolic nature of this in uh,
in religion, it was more THEO there was no but
it's hard to imagine that it it's an Apple computer. Yes.
(14:46):
Of course they also say that Apple was chosen for
other reasons than the Yeah. That's funny because because Wozniak
said that he had just guessed at some point that
the reason why Steve Jobs wanted to call the company
Apple was that Steve Jobs had worked for a while
in an orchard in either Washington or Oregon, and that
that perhaps gave him the idea which may or may
(15:07):
not be the case, because he said the thing about
Jobs was that he would come up with ideas but
not necessarily explain to you how he came up with him. Yeah, yeah,
that's true. We also should point out that there was
this time in jobs life where he was expanding his
consciousness a little bit. Yes, yes, Um, Jobs attended read
college up in Oregon and did not finish there, but
(15:31):
was was very interested in a number of things, including, uh,
expanding one's horizons to the use of chemical substances. Yes,
that's very very diplomatic way of putting it. That's not
I don't get the sense that that was is interested
in that. I think he likes to expand his consciousness
through technological means, which again shows that difference. Jobs was
this marketer and Wozniak was the engineer. He was the
(15:53):
guy who was really designing the technology. Yeah, well that
was That was actually exactly My point is according to
the isaacs and story, Um was wanted to give away
the design for the original boards for the Apple One,
and Jobs said no, no, no, we could sell this thing.
We can make a company, And that intrigue was just
(16:14):
enough to go, Okay, yeah, let's give it a try. Yeah,
because before at at the Homebrew Computer Club, Wasniak would
distribute designs that he would come up with for for
computer kids. He would design them on paper and then
he would just distribute copies of it to the other members.
And jobs was getting to the point where he's like,
(16:35):
you know, if we didn't give these away for free,
I bet people would pay for them. And so yeah,
he he convinced Wozniak to go in with him on
a venture together, and this was the idea of Apple. Yeah,
and it wasn't It wasn't easy, Um, you know, Wasosniac
(16:55):
was a little reticent to leave HP. I mean, you
think about it if you were if your buddy is
telling you, hey, let's go start a company. Meanwhile you're
in with a very strong technology company and you're you know,
you've got a good job, it's secure, and it's like, well,
they're on on the one hand, you got the allure
of of you know, this opportunity to do something really cool,
(17:16):
but hey, you know, there's not a lot of security,
and it's starting your own company can be a challenge,
and it can be a lot of work, and it
can be scary. Yeah, And a first guarantee, right at first.
He did continue to work with HP, didn't quit immediately.
And in fact, one of the stories about founding Apple
is that they had to in order to raise the
capital they needed, which was not that much by today's standards.
(17:38):
I mean, even if you were to convert into today's dollars,
they it was a fairly low investment. In fact, that
was one of the things that Steve Jobs was able
to to use to convince Bosnia to try. It was
because the investment was not going to be prohibitively large,
but it's still required that they raised some capital, and
they did it by selling off stuff that they owned,
and Wozniak sold off his beloved scientific calculator, Yes, which
(18:03):
at the time was a pretty hot piece of technology. Yeah,
for around something something to the tune of around five
dollars at the time, which you know in the seventies.
That's that's it's still a good chunk of change, right,
It's it was even more so back then. And uh,
the interesting thing to me was that when I read
an interview, a more recent interview, wasn't he act really
(18:25):
downplayed that? He said, he said, uh, well, here's the
thing I'm still technically working for HP, and because I
worked for HP, I could buy the next new calculator
before it came out and at a lower price than
I did the older calculator. So uh so I thought,
even at this company that I'm working on with jobs
goes belly up, I still, um, I still have the
(18:47):
protection of working for this other company, and I can
get my calculator back. Yeah, that's um, which is an
important part of context that I think a lot of
people miss. Um. But yeah, the the Apple one did
reasonably well within those circles, and they started working on
the Apple too. Um. Jobs play, I mean, jobs played
(19:08):
a good part in the getting it into stores, But
Wazniak had a lot to do with the back end
of that machine, especially the the Basic language implement implementation.
There you go. He was unfamiliar with Basic at first,
and uh, just kind of funny. It's funny, it's hard,
but not with Basic. It's also funny that he got
(19:29):
really uh he started to really say the basic version
that HP uses, which is not the same as the
Basic language that that Bill Gates was working on. So um,
it was he was coming at it from a different
approach because he was you know, I think at the
time he was actually working under the assumption that was
(19:50):
essentially the same thing, but turned out it was two
different versions of basic to two pretty significant different versions. Also,
I should point out, so so they founded Apple in
nineteen seventy six, and it wasn't it was just nineteen
seventy seven when Apple two came out, so that that
first Apple, we should really point out, it was more
(20:11):
like a almost like a run of prototypes. It would
they only made a small, a relatively small number of
these because, for one thing, they didn't know how big
the demand was going to be. They knew that their
fellow computer enthusiasts would enjoy this kind of thing because
they also shared the vision that computers would one day
be an integral part of our lives. But at the time,
(20:34):
the average person, like the average consumer, didn't necessarily have
any desire or need for a computer, or at least
they didn't think they did. And uh, and so it
was it was definitely not a sure thing when they
were first getting started. But nineteen seventy seven, Apple two
comes out, and I think, uh, I think you could
(20:56):
describe its success as being meteoric. Oh yeah, yeah, Well, Um.
That's one of the reasons that Wozniak says that he
worked so hard on the basic HUM structure for the
two microprocessor was was simply that he realized that basic
was going to be a big help to people who
(21:17):
were going to adopt these and he wanted people to
understand that computers could play a significant role in their
personal lives. And so he said, you know this is
you know, I basically hunkered down to do this because
I knew this was going to be important. And that's
that's something that you see when you look at that
Steve Wozniak's career is that he obviously he's willing to
(21:42):
put his his back into it and really work on
something that he is very passionate about like this, Um
the very other you know, there are other things too.
He talks about having to write the disc operating software
for the the earlier machines, and he didn't this was
not something that he was familiar with. Yeah, he had
(22:03):
never really used magnetic storage like that, but he made
it work because he knew it was important. Um. Not
that not downe to discount other people all over the
world who do this every day. But I'm saying you know,
as we're looking at Steve Wozniak, this is uh technology
is is clearly part of his DNA, and it's it
he he needs to to make it work. One of
(22:25):
the things that I read about him too in the
Isaacs and um biography of Jobs was that uh um,
apparently he was just really good at finding innovative solutions
to the challenges that that came up while they were
creating the actual machines. His engineering expertise, it's more than
just It's sort of like a virtuoso and a musical instrument.
(22:48):
You have people who can play the instrument, but there
are very few people that can that can pick it
up and do something really brilliant with it that you
wouldn't expect to do because they don't teach that. It's
just the thing that you sort of innately have. Yeah,
and apparently he is. He just got that um ability
to to look at a technology and know how it
(23:10):
works and go, well, you know what, I know, this
isn't work in this way just for kicks, Let's plug
this in this way and see if that works. Yeah.
He he had a real interesting attitude too. He said that,
you know, in general, in a broad stroke. He said,
if he could build a machine that had two hundred
chips in it, he would then look at that design
and say, how can I build a machine that does
the exact same thing this thing does, but with a
(23:32):
hundred fifty chips? And he would do it. And then
after that he'd say, okay, well, how can I build
a machine that does all the things this machine does,
but only with a hundred chips and just continuously refine
that design so that it was more and more elegant
and more efficient in each iteration. That was sort of
his thought process, which is, you know, that's a good thing. Well,
(23:53):
it's funny you should mention that because there there is
another story that jobs in Wosniak were working to get
there at Atari to develop a game machine. Now I
don't think Wosniak was that, if my memory serves, It's
been a few days since I've read that, Uh if
Memory Serves Wasnac wasn't actually working for Atari. Um Jobs
(24:13):
actually kind of convinced him to work on this project,
but they they were supposed to. They were trying to
create this machine and the challenge was it's like, hey,
you know, if you can do this with uh fewer
chips in this time period, we'll go ahead and go
with this idea. So Jobs knew that Wosniak had the
the expertise to make it work, and he did that.
(24:34):
The point of doing this was to save money because
these chips were not cheap UM, so the fewer components
that you could use on the circuit board, the more
money you could save. And doing that and make the
project more cost efficient in the end, and uh, thanks
to was they actually made it work. Of course. Uh,
(24:55):
they're known for Breakout The two of them both worked
on Breakout UM, which is a classic Autari game. UM.
But yeah, I mean that that paid off both on
that project and their work they did for Apple because
they would continually revise the design to make it, to
make it more cost efficient and make it more effective.
Because what was is one of those people that believes
(25:16):
that UM technology should be accessible to people. Um. I
was gonna say, well, you might say, well, hey, Apple
is known for having high priced computers. What are you
talking to? High price computers and closed systems. Yes, two
things that you would imagine would be antithetical to that philosophy.
(25:37):
Well that's true, and uh, but I would argue that, Um,
we need to take a look at the exit of
Wozniak from Apple because, um, a lot of that did
not surround the Apple to the Apple two was a
very affordable machine, which is why it ended up in
a lot of people's homes, in a lot of schools. Yeah,
So in order to get there, we need to we
need to to get back to like about nineteen eighties
(26:00):
when Apple went public, and that was of course a
big event. Chris and I will have more to say
about the laws in just a moment, but first let's
take a quick break. One was a huge year for
Wazniak in both triumph and tragedy. Uhe he returned to
(26:25):
UC Berkeley to finish out his degree in electrical engineering
and computer science under an assumed name. I would also
guess that he probably cruised through a lot of that. Probably, Yeah,
the fact that the fact that there may have been
courses that were referring to his own work might have
might have done that. But also that year, he um,
(26:48):
he was the act a man who has a lot
of different interests in one of those was piloting airplanes,
and he owned his own private airplane. At this point,
because Apple very quickly was a huge success. You know,
I launched in nineteen seventy six, and by one he
had enough to have his own private plane. And he
was piloting his private plane and crashed while trying to
(27:09):
take off at the Santa Cruz SkyPark And it was
pretty serious crash and he was very badly hurt in that.
In that accident, I suffered from amnesia for quite some time. Yeah, yeah,
I had a lot of different injuries, memory loss. It
took about two years of rehabilitation for him to get
back to how he was before the accident. But around
(27:33):
that time, the Apple two was really starting to become
a true success story, like a huge success story in
personal computing. And uh and by three, so this is
just a couple of years after Apple has gone public.
Three years after Apple's gone public, it was valued the
company was valued at nine hundred and eighty five million
(27:54):
dollars if you looked at its stock, if you were
to value the company by how much stock was out
there and the price that stock was trading at, so
just under a billion dollars. And again the company is
not even ten years old yet. So you know, Wazniak's
work was really starting to pay off for the company
and for Wozniak at the time. Yep. He also uh
(28:16):
in addition to this, while he was going through his
recovery period, got involved in another one of his passions,
which is music. Hosted the now infamous US festivals in California,
UM which were both were which were known for being huge,
I mean very very large events. Think of um things
(28:38):
like um Um, you know Lollapalooza now or Lilith Fair.
I mean kinds of events like that where they're I know,
I am, but but I don't go to large outdoor
events like that or the festive Well. Yeah, but they
did have a diverse line of different kinds of Yes,
actually they were. They were sort of incompetent Asian into
(29:01):
some degree because Coachella had then had been out for
many years, more than a decade out in California. UM,
but they it was sort of a blend of technology
and music, which makes me think more of south By
Southwest now than than that. But at that time that's
not the kind of events that we're going on. There
were more I think inspired from the many years earlier
(29:25):
Woodstock and events like that, where it was just the
large outdoor music festivals, but they were also known for extravagance. Um.
You know, there were some artists like uh van Halen
and David Bowie who were taking home more than a
million dollars in early eighty two and eighty three, the
early eighties, I mean, um and, which were tremendous sums
(29:46):
of money at that point. Um and and it's I
think regarded by a lot of people now the US
festivals sort of a a sort of a punch line
to a joke, although I'm not sure what the setup
would be uh um, but I don't know that it
was completely unsuccessful. I just think that, uh, it was
sort of a tribute to was his generosity and the
(30:08):
fact that he paid people really uh, you know, generous
sums of money. But I think he was just having
a good time with a lot of people. Yeah. He
also took this time to start getting into philanthropy. He
began to really invest, specifically in the education system near
his own home. He began to uh to help UH
(30:30):
schools get computers and training on how to use the computers.
He was very enthusiastic at fostering education, which is no
surprise considering, you know, his father had helped him, and
he does credit his you know, several teachers went in
his elementary school days as really being the inspiration for
him to pursue his interests. So it's not a big
(30:51):
surprise that he wanted to to kind of pay it
forward and and do that on himself. So he began
to do that and Uh. In fact, his his contributions
to technology and philanthropy led up to him receiving the award,
the the National Medal of Technology in He was awarded
that by the United States President, who at the time
(31:13):
was Ronald Reagan and received that and it's the highest
honor bestowed on America's inventors and innovators. Yes, the award
has come up several times over the course of tech stuff. UM.
You know, probably was it one of the people we
would actually have heard of. Um they were losing. Jobs
were sort of rock stars in the early eighties because
(31:34):
of the the the prominence of the Apple two. UM.
And you know, there were there were cover stories on magazines,
business magazines, UH and UH and news magazines about these guys.
They were they were sort of well known. Of course,
Jobs is a little bit more outspoken. He's known as
the UM you know, more of the the marketing face
(31:56):
of the company, especially UM recently, but even back then
in the in the early days of the company. UM
as technology went on at Apple, though, as things started
to change and they started focusing on, uh, diversifying the
lines UM was, you know, was sort of not as
(32:17):
integral to the the creation of machines like the Apple three,
the Lisa, and the Macintosh like he had been with
the Apple too. And I think that was partially due
of course, to the to the accident and the need
for his recovery. Just he just wasn't as um as
UM available during that time as he would have done otherwise. Yeah,
(32:38):
and then UM and by Ve big changes were happening
at Apple. Uh. The biggest was that Steve Jobs left
the company and that depending on how you define it,
he was either fired because he was having some really
nasty conflicts with the with Apple's board of directors, or
(33:01):
he was just marginalized to the point where he just
stopped showing up to work. UM. But really, I mean
essentially they kept giving him a d a smaller role
over time and distancing him Steve Jobs, that is, away
from the main operations of Apple, and so Steve Jobs
left in five Niac stuck around with Apple for a
(33:24):
couple more years. He would not leave the company until Yes,
and to some degree he still holds a consulting role
with the company today. His and he left the company,
but Apple still I guess it's safe to say they
never completely severed their relationship, although he doesn't go into
(33:46):
work there like he used to. Um. And he's and
you wouldn't necessarily call him an Apple evangelist either. I
mean he says in frequent interviews he will say or
frequently interviews I should say, he will say he loves Apple.
But at the same time, he is not shy to
criticize Apple for things that he views as as uh
(34:09):
as a as as failures or as mistakes. He is
very He's known for being very honest and very upfront
and just uh, you know, giving his opinion. He's a
straight shooter when it comes to that, and not in
necessarily a mean way, but very matter of fact. Um yeah,
(34:30):
actually uh. When he started to work on some other
projects that one of the first was cl nine. This
is a company that was known for creating the first
programmable universal remote YEP. And so this again shows that
wozniak interest in electronics was still very, very high. He
just I think wosnia X one of those guys who
(34:50):
really likes to find a new challenge, and you know,
once he's done that, once he's managed to to accomplish
whatever that challenges, then he ready to move on to
the next one. In fact, again from listening to him talk,
I would say that that's just one of those things
he really values, is the idea of innovation, research and development,
(35:11):
building new stuff and not just making constant improvements over
older technology. In fact, that might have been one of
the reasons why he left Apple, was that he was
starting to see Apple turned into this company that was
more interested in releasing incremental updates to its technology rather
(35:33):
than truly innovating and building something that's really cool. And
in fact, that's a that's a criticism that he has
leveled recently at Apple over the last few years, saying
that Apple seems to be content to release new versions
of truly innovative and amazing products. You know, he loves
things like the iPad and the iPhone and all that.
(35:54):
He thinks those are great, But why he doesn't think
is great is that Apple seems to be content to
just give updates to those products rather than try and
create something wholly new. Now that may not be completely fair.
There may be some things developing an Apple about which
we know nothing that could blow our minds any day now,
(36:16):
like the Apple TV that we keep on hoping will
come out. But you know that that the perception that
Wozniak has is that, uh, Apple's not currently really in
that innovative space. In fact, recently he said that Microsoft
was showing more of that sort of innovative approach. Doesn't
necessarily mean it's going to be a success for Microsoft,
but he was saying that you know, Windows eight, Windows Phone, Ate,
(36:38):
the surface tablet, all of that was kind of pointing
there was such a radical departure from the stuff that
Microsoft had been doing that it was a much more
innovative approach than what Apple was currently doing. Right well, um,
you know he uh he ended up butting heads with
c L nine with Apple. Um. He was trying to
contract the design firm Frog Design, uh to get the
(37:02):
product designed for him, and Apple had brought Frog Design
to California with the idea that they were going to
be their designers, their product designers, and Apple said no,
you cannot do that. That was part of their their
U their UM contract with them. UM. But yeah, he
very much, uh you know, had an idea because he
(37:24):
knew that these guys were innovators in the way things
looked and felt. UM. So it doesn't surprise me much
that that was likes um the kinds of products that
Apple comes out with. But uh, you know, they had
a similar design sense. But Apple did not appreciate that
at the time. UM. Oh and uh, we didn't mention,
(37:45):
but well, it's probably looking at the timeline here, UM
probably should mention some of the other things that he
got into over the years. Of course, he's been a
speaker UM for many, many years now, including dating back
to that that time he was sort of a coveted
(38:05):
personality for m keynotes and different kinds of addresses. Uh
and uh. He started several companies. See all nine was
just one of them. Wheels of Zeus was one of
my favorites. Yes, the acronym Wheels of Zeus is laws
in in two thousand one, and that was back uh
in the early days of trying to come up with
(38:27):
uses for GPS. Yeah. The idea being that if you
can have a wireless GPS UH network, then you would
be able to locate stuff. Really, that was one of
his ideas. He said he wanted to help people be
able to locate things. Yes, all right, that was you
know so, yeah, and was or as in Wheels of Zeus,
(38:48):
not Wazniac, but Wheels of Zeus lasted for about five
years that it closed up in two thousand six. Ye
also and uh he in uh going back a bit. No, No,
it's fine. I just wanted to mention, you know, being
a co founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. I mean
this is huge. The Electronic Frontier Foundation or e f F,
(39:12):
is an organization that advocates for openness and freedom on
the internet in the computer world. They are also known
for doing things like helping provide legal assistance to hackers
that are being pursued by by government officials or or
you know, by law enforcement. They're known for helping out
(39:32):
folks who might otherwise be seen as troublemakers. Um, but
it's really all about promoting the freedom of information and
the trying to keep as as much of the uh
the manipulation or or or um, the just just trying
(39:53):
to keep the government out of controlling technology in all
its forms. Mainly it tends over the last several year,
it tends to mostly be about the Internet, but it's
it goes beyond that. Yeah. Yeah, and then they are
very interested in uh, you know, privacy issues issues. Uh,
not to uh, not to protect what you might call
(40:14):
black hat hackers, um, but more to give people the
opportunity to uh control their technology lives a little bit
more openly and and do more with it rather than
having that spoken for for them. Yeah. Wozniak has has
really come across as someone who who wants the individual
(40:37):
to have as much control and say in that sort
of thing, and less of that should go to things
like corporations and governments. So uh, you know this, it's
obvious why he would want to co found that organization
like BFF. And in two thousand he was inducted into
the Inventor's Hall of Fame and also receive the Hinz
(40:57):
Award for Technology, the Economy and employe. Yes, I wanted
to mention the Hines Award, So I'm glad you did that.
And it's not the Hines Stefenschmertz Award. Curse you bury
the Platypaus We've got a little bit further to go
with Chris Polette's final episode as a co host of
Tech Stuff. But before we get to that sad moment,
(41:18):
let's take another quick break. This is a period, um
the early two thousand's where we kind of didn't hear
a lot from him. I mean, he's not the kind
of person that that, um, you read about in the
society pages so much. Although until the late two thousands, well,
(41:43):
you know, making appearances on shows like Kathy Griffin in
My Life on the d List. Yeah, he was dating
her at the time. Yes, yes, Um. He's also been
on The Big Bang Theory and of course Dancing with
the Stars cutting a rug on a segue, yes, yes
he uh he showed. I watched some of that, and
(42:04):
I have to admit he showed a tremendous sense of
humor about being on that show. Um. And uh he's
as a dancer, he is a really incredible programmer. Nice.
Um an excellent compliment and uh, I am neither. So
I really can't talk, but I will. I will say
that that, but I think he would probably agree. Um
(42:27):
yeah he um, uh, yeah, he seemed to really kind
of have fun with his own you know, public persona,
although he's not you know, he's not like a celebrity
in the sense of jumping out and trying to attract attention.
That doesn't seem to really be his his style. He's
even been known, like on on launch days for Apple
(42:47):
products to go and wait in line at an Apple store.
There was one story where, uh he I remember it
was one of the early iPhones, I want to say,
where he was walking to the Apple store to go
get in line, and then he got ushered into the
front of the line, and he actually felt badly about
it because he was like, you know, he didn't feel
(43:10):
that he should necessarily be treated any differently than any
other customer. Um. And but a lot of people who
were in line are like, dude, that's woznia. He could
totally go in It's okay, Yeah I would. I would
imagine that that he has enough of a following where
you know, there there would be a certain amount of
tolerance among the other shoppers that day. Um. He's also known,
(43:32):
of course, over over time to be a rather uh
playful prankster of sorts. He's famed, of course for many
different stunts with two dollar bills. Um. I have actually
tried to pass two dollar bills, which are completely legal,
and they have people confused by them because you don't
(43:54):
see them all the time, which of course lends itself
to was a sort of sense of humor. Now you
can buy, as he will point out, complete sheets of
one dollar, two dollar, and five dollar bills from the
Bureau of Engraving and Printing. You can get a sheet
of an uncut sheet of bills. They're completely legal, they
just haven't been cut apart. In fact, they're perforated. So
(44:15):
he has been known to buy sheets of these, you know,
separate them and have them laminated into a pad, and
go in and buy stuff and peel off a series
of two dollar bills, which are of course are numbered sequentially.
It's very weird. Two dollar bills are weird to begin with,
and then you add that it looks like this guy
(44:35):
just peeled off money and handed it to me, am
I supposed to take it. Apparently he's been to Vegas
and tried to stunt and had security people come and
uh talked to him about exactly what's going I've encountered
Vegas security. I know exactly what you're talking about. And
of course if it were me, I would be sweating
(45:00):
like about it. He keeps doing. Really, I didn't know
that that the government doesn't, you know, make these perforated
bills available. Really, I bought these from some guy. What
what's great is that I wouldn't have had the nerve.
I should also point out that while two dollar bills
are unusual here in the United States, in other places
(45:20):
there are two dollar coins. So for our friends in Canadia, yes,
and our friends in Canadia, your twnis are very adorable,
like I actually do like tunis. I like Looney's and tunis. Yes,
I agree. If you would like to send me Looney's
and twnis, do so at the house Stuff Works address,
Carroll Jonathan Strickland. Kids, go check your parents. No, never mind,
(45:45):
um but uh but but yeah, what you were talking
about about innovation and openness and technology. He has recently,
as of the time we're recording this, in late Ben
photographed in front of the large uh different versions of
Google androids. We have Android people, and people go, it's
(46:05):
the Apple co founder in front of the Android androids. Well, yeah,
because he tries pretty much everything. Yeah, he's just a
computer omnivore. He actually says that he will, you know,
he loves he loves technology, and he loves Gadgy doesn't
doesn't necessarily love what corporations are doing or what governments
are doing, but he loves the technology. And he specifically,
(46:27):
I had an hour and a half of sleep last night, folks,
I would and watch the Hobbit anyway. So he specifically
really likes uh platforms that are are that allow you
to do lots of stuff right, So the Android platform
gives a lot of flexibility to users. It's something that
can be overwhelming to someone who's not necessarily an enthusiast,
(46:49):
but for someone who really likes hacking and getting their
their hands dirty with technology, the Android platform is very
attractive because it's you can make a lot of changes yourself,
you know, and and Google facilitates that. Depending on which
handset manufacturer and which carrier you're with, it may or
may not be very easy to do. But he also
(47:13):
says he likes to try everything because he doesn't want
to form a a prejudice against any particular platform without
giving it a real fair shot. And so he goes
out when a new phone comes out, he'll go out
and buy it. So often like, I've seen pictures of
what Wozniak was carrying on a given day, and it's
(47:34):
usually something like five or six smartphones and then maybe
a tablet and then maybe two computers. It's like, you figure,
it's got to be around fifty pounds of technology at least. Yeah.
It It kind of reminds me of the nineties version
of Dilbert where he used to have the gadget utility belt. Um,
you actually knew some people like that? Um yeah, yeah,
(47:58):
I used to try and do that them. My pants
kept falling down, dude, looking like a fool with the
pants on the ground. I was, in fact. Yeah. So
currently he's working at a food Fusion Io or Fusion
EO Fusion HEO was Fusion dash Io as a chief
scientist and that's the company is a data storage and
(48:21):
server company. So he's he's currently that's you know, his
technical job title at the moment. But he does do
a lot of speaking events and you know, you'll still
see him at things like a TED conferences and other
big events where you know, they need to have someone
there who who really knows the ins and outs of technology,
(48:41):
who is truly an advocate for technology, for the consumer
and who just you know, he's just very passionate and
loves to share that with other people. That's it's a
great couple of qualities to have, Like, there are a
lot of people who are really passionate about what they do,
but they don't necessarily communicate that or share that with people.
(49:04):
But wasn't he acts he's like, you know, you would
have to tie him down for him not to to
to be a brilliant over his love of tech. Yeah,
it's uh, from from just about all accounts I've read
about about Steve Wozniak, He's he's not the kind of
person who who hides his emotions very well. He's, uh,
(49:26):
he's excited about a lot of stuff, and when he is,
he you know, he shares that with you. Um, I
should say that he doesn't hide his his excitement for
technology very well because he's, uh, he's really gregarious when
it comes to that. He may not be necessarily outspoken
about his personal life as much or or want to
(49:46):
jump into the spotlight. But if you ran into him
and he had fifteen minutes to talk about some kind
of technology with you, I don't think it would be
much of a stretch. Based on Again, I've never met him,
but uh, if he wanted to stry a cup of
conversation with him about virtually any kind of technology, I
don't think he would turn you down, or if he did,
he would do it politely. Well, it seems like just
(50:09):
a just a great guy. He does he does. I
would be very interested to talk with him, except I
would be intimidated that he had discovered that I'm a
complete idiot within like two minutes of chatting with me. Well,
I mean, it doesn't take the rest of us that long.
You know. Maybe I'm hoping that he would just have
a lot of optimism. And that wraps up this classic
episode of text Stuff once again. I want to thank
(50:32):
Chris Polette for the amazing work he did. I mean,
you know, we're six years past, almost seven years past
when this happened, and uh, he's still very much a
part of tech Stuff's culture. The puns, I would argue,
are Chris Polette's contribution to this show. I love puns,
but I wasn't really known for making them in the
(50:52):
show quite like Chris was. I hope you guys enjoyed it.
If you have any suggestions for future episodes, of tech Stuff.
Please reach out and let me know The email addresses
tech stuff at how stuff works dot com, where you
can drop a line on Facebook or Twitter. The handle
of both of those is tech Stuff hs W. Go
to our website that's tech stuff podcast dot com. You
(51:13):
will find a link to the archive of every episode
we've ever published. You will also find a link to
our online store, where every purchase you make goes to
out the show and we greatly appreciate it, and I'll
talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is a
production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more
(51:34):
podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios.
How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
I Heart Radio and I love all things tech. And
it is Friday. That means it is time for another
classic episode. And this episode published on January second, two
(00:28):
thousand thirteen. It is also Chris Palette's final episode as
a co host of tech Stuff. Chris and I created
tech Stuff back in two thousand and eight, and in
two thousand thirteen he decided to step away from the
show to focus on other things, and he definitely put
(00:51):
his imprint on tech Stuff. Tech Stuff would not be
the show it is without Chris Palette. This was the
topic he decided he wanted to cover as his final episode.
The wonderful wizard named was Steve Wasniak. I hope you
guys enjoy the curtain sweeps down, the spotlight goes out
(01:12):
on our beloved Chris Palette. It is his final tech
Stuff episode. This is not a joke. We may eventually
be able to get him back on as a guest,
but he's this is his his final episode as a
host of tech Stuff. And uh, and he got to
choose whatever topic he wanted. Unfortunately, almost all of them
were ones we had already covered. Well. Actually, it surprised
(01:35):
me that we didn't have a podcast on the person
that we wanted to talk about today. Yeah. We we've
mentioned him in several podcasts. Yeah, but yeah, we definitely
one of text more colorful characters, right, and that, of
course is the wonderful wizard named was was, yes, Steve
Stephen Gary Wazniak. Yeah, um, one of the co founders
(01:59):
of Apple. And he was born in on August eleventh,
nine and uh. He came from a family that was
technologically inclined. His dad was an engineer at a little
company called lockeed Martin. I feel like I've heard of that.
Yeah and uh and yeah he um. As a as
a kid, he became very interested in engineering and electronics.
(02:24):
Did you did you hear about what his favorite book
series was that kind of inspired him? Actually it was
the I looked at a lot of interviews. He's actually
if you've never seen an interview with Wozniak, he's a
very animated individual, well spoken, very passionate about what he does.
It's clearly he truly enjoys technology like there's no irony there.
(02:46):
He just loves it. And though he doesn't necessarily love
all the things that we do with technology or the
way that companies handle technology, he's not He actually is
not so not in such a big fan of big companies.
But we'll get an to that. But no, as a kid,
his favorite book series was the Tom Swift series. So
(03:07):
Tom Swift, if you don't know, he's a young man
who is a kind of an engineer who could build
just about anything in his own company. He would fight
evil and and solve mysteries and things of that nature.
And in fact, just as a tangent, Tom Swift plays
a role in a in a totally different technology has
nothing to do with Wozniak. Do you do you happen
to know what Tom Swift? It's actually his. Tom Swift's
(03:31):
name is lent in a way to this technology. Really. Yeah,
it's Taser. Oh right, Taser stands Taser's technically an acronym.
It stands for Thomas A. Swift's electric rifle. You know,
I think we mentioned that a long time ago when
we talked about the Taser. Yeah, I think so. But yeah,
he in an interview. He credited the Tom Swift books
(03:54):
as igniting his imagination at the idea of creating things
electronics and being able to have kind of, you know,
the equivalent of these adventures, and having a dad who
was an engineer at Lockeed Martin didn't hurt because it
turned out he had a really good person to go
(04:14):
to when those science fairs came up in elementary school.
Well yeah, yeah, and uh it certainly wouldn't have hurt
his interest in technology to have a family that understood
and supported those interests too. They go, oh, you know, hey,
this is something I like too, so you know, yeah,
(04:35):
we should uh stop clowning around, he said foolishly. I
was a a Tom Swift e nice, he's a he's
a Yeah, he had a He credited his dad and
some of his teachers in elementary school as really inspiring him. Essentially,
he said that, uh, you know, when he started to
excel at science, Uh, the teachers responded, and that just
(04:57):
drove him to make even more accomplishments in that area.
So by the time he was in sixth grade, he
actually built a fairly primitive but a working computer that
could play Tic tac toe and you know, we all
know from the documentary War Games that it's just a
short hop, skip and a jump from Tic tac toe
(05:17):
to thermonuclear war. Of course, you know, shall we play
a game? Thanks Whopper? Hey nice you remembered the name
and everything. Yeah, I've I've watched that documentary several times.
So the old cup modems where you actually had to
put the phone and I'm sure actually it's probably remembers
(05:39):
those days. Oh yeah, we'll get into that a little
bit too. Well. I was has also got a bit
of a mischievous streak in him. Um a bit, yeah,
a bit of a mischievous streak. That was a bit
of an understatement. Yeah, well to it well. In sixth
grade he also got his ham radio license, So obviously
he was very much interested in electronics and technology and
(05:59):
can indication all of these things would play a very
large role in his choices further down the line. And
according to laws, he said, he never took any courses
on building electronics or computers. He just learned how to
do that all on his own, at least at least
in the elementary in high school years. Once you get
to college, he actually was pursuing originally Uh. When he
(06:23):
when he first enrolled, he was pursuing a degree in
electrical engineering and computer science at the University of California
at Berkeley. Yeah, and that's that's sort of a lesson
for all of us. You know. Um, sometimes programming and
fiddling with electronics and those kinds of things can seem
really daunting, and it feels like, you know, you start
dabbling in and it feels like you need a degree
(06:44):
in computer science or electrical engineering to do these things.
You don't. You just have to have an interest and
get the right right place to start. And it also
helps to uh surround yourself within other fellow enthusiasts. Yeah,
and it didn't hurt that was is categorically a genius
in certain arenas, so that gave him a leg up
(07:06):
as well. But tales details. Yeah, Well, while in while
in the both in high school and in college, he
began to associate with other people who are really interested
in electronics and technology. Uh and uh he was part
of a homebrew computer club. Yes, that would be v
homebrew computer club. Yeah. Back back in the mid seventies,
(07:27):
um was was at the University of California at Berkeley.
Um and uh, he was he was interested in attending this, uh,
this nearby computer club, the Homebrew Computer Club, and uh
there were actually quite a few people of note who
are part of this UM. But they were interested in
before you get into the details of that kind of thing,
(07:49):
this group was really kind of interested in what you
could do with computers because, uh, in the mid nineties seventies,
we weren't talking about uh, machines like the Apple too,
where you had a monitor toing on top of a
computer with a keyboard and you would program stuff. I mean,
we were uh, they were interested in in the large
part and things like the Altaire, which had no monitor.
You you would read, um, the the output of this
(08:12):
device by the blinking lights or you know, in German
dust princing light, as many a many many jokes have gone.
But really, I mean, it wasn't It wasn't something that
the average person would probably be likely in picking up,
simply because there was kind of a barrier of entry.
It was hard to understand for people who were sort
of passingly interested in it. And we talked about the
(08:34):
IBM s and the machines that corporate customers would use
where you had punch cards and and you know, printing
and large storage devices and things like that. Well, yeah,
I mean those were far more easy in some ways
to understand because there were more ways to interact with
those machines, but they were also hugely expensive and took
(08:56):
up a lot more space than something like the Altair.
This is the kind of divice ice that got people thinking,
you know, I could have a computer in my house.
I could do things with a computer. I could program
this thing this, this could be fun. What could I
do with this? And that's really what this group was
all about. And there were other people, uh interested in
this as well, like a guy named Jobs, and I
(09:17):
believe a couple of guys named Alan and Gates to
show up in the logs, and there were there were
other people who interacted with all of those guys that
that floated in and out of that culture out there
in California around that time. Yeah, this is this is
the birth of the personal computer age. And we're talking
(09:37):
about the the very early days and uh and you know,
of course Bosniak plays a very large role in that,
but also uh he had other interests in in finding
out how stuff works, which you know we can appreciate, um,
like the phone system. He was, he was known to
engage in a little phone freaking now and then. We
(10:00):
actually have talked about phone freaking in the past. Essentially,
what phone freaking was was finding out how the telephone
system worked and then exploiting that knowledge by being able
to UH to create things that would allow you to
make free phone calls. Um. Usually it would involve recreating
a certain kind of tone that the phone would then
(10:23):
um not recognize the fact that you were dialing. It
wouldn't register that, so it act as if the line
had not been engaged, whereas you could actually make the
call for free. So UM, there are a lot of
different kits that you could do this with. There, of course,
was the famous UH whistle, Yes, UH, the the Captain
(10:45):
crunch whistle, or you could whistle into a phone and
with this particular toy whistle that came in the Cereal
and UH it would recreate the exact pitch you needed
in order to UH to hack the phone system. That
changed before too long and they had to start creating
electronic devices that could generate Normally it would be two
(11:06):
tones together to be able to UH to actually hack
into a phone system. Yeah. Well, um, if if you
haven't done any research into into phone freaking or listen
to the podcast from Man that was a long time. UM.
Basically that the deal was that they had the system
in place so that the phone company could do maintenance
(11:29):
work and the phone technicians out in the field could
use these certain codes. UM. In the case of one
of them, it was a high E played three times
and that would unlock the system. It was a very
analog system at that point. And uh, you know they
the phone company actually published information on this in their
Bell Technical Journal, which was available at your local library,
(11:52):
and certain people figured this out and any whistle. This
is famous because a famous phone freaker named Captain Crunch
named that because he realized that the toy whistle that
you found in a box of cereal, I'll let you
guess which brand, Um, yes, exactly. How How did you know? Um?
You could you could play exactly that note. That's all
(12:14):
you needed. You all you had. All you had to
do was know that the code and have that whistle. UM.
And of course Bell went nuts trying to get the
technical that copy of the technical Journal back off the shelf.
That this was a mistake to let that information get
outside the door of Bell. Yeah, that was not not
a great move. We published this, you're not supposed to
(12:37):
want to read about it. Yeah, but people who were
interested in electronics, I mean, clearly something as complex as
the telephone uh system would be fascinating to them, and
that included people like wasn't it Yes? Absolutely? And uh
it's it's famous that he and Steve Jobs were actually
building phone freaking systems for other people, um and and
(13:00):
trying to sell them, which they did on a small scale,
and that which kind of set the ground for for
their future endeavors together. They He actually did withdraw from
the University of California before completing his degree and began
to work for Hewlett Packard and was an an engineer there.
(13:21):
He actually worked specifically on designing calculators. Meanwhile, Jobs kind
of came up with this idea. Now, but when you
talk about Jobs in Wosniac, they had very different roles
when in those early days of Apple, right, Steve Jobs
was an idea guy, he was a business guy, and
(13:42):
he was a marketing guy most more than anything else.
He was a marketing genius. Yeah. I've been reading Isaacson's
biography of Steve Jobs, and I'm still not quite done
with it yet, but I have passed through the early
stages of Apple. There and apparently when they were working
on the Apple one, which was a very basic computer. UM.
(14:03):
As a matter of fact, you had the the very
early machines weren't really machines. They were a set of boards,
basically motherboards and pieces that you would assemble into a
case and use it as a computer UM, which sold
for as Jonathan likes to point out, the sum of
six sixty six dollars and sixty six cents. Wozniak likes
(14:25):
repeating digits. Yeah. Apparently, well, according to them, it had
nothing to do with the symbolic nature of this in uh,
in religion, it was more THEO there was no but
it's hard to imagine that it it's an Apple computer. Yes.
(14:46):
Of course they also say that Apple was chosen for
other reasons than the Yeah. That's funny because because Wozniak
said that he had just guessed at some point that
the reason why Steve Jobs wanted to call the company
Apple was that Steve Jobs had worked for a while
in an orchard in either Washington or Oregon, and that
that perhaps gave him the idea which may or may
(15:07):
not be the case, because he said the thing about
Jobs was that he would come up with ideas but
not necessarily explain to you how he came up with him. Yeah, yeah,
that's true. We also should point out that there was
this time in jobs life where he was expanding his
consciousness a little bit. Yes, yes, Um, Jobs attended read
college up in Oregon and did not finish there, but
(15:31):
was was very interested in a number of things, including, uh,
expanding one's horizons to the use of chemical substances. Yes,
that's very very diplomatic way of putting it. That's not
I don't get the sense that that was is interested
in that. I think he likes to expand his consciousness
through technological means, which again shows that difference. Jobs was
this marketer and Wozniak was the engineer. He was the
(15:53):
guy who was really designing the technology. Yeah, well that
was That was actually exactly My point is according to
the isaacs and story, Um was wanted to give away
the design for the original boards for the Apple One,
and Jobs said no, no, no, we could sell this thing.
We can make a company, And that intrigue was just
(16:14):
enough to go, Okay, yeah, let's give it a try. Yeah,
because before at at the Homebrew Computer Club, Wasniak would
distribute designs that he would come up with for for
computer kids. He would design them on paper and then
he would just distribute copies of it to the other members.
And jobs was getting to the point where he's like,
(16:35):
you know, if we didn't give these away for free,
I bet people would pay for them. And so yeah,
he he convinced Wozniak to go in with him on
a venture together, and this was the idea of Apple. Yeah,
and it wasn't It wasn't easy, Um, you know, Wasosniac
(16:55):
was a little reticent to leave HP. I mean, you
think about it if you were if your buddy is
telling you, hey, let's go start a company. Meanwhile you're
in with a very strong technology company and you're you know,
you've got a good job, it's secure, and it's like, well,
they're on on the one hand, you got the allure
of of you know, this opportunity to do something really cool,
(17:16):
but hey, you know, there's not a lot of security,
and it's starting your own company can be a challenge,
and it can be a lot of work, and it
can be scary. Yeah, And a first guarantee, right at first.
He did continue to work with HP, didn't quit immediately.
And in fact, one of the stories about founding Apple
is that they had to in order to raise the
capital they needed, which was not that much by today's standards.
(17:38):
I mean, even if you were to convert into today's dollars,
they it was a fairly low investment. In fact, that
was one of the things that Steve Jobs was able
to to use to convince Bosnia to try. It was
because the investment was not going to be prohibitively large,
but it's still required that they raised some capital, and
they did it by selling off stuff that they owned,
and Wozniak sold off his beloved scientific calculator, Yes, which
(18:03):
at the time was a pretty hot piece of technology. Yeah,
for around something something to the tune of around five
dollars at the time, which you know in the seventies.
That's that's it's still a good chunk of change, right,
It's it was even more so back then. And uh,
the interesting thing to me was that when I read
an interview, a more recent interview, wasn't he act really
(18:25):
downplayed that? He said, he said, uh, well, here's the
thing I'm still technically working for HP, and because I
worked for HP, I could buy the next new calculator
before it came out and at a lower price than
I did the older calculator. So uh so I thought,
even at this company that I'm working on with jobs
goes belly up, I still, um, I still have the
(18:47):
protection of working for this other company, and I can
get my calculator back. Yeah, that's um, which is an
important part of context that I think a lot of
people miss. Um. But yeah, the the Apple one did
reasonably well within those circles, and they started working on
the Apple too. Um. Jobs play, I mean, jobs played
(19:08):
a good part in the getting it into stores, But
Wazniak had a lot to do with the back end
of that machine, especially the the Basic language implement implementation.
There you go. He was unfamiliar with Basic at first,
and uh, just kind of funny. It's funny, it's hard,
but not with Basic. It's also funny that he got
(19:29):
really uh he started to really say the basic version
that HP uses, which is not the same as the
Basic language that that Bill Gates was working on. So um,
it was he was coming at it from a different
approach because he was you know, I think at the
time he was actually working under the assumption that was
(19:50):
essentially the same thing, but turned out it was two
different versions of basic to two pretty significant different versions. Also,
I should point out, so so they founded Apple in
nineteen seventy six, and it wasn't it was just nineteen
seventy seven when Apple two came out, so that that
first Apple, we should really point out, it was more
(20:11):
like a almost like a run of prototypes. It would
they only made a small, a relatively small number of
these because, for one thing, they didn't know how big
the demand was going to be. They knew that their
fellow computer enthusiasts would enjoy this kind of thing because
they also shared the vision that computers would one day
be an integral part of our lives. But at the time,
(20:34):
the average person, like the average consumer, didn't necessarily have
any desire or need for a computer, or at least
they didn't think they did. And uh, and so it
was it was definitely not a sure thing when they
were first getting started. But nineteen seventy seven, Apple two
comes out, and I think, uh, I think you could
(20:56):
describe its success as being meteoric. Oh yeah, yeah, Well, Um.
That's one of the reasons that Wozniak says that he
worked so hard on the basic HUM structure for the
two microprocessor was was simply that he realized that basic
was going to be a big help to people who
(21:17):
were going to adopt these and he wanted people to
understand that computers could play a significant role in their
personal lives. And so he said, you know this is
you know, I basically hunkered down to do this because
I knew this was going to be important. And that's
that's something that you see when you look at that
Steve Wozniak's career is that he obviously he's willing to
(21:42):
put his his back into it and really work on
something that he is very passionate about like this, Um
the very other you know, there are other things too.
He talks about having to write the disc operating software
for the the earlier machines, and he didn't this was
not something that he was familiar with. Yeah, he had
(22:03):
never really used magnetic storage like that, but he made
it work because he knew it was important. Um. Not
that not downe to discount other people all over the
world who do this every day. But I'm saying you know,
as we're looking at Steve Wozniak, this is uh technology
is is clearly part of his DNA, and it's it
he he needs to to make it work. One of
(22:25):
the things that I read about him too in the
Isaacs and um biography of Jobs was that uh um,
apparently he was just really good at finding innovative solutions
to the challenges that that came up while they were
creating the actual machines. His engineering expertise, it's more than
just It's sort of like a virtuoso and a musical instrument.
(22:48):
You have people who can play the instrument, but there
are very few people that can that can pick it
up and do something really brilliant with it that you
wouldn't expect to do because they don't teach that. It's
just the thing that you sort of innately have. Yeah,
and apparently he is. He just got that um ability
to to look at a technology and know how it
(23:10):
works and go, well, you know what, I know, this
isn't work in this way just for kicks, Let's plug
this in this way and see if that works. Yeah.
He he had a real interesting attitude too. He said that,
you know, in general, in a broad stroke. He said,
if he could build a machine that had two hundred
chips in it, he would then look at that design
and say, how can I build a machine that does
the exact same thing this thing does, but with a
(23:32):
hundred fifty chips? And he would do it. And then
after that he'd say, okay, well, how can I build
a machine that does all the things this machine does,
but only with a hundred chips and just continuously refine
that design so that it was more and more elegant
and more efficient in each iteration. That was sort of
his thought process, which is, you know, that's a good thing. Well,
(23:53):
it's funny you should mention that because there there is
another story that jobs in Wosniak were working to get
there at Atari to develop a game machine. Now I
don't think Wosniak was that, if my memory serves, It's
been a few days since I've read that, Uh if
Memory Serves Wasnac wasn't actually working for Atari. Um Jobs
(24:13):
actually kind of convinced him to work on this project,
but they they were supposed to. They were trying to
create this machine and the challenge was it's like, hey,
you know, if you can do this with uh fewer
chips in this time period, we'll go ahead and go
with this idea. So Jobs knew that Wosniak had the
the expertise to make it work, and he did that.
(24:34):
The point of doing this was to save money because
these chips were not cheap UM, so the fewer components
that you could use on the circuit board, the more
money you could save. And doing that and make the
project more cost efficient in the end, and uh, thanks
to was they actually made it work. Of course. Uh,
(24:55):
they're known for Breakout The two of them both worked
on Breakout UM, which is a classic Autari game. UM.
But yeah, I mean that that paid off both on
that project and their work they did for Apple because
they would continually revise the design to make it, to
make it more cost efficient and make it more effective.
Because what was is one of those people that believes
(25:16):
that UM technology should be accessible to people. Um. I
was gonna say, well, you might say, well, hey, Apple
is known for having high priced computers. What are you
talking to? High price computers and closed systems. Yes, two
things that you would imagine would be antithetical to that philosophy.
(25:37):
Well that's true, and uh, but I would argue that, Um,
we need to take a look at the exit of
Wozniak from Apple because, um, a lot of that did
not surround the Apple to the Apple two was a
very affordable machine, which is why it ended up in
a lot of people's homes, in a lot of schools. Yeah,
So in order to get there, we need to we
need to to get back to like about nineteen eighties
(26:00):
when Apple went public, and that was of course a
big event. Chris and I will have more to say
about the laws in just a moment, but first let's
take a quick break. One was a huge year for
Wazniak in both triumph and tragedy. Uhe he returned to
(26:25):
UC Berkeley to finish out his degree in electrical engineering
and computer science under an assumed name. I would also
guess that he probably cruised through a lot of that. Probably, Yeah,
the fact that the fact that there may have been
courses that were referring to his own work might have
might have done that. But also that year, he um,
(26:48):
he was the act a man who has a lot
of different interests in one of those was piloting airplanes,
and he owned his own private airplane. At this point,
because Apple very quickly was a huge success. You know,
I launched in nineteen seventy six, and by one he
had enough to have his own private plane. And he
was piloting his private plane and crashed while trying to
(27:09):
take off at the Santa Cruz SkyPark And it was
pretty serious crash and he was very badly hurt in that.
In that accident, I suffered from amnesia for quite some time. Yeah, yeah,
I had a lot of different injuries, memory loss. It
took about two years of rehabilitation for him to get
back to how he was before the accident. But around
(27:33):
that time, the Apple two was really starting to become
a true success story, like a huge success story in
personal computing. And uh and by three, so this is
just a couple of years after Apple has gone public.
Three years after Apple's gone public, it was valued the
company was valued at nine hundred and eighty five million
(27:54):
dollars if you looked at its stock, if you were
to value the company by how much stock was out
there and the price that stock was trading at, so
just under a billion dollars. And again the company is
not even ten years old yet. So you know, Wazniak's
work was really starting to pay off for the company
and for Wozniak at the time. Yep. He also uh
(28:16):
in addition to this, while he was going through his
recovery period, got involved in another one of his passions,
which is music. Hosted the now infamous US festivals in California,
UM which were both were which were known for being huge,
I mean very very large events. Think of um things
(28:38):
like um Um, you know Lollapalooza now or Lilith Fair.
I mean kinds of events like that where they're I know,
I am, but but I don't go to large outdoor
events like that or the festive Well. Yeah, but they
did have a diverse line of different kinds of Yes,
actually they were. They were sort of incompetent Asian into
(29:01):
some degree because Coachella had then had been out for
many years, more than a decade out in California. UM,
but they it was sort of a blend of technology
and music, which makes me think more of south By
Southwest now than than that. But at that time that's
not the kind of events that we're going on. There
were more I think inspired from the many years earlier
(29:25):
Woodstock and events like that, where it was just the
large outdoor music festivals, but they were also known for extravagance. Um.
You know, there were some artists like uh van Halen
and David Bowie who were taking home more than a
million dollars in early eighty two and eighty three, the
early eighties, I mean, um and, which were tremendous sums
(29:46):
of money at that point. Um and and it's I
think regarded by a lot of people now the US
festivals sort of a a sort of a punch line
to a joke, although I'm not sure what the setup
would be uh um, but I don't know that it
was completely unsuccessful. I just think that, uh, it was
sort of a tribute to was his generosity and the
(30:08):
fact that he paid people really uh, you know, generous
sums of money. But I think he was just having
a good time with a lot of people. Yeah. He
also took this time to start getting into philanthropy. He
began to really invest, specifically in the education system near
his own home. He began to uh to help UH
(30:30):
schools get computers and training on how to use the computers.
He was very enthusiastic at fostering education, which is no
surprise considering, you know, his father had helped him, and
he does credit his you know, several teachers went in
his elementary school days as really being the inspiration for
him to pursue his interests. So it's not a big
(30:51):
surprise that he wanted to to kind of pay it
forward and and do that on himself. So he began
to do that and Uh. In fact, his his contributions
to technology and philanthropy led up to him receiving the award,
the the National Medal of Technology in He was awarded
that by the United States President, who at the time
(31:13):
was Ronald Reagan and received that and it's the highest
honor bestowed on America's inventors and innovators. Yes, the award
has come up several times over the course of tech stuff. UM.
You know, probably was it one of the people we
would actually have heard of. Um they were losing. Jobs
were sort of rock stars in the early eighties because
(31:34):
of the the the prominence of the Apple two. UM.
And you know, there were there were cover stories on magazines,
business magazines, UH and UH and news magazines about these guys.
They were they were sort of well known. Of course,
Jobs is a little bit more outspoken. He's known as
the UM you know, more of the the marketing face
(31:56):
of the company, especially UM recently, but even back then
in the in the early days of the company. UM
as technology went on at Apple, though, as things started
to change and they started focusing on, uh, diversifying the
lines UM was, you know, was sort of not as
(32:17):
integral to the the creation of machines like the Apple three,
the Lisa, and the Macintosh like he had been with
the Apple too. And I think that was partially due
of course, to the to the accident and the need
for his recovery. Just he just wasn't as um as
UM available during that time as he would have done otherwise. Yeah,
(32:38):
and then UM and by Ve big changes were happening
at Apple. Uh. The biggest was that Steve Jobs left
the company and that depending on how you define it,
he was either fired because he was having some really
nasty conflicts with the with Apple's board of directors, or
(33:01):
he was just marginalized to the point where he just
stopped showing up to work. UM. But really, I mean
essentially they kept giving him a d a smaller role
over time and distancing him Steve Jobs, that is, away
from the main operations of Apple, and so Steve Jobs
left in five Niac stuck around with Apple for a
(33:24):
couple more years. He would not leave the company until Yes,
and to some degree he still holds a consulting role
with the company today. His and he left the company,
but Apple still I guess it's safe to say they
never completely severed their relationship, although he doesn't go into
(33:46):
work there like he used to. Um. And he's and
you wouldn't necessarily call him an Apple evangelist either. I
mean he says in frequent interviews he will say or
frequently interviews I should say, he will say he loves Apple.
But at the same time, he is not shy to
criticize Apple for things that he views as as uh
(34:09):
as a as as failures or as mistakes. He is
very He's known for being very honest and very upfront
and just uh, you know, giving his opinion. He's a
straight shooter when it comes to that, and not in
necessarily a mean way, but very matter of fact. Um yeah,
(34:30):
actually uh. When he started to work on some other
projects that one of the first was cl nine. This
is a company that was known for creating the first
programmable universal remote YEP. And so this again shows that
wozniak interest in electronics was still very, very high. He
just I think wosnia X one of those guys who
(34:50):
really likes to find a new challenge, and you know,
once he's done that, once he's managed to to accomplish
whatever that challenges, then he ready to move on to
the next one. In fact, again from listening to him talk,
I would say that that's just one of those things
he really values, is the idea of innovation, research and development,
(35:11):
building new stuff and not just making constant improvements over
older technology. In fact, that might have been one of
the reasons why he left Apple, was that he was
starting to see Apple turned into this company that was
more interested in releasing incremental updates to its technology rather
(35:33):
than truly innovating and building something that's really cool. And
in fact, that's a that's a criticism that he has
leveled recently at Apple over the last few years, saying
that Apple seems to be content to release new versions
of truly innovative and amazing products. You know, he loves
things like the iPad and the iPhone and all that.
(35:54):
He thinks those are great, But why he doesn't think
is great is that Apple seems to be content to
just give updates to those products rather than try and
create something wholly new. Now that may not be completely fair.
There may be some things developing an Apple about which
we know nothing that could blow our minds any day now,
(36:16):
like the Apple TV that we keep on hoping will
come out. But you know that that the perception that
Wozniak has is that, uh, Apple's not currently really in
that innovative space. In fact, recently he said that Microsoft
was showing more of that sort of innovative approach. Doesn't
necessarily mean it's going to be a success for Microsoft,
but he was saying that you know, Windows eight, Windows Phone, Ate,
(36:38):
the surface tablet, all of that was kind of pointing
there was such a radical departure from the stuff that
Microsoft had been doing that it was a much more
innovative approach than what Apple was currently doing. Right well, um,
you know he uh he ended up butting heads with
c L nine with Apple. Um. He was trying to
contract the design firm Frog Design, uh to get the
(37:02):
product designed for him, and Apple had brought Frog Design
to California with the idea that they were going to
be their designers, their product designers, and Apple said no,
you cannot do that. That was part of their their
U their UM contract with them. UM. But yeah, he
very much, uh you know, had an idea because he
(37:24):
knew that these guys were innovators in the way things
looked and felt. UM. So it doesn't surprise me much
that that was likes um the kinds of products that
Apple comes out with. But uh, you know, they had
a similar design sense. But Apple did not appreciate that
at the time. UM. Oh and uh, we didn't mention,
(37:45):
but well, it's probably looking at the timeline here, UM
probably should mention some of the other things that he
got into over the years. Of course, he's been a
speaker UM for many, many years now, including dating back
to that that time he was sort of a coveted
(38:05):
personality for m keynotes and different kinds of addresses. Uh
and uh. He started several companies. See all nine was
just one of them. Wheels of Zeus was one of
my favorites. Yes, the acronym Wheels of Zeus is laws
in in two thousand one, and that was back uh
in the early days of trying to come up with
(38:27):
uses for GPS. Yeah. The idea being that if you
can have a wireless GPS UH network, then you would
be able to locate stuff. Really, that was one of
his ideas. He said he wanted to help people be
able to locate things. Yes, all right, that was you
know so, yeah, and was or as in Wheels of Zeus,
(38:48):
not Wazniac, but Wheels of Zeus lasted for about five
years that it closed up in two thousand six. Ye
also and uh he in uh going back a bit. No, No,
it's fine. I just wanted to mention, you know, being
a co founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. I mean
this is huge. The Electronic Frontier Foundation or e f F,
(39:12):
is an organization that advocates for openness and freedom on
the internet in the computer world. They are also known
for doing things like helping provide legal assistance to hackers
that are being pursued by by government officials or or
you know, by law enforcement. They're known for helping out
(39:32):
folks who might otherwise be seen as troublemakers. Um, but
it's really all about promoting the freedom of information and
the trying to keep as as much of the uh
the manipulation or or or um, the just just trying
(39:53):
to keep the government out of controlling technology in all
its forms. Mainly it tends over the last several year,
it tends to mostly be about the Internet, but it's
it goes beyond that. Yeah. Yeah, and then they are
very interested in uh, you know, privacy issues issues. Uh,
not to uh, not to protect what you might call
(40:14):
black hat hackers, um, but more to give people the
opportunity to uh control their technology lives a little bit
more openly and and do more with it rather than
having that spoken for for them. Yeah. Wozniak has has
really come across as someone who who wants the individual
(40:37):
to have as much control and say in that sort
of thing, and less of that should go to things
like corporations and governments. So uh, you know this, it's
obvious why he would want to co found that organization
like BFF. And in two thousand he was inducted into
the Inventor's Hall of Fame and also receive the Hinz
(40:57):
Award for Technology, the Economy and employe. Yes, I wanted
to mention the Hines Award, So I'm glad you did that.
And it's not the Hines Stefenschmertz Award. Curse you bury
the Platypaus We've got a little bit further to go
with Chris Polette's final episode as a co host of
Tech Stuff. But before we get to that sad moment,
(41:18):
let's take another quick break. This is a period, um
the early two thousand's where we kind of didn't hear
a lot from him. I mean, he's not the kind
of person that that, um, you read about in the
society pages so much. Although until the late two thousands, well,
(41:43):
you know, making appearances on shows like Kathy Griffin in
My Life on the d List. Yeah, he was dating
her at the time. Yes, yes, Um. He's also been
on The Big Bang Theory and of course Dancing with
the Stars cutting a rug on a segue, yes, yes
he uh he showed. I watched some of that, and
(42:04):
I have to admit he showed a tremendous sense of
humor about being on that show. Um. And uh he's
as a dancer, he is a really incredible programmer. Nice.
Um an excellent compliment and uh, I am neither. So
I really can't talk, but I will. I will say
that that, but I think he would probably agree. Um
(42:27):
yeah he um, uh, yeah, he seemed to really kind
of have fun with his own you know, public persona,
although he's not you know, he's not like a celebrity
in the sense of jumping out and trying to attract attention.
That doesn't seem to really be his his style. He's
even been known, like on on launch days for Apple
(42:47):
products to go and wait in line at an Apple store.
There was one story where, uh he I remember it
was one of the early iPhones, I want to say,
where he was walking to the Apple store to go
get in line, and then he got ushered into the
front of the line, and he actually felt badly about
it because he was like, you know, he didn't feel
(43:10):
that he should necessarily be treated any differently than any
other customer. Um. And but a lot of people who
were in line are like, dude, that's woznia. He could
totally go in It's okay, Yeah I would. I would
imagine that that he has enough of a following where
you know, there there would be a certain amount of
tolerance among the other shoppers that day. Um. He's also known,
(43:32):
of course, over over time to be a rather uh
playful prankster of sorts. He's famed, of course for many
different stunts with two dollar bills. Um. I have actually
tried to pass two dollar bills, which are completely legal,
and they have people confused by them because you don't
(43:54):
see them all the time, which of course lends itself
to was a sort of sense of humor. Now you
can buy, as he will point out, complete sheets of
one dollar, two dollar, and five dollar bills from the
Bureau of Engraving and Printing. You can get a sheet
of an uncut sheet of bills. They're completely legal, they
just haven't been cut apart. In fact, they're perforated. So
(44:15):
he has been known to buy sheets of these, you know,
separate them and have them laminated into a pad, and
go in and buy stuff and peel off a series
of two dollar bills, which are of course are numbered sequentially.
It's very weird. Two dollar bills are weird to begin with,
and then you add that it looks like this guy
(44:35):
just peeled off money and handed it to me, am
I supposed to take it. Apparently he's been to Vegas
and tried to stunt and had security people come and
uh talked to him about exactly what's going I've encountered
Vegas security. I know exactly what you're talking about. And
of course if it were me, I would be sweating
(45:00):
like about it. He keeps doing. Really, I didn't know
that that the government doesn't, you know, make these perforated
bills available. Really, I bought these from some guy. What
what's great is that I wouldn't have had the nerve.
I should also point out that while two dollar bills
are unusual here in the United States, in other places
(45:20):
there are two dollar coins. So for our friends in Canadia, yes,
and our friends in Canadia, your twnis are very adorable,
like I actually do like tunis. I like Looney's and tunis. Yes,
I agree. If you would like to send me Looney's
and twnis, do so at the house Stuff Works address,
Carroll Jonathan Strickland. Kids, go check your parents. No, never mind,
(45:45):
um but uh but but yeah, what you were talking
about about innovation and openness and technology. He has recently,
as of the time we're recording this, in late Ben
photographed in front of the large uh different versions of
Google androids. We have Android people, and people go, it's
(46:05):
the Apple co founder in front of the Android androids. Well, yeah,
because he tries pretty much everything. Yeah, he's just a
computer omnivore. He actually says that he will, you know,
he loves he loves technology, and he loves Gadgy doesn't
doesn't necessarily love what corporations are doing or what governments
are doing, but he loves the technology. And he specifically,
(46:27):
I had an hour and a half of sleep last night, folks,
I would and watch the Hobbit anyway. So he specifically
really likes uh platforms that are are that allow you
to do lots of stuff right, So the Android platform
gives a lot of flexibility to users. It's something that
can be overwhelming to someone who's not necessarily an enthusiast,
(46:49):
but for someone who really likes hacking and getting their
their hands dirty with technology, the Android platform is very
attractive because it's you can make a lot of changes yourself,
you know, and and Google facilitates that. Depending on which
handset manufacturer and which carrier you're with, it may or
may not be very easy to do. But he also
(47:13):
says he likes to try everything because he doesn't want
to form a a prejudice against any particular platform without
giving it a real fair shot. And so he goes
out when a new phone comes out, he'll go out
and buy it. So often like, I've seen pictures of
what Wozniak was carrying on a given day, and it's
(47:34):
usually something like five or six smartphones and then maybe
a tablet and then maybe two computers. It's like, you figure,
it's got to be around fifty pounds of technology at least. Yeah.
It It kind of reminds me of the nineties version
of Dilbert where he used to have the gadget utility belt. Um,
you actually knew some people like that? Um yeah, yeah,
(47:58):
I used to try and do that them. My pants
kept falling down, dude, looking like a fool with the
pants on the ground. I was, in fact. Yeah. So
currently he's working at a food Fusion Io or Fusion
EO Fusion HEO was Fusion dash Io as a chief
scientist and that's the company is a data storage and
(48:21):
server company. So he's he's currently that's you know, his
technical job title at the moment. But he does do
a lot of speaking events and you know, you'll still
see him at things like a TED conferences and other
big events where you know, they need to have someone
there who who really knows the ins and outs of technology,
(48:41):
who is truly an advocate for technology, for the consumer
and who just you know, he's just very passionate and
loves to share that with other people. That's it's a
great couple of qualities to have, Like, there are a
lot of people who are really passionate about what they do,
but they don't necessarily communicate that or share that with people.
(49:04):
But wasn't he acts he's like, you know, you would
have to tie him down for him not to to
to be a brilliant over his love of tech. Yeah,
it's uh, from from just about all accounts I've read
about about Steve Wozniak, He's he's not the kind of
person who who hides his emotions very well. He's, uh,
(49:26):
he's excited about a lot of stuff, and when he is,
he you know, he shares that with you. Um, I
should say that he doesn't hide his his excitement for
technology very well because he's, uh, he's really gregarious when
it comes to that. He may not be necessarily outspoken
about his personal life as much or or want to
(49:46):
jump into the spotlight. But if you ran into him
and he had fifteen minutes to talk about some kind
of technology with you, I don't think it would be
much of a stretch. Based on Again, I've never met him,
but uh, if he wanted to stry a cup of
conversation with him about virtually any kind of technology, I
don't think he would turn you down, or if he did,
he would do it politely. Well, it seems like just
(50:09):
a just a great guy. He does he does. I
would be very interested to talk with him, except I
would be intimidated that he had discovered that I'm a
complete idiot within like two minutes of chatting with me. Well,
I mean, it doesn't take the rest of us that long.
You know. Maybe I'm hoping that he would just have
a lot of optimism. And that wraps up this classic
episode of text Stuff once again. I want to thank
(50:32):
Chris Polette for the amazing work he did. I mean,
you know, we're six years past, almost seven years past
when this happened, and uh, he's still very much a
part of tech Stuff's culture. The puns, I would argue,
are Chris Polette's contribution to this show. I love puns,
but I wasn't really known for making them in the
(50:52):
show quite like Chris was. I hope you guys enjoyed it.
If you have any suggestions for future episodes, of tech Stuff.
Please reach out and let me know The email addresses
tech stuff at how stuff works dot com, where you
can drop a line on Facebook or Twitter. The handle
of both of those is tech Stuff hs W. Go
to our website that's tech stuff podcast dot com. You
(51:13):
will find a link to the archive of every episode
we've ever published. You will also find a link to
our online store, where every purchase you make goes to
out the show and we greatly appreciate it, and I'll
talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is a
production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more
(51:34):
podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
TechStuff News
Hosts And Creators
Oz Woloshyn
Karah Preiss
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