iWoz summary

As we all know, it’s impossible to overestimate how our childhood environment shapes our lives. Accordingly, it’s apparent that Wozniak’s close relationship with his father, Francis, played a crucial role in his development, especially because it involved lots of tinkering with electronics.

Growing up, Wozniak would sometimes spend time at his father’s office at Electronic Data Systems in Los Angeles, playing with various electronic pieces and parts. Moreover, the Wozniak home was packed with interesting gadgets, such as resistors.

Like other great inventors, Wozniak’s engineering career started with childhood virtuosity that evolved into a dream: one day, Steve believed, computers would be widely accessible and easy to use.

But let’s back up: as we’ve learned, Wozniak’s engineering talent emerged in childhood and his father was instrumental in this respect, teaching his son the basics of physics, electronics and engineering. He also bought his son electronics hobby kits to foster his budding interest in science.

In 1968, Wozniak arrived at college: the following years would prove to be a turbulent but exciting time for the budding engineer, eventually culminating with a great achievement, the building of his own computer.

It all started with a brief tenure at Colorado University. The CU computer science program taught only FORTRAN, one of the first basic programing languages. And even though most people would have been satisfied with those offerings, Wozniak wanted more. So he began teaching himself by running experiments in seven different programing languages.

At the time, Wozniak couldn’t have known that he was on the verge of creating the very first Apple computer, which would earn its place in the annals of technology history. The story begins during Wozniak’s year away from school, after he built the Cream Soda Computer, when his colleague, Bill Fernandez, introduced him to Steve Jobs.

Jobs came by to visit Fernandez and Wozniak at their garage, and when they showed him the Cream Soda Computer, Jobs was hugely impressed. Even though Jobs was still in high school, the two Steves had a lot in common: they both loved Bob Dylan, pranks and electronics. They were linked for life.

For anyone who’s familiar with the history of the Apple brand, it may be hard to imagine that the two Steves were anything but happy peas in a happy pod. But the truth is, their personal relationship wasn’t uncomplicated.  

For starters, Jobs had the tendency to slightly mislead his friend – and sometimes even withhold money. Consider the Breakout project: Atari’s CEO wanted the product to use less than the 200 chips typically found in standard arcade games. And the two Steves started and finished the job in a mere four days, creating a game that used only forty-five chips.

Wozniak’s Apple computers revolutionized the industry: every computer before Apple had a panel of switches and lights; every computer after Apple had a screen and keyboard.

And in a lot of ways, it was Wozniak’s dream come true – a computer that everyone could buy. Not to mention, it became the engine behind the world’s first trillion-dollar company.

Under the pressure of social norms, many trade in private passion for public glory. That’s why so many engineers eventually move into management or ownership.

But Wozniak never stopped engineering, leaving the business side wholly to Steve Jobs. And when the two Steves got funding for their then-startup, Markkula asked Wozniak to leave his job at HP – but Wozniak refused. He enjoyed his job as a calculator engineer and didn’t want a management position.