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Wozniak: “Actually, the movie was largely a lie about me”

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Re: Wozniak: “Actually, the movie was largely a lie about me”

#201

> Woz: And when Jobs (in the movie, but really a board does this) denied stock to the early garage team (some not even shown) I'm surprised that they chose not to show me giving about $10M of my own stock to them because it was the right thing. And $10M was a lot in that time. I have to say: That speaks volumes. And Woz, if you ever happen to read this: It's still a pile of dough in the year 2014.

I think his point was that $10M of apple stock was a proportionately larger portion of his holdings; had Woz kept all of his shares and donated $10M worth of stock today, he'd have far less.

But, cue the recent discussion of wealth addiction; $10M was and is enough to have a super comfortable life without working again.

Re: Wozniak: “Actually, the movie was largely a lie about me”

#202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anybody who worked anywhere near Jobs will observe he was one of the biggest assholes around. I know quite a few people who worked in, or near his sphere - and they are all pretty consistent on this point. And yet, who else in modern history has driven as many companies to such such success, and lead the creation of so many great products? We had a ton of the NeXT machines at my university, and I still believe they,…

I don't totally disagree, but I think this is excessively sunny. As somebody who was an early NeRD (NeXT Registered Developer) and helped start one of the NeXT User Groups, I don't think I would call NeXT a successful company. It created some great technology for its day, but it was an ongoing commercial failure. Nobody would buy the hardware, so they killed that early. By the end they were killing off the OS and goi…

Fortunately for us, Apple acquiring NeXT instead of Be means that we get to program iOS and OS X in Objective-C instead of C++.

Re: Wozniak: “Actually, the movie was largely a lie about me”

#203
I really enjoyed reading Wozniak's foreword to Phil Lapsley's 'Exploding the Phone' book [0], as well as reading about the time period when Wozniak began college and what they were up to. It's a great book about phone freaking.

[0] http://explodingthephone.com

Re: Wozniak: “Actually, the movie was largely a lie about me”

#204
post #181

"And when Jobs (in the movie, but really a board does this) denied stock to the early garage team (some not even shown) I'm surprised that they chose not to show me giving about $10M of my own stock to them because it was the right thing. And $10M was a lot in that time." Nothing more need be said, really. This is the very definition of character and integrity.

"And $10M was a lot in that time."

I love this. Classic Steve Wozniak humor.

Re: Wozniak: “Actually, the movie was largely a lie about me”

#205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sadly (speaking as one) - technologists are for the most part fungible, you can swap out one for another. The willingness of members of our profession to believe and repeat this bit of absolute nonsense is one of the primary reasons our industry is such a shitshow.

There is always room for differentiation at the top, either as an architect, or leader - but (speaking of my own profession) - I've never actually seen an environment where any particularly network engineer wasn't replaceable. In fact, one of the hallmarks of a first class network engineer is that they leave behind an environment that is well documented, designed to industry standards, and is pretty much resistant ou…

I left the field because it is a pretty inglorious role: nobody congratulates you when the network withstand the load under the worst circumstances, but everybody point you a finger for the minimal glitch - when it is not your fault you have to prove it.

Re: Wozniak: “Actually, the movie was largely a lie about me”

#206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always wondered more about Woz than Jobs! We get plenty of shrewd businessmen; they aren't a dime-a-dozen, but they aren't an enigma either. Kind of an understood phenomenon. People like Woz (at least based on the myriad recountings; I have not met the man) seem to actually be rare. I wonder if there was an interesting aspect to his youth, or what. Maybe the same way that you can have a psychopath, you can have…

Jobs was more than a "shrewd businessman". Building Pixar over 10 years into one of the top movie studios was not some "shrewd" business decision. Ditto for NeXT, the early Mac, the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad.. It's more accurate to say he was a visionary who took a long term view. It's only in retrospect that we have the luxury of looking on his track record as smart from a business standpoint. Woz even criticizes t…

By "countless" I think you mean "half a dozen, with perhaps a 25% success rate." Its important that we realize that the upper end of the impact scale isn't an endless string of success, but "a few." One is really hard, and failure is common.

By the same token, a few successes are truly impressive. It takes a lot of execution and judgment to avoid many, many pitfalls.

Re: Wozniak: “Actually, the movie was largely a lie about me”

#207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anybody who worked anywhere near Jobs will observe he was one of the biggest assholes around. I know quite a few people who worked in, or near his sphere - and they are all pretty consistent on this point. And yet, who else in modern history has driven as many companies to such such success, and lead the creation of so many great products? We had a ton of the NeXT machines at my university, and I still believe they,…

>And yet, who else in modern history has driven as many companies to such such success, and lead the creation of so many great products? Elon musk?

Top contender, but has a way to go before he achieves near Jobs-level success.

Re: Wozniak: “Actually, the movie was largely a lie about me”

#208
Woz's comment in full:

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

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

And when Jobs (in the movie, but really a board does this) denied stock to the early garage team (some not even shown) I'm surprised that they chose not to show me giving about $10M of my own stock to them because it was the right thing. And $10M was a lot in that time.

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

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

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

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

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

Re: Wozniak: “Actually, the movie was largely a lie about me”

#209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But Geniuses/Leaders - they come but once in a lifetime, and we admire them for that uniqueness. Oh please. There are 7 billion people in this world. This hero worship has got to stop. By your own admission he was a complete arsehole. His 'vision' was who he could exploit. Look at how he treated Woz. That's not the actions of a visionary, that's the actions of an egomaniac who discovered a route to power.

With respect that's as blinkered a view in the opposite direction. Neither the "Jobs was a genius" nor the "Jobs was an asshole" narratives are incorrect, but neither are complete and as such neither is particularly helpful or enlightening on it's own. To me at least, what makes Jobs most interesting is what he achieved despite being an asshole and how that played out. He undoubtedly was a thoroughly unpleasant indiv…

I don't know what the big deal about Apple being the "largest company in the world" is. Who was the company that they passed. Exxon Mobile? Shell? They create great products used by billions around the world. No one romanticizes their CEOs, and they're all assholes too.

Re: Wozniak: “Actually, the movie was largely a lie about me”

#210
If the world was filled with Wozs I imagine it would be a wonderful place, far more advanced than we are now. He's a product iterator and inventor at his core, and that core has a big heart. He impacted and took part in making our lives better (I coded my first game on an Apple ][) all the while is humble and helpful.
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