241–250 of 314 posts
> 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.
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> It turns out people like Woz need people like Steve Jobs Nope. Woz gives every impression that he'd be perfectly happy inventing stuff, rich or not. He doesn't really need a Steve Jobs, and the exploitation by someone who presented himself as a friend mostly seems to have caused him a lot of heartache.
And made him richer than you or I can ever dream of, and got his inventions to change the lives of millions of people, but apart from that...
That's the whooshing sound as a point goes over your head. You obviously care about that. Jobs obviously cares about that. It is nopt obvious Woz cares about that at all.
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Agree. One thing missing from Wozniak's comment is that in the end Jobs did whatever he had to and created great products that many of us use. Woz doesn't seem to want to acknowledge the fact that creating great things in life or in business involves stepping on some toes and doing all sorts of shenanigans. Woz certainly didn't have the stomach to be Jobs but Jobs did. And with that you get credit perhaps you don't d…
> But it doesn't matter to many of the daily users of the Mac what Woz did they just want a product that is great that solves a problem that they have. You're implying that the only thing that people care about is the end result; the product that rolls off of the assembly line for their use. If that's the case, then they equally don't care what Jobs did.
Same with Walt Disney. (Of course he had a TV show..)
In the case of Ray Croc there was Harry Sonnenborn who was given credit (in the business press but not the popular press) as being the financial brains behind McDonalds. But most "normals" have never heard of him. Have you? (Not a challenge just curious..)
In the case of Ray Croc that was another story of business celebrity that made it main stream. Otherwise at McDonalds all anyone would care about is the food, right?
I guess my point is that (some) people get jealous when someone else has something they don't have. In the case of Woz he has money but he is jealous of the fame that Jobs has (over his fame which of course is considerable, right?). If Jobs wasn't so over the top idealized Woz wouldn't say as much is my speculation.
Of course not everyone wants that fame some people are perfectly happy not being noticed and letting someone else get all the attention. Even if that attention isn't deserved.
All this is a matter of degree of course.
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>You don't need millions to make technology bets. To become a household name as a genius capable of predicting the future you most certainly do. >I'll tell you why. Things aren't so obvious when you have some skin in the game. I'll tell you the real reason why: I make enough money to cover my living expenses, and that's about it. I am right about technology most of the time, but I don't have enough expendable income…
I think there are virtual stock markets that you can partake in to see how good you are (although this likely requires investing time which won't directly get paid back if you do well at it.) I wonder if people who do especially well in them can use virtual stock market success as a stepping stone to managing other peoples' money (and getting a cut).
There are new comments from Woz posted today on the original Google+ post's comment thread. https://plus.google.com/u/0/+CarmsPerez/posts/GnVTvQNgvpf
>Actually, Jobs was not fired. He could have been well funded to develop any product, even something like the NeXT, right at Apple. He was removed from running Macintosh because he had no good constructive ideas that were needed to save the company. He felt that some small adjustments in pricing, and diverting funds from our revenue source, the Apple ][, would make the Macintosh an instant success. The Macintosh was great and was the future in the eyes of those who displaced Jobs. But it was time to be adult and realistic. Hard work to build a Macintosh market would be needed. I’m sad too that the Macintosh wouldn’t sell just on its own.
"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.
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You can't really tell either way. The road to NEXT and Pixar was through Apple. And I do hear his role in Pixar is often portrayed as being much more than it really was.
Most of what's usually said about Steve Jobs' role in Pixar is a complete myth. It's quite outrageous the level of falsehood when you read about it from those who were there before Pixar was big. For starters, Steve Jobs didn't invest in the Pixar that you know (the one which makes films), it was a hardware company and it never occured to him to make an animated movie, just sell hardware. It was the people working th…
But he fails so hard on so many things, like the Steve Jobs investment didn't save Pixar rant. He says Steve's money didn't save Pixar and then says that Steve pumped more and more money in until it was actually worth something.
Whatever points he makes that may be valid are completely made suspect by his tone and spiteful attitude.
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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…
It looks like you're trying to be critical of Woz but it's worth noting that he is totally correct here. The company would not have continued without the Apple II revenue Sculley was focused on keeping. In the same vein, Gil Amelio and Fred Thompson later saved the company from bankruptcy by selling Apple debt at remarkably favorable terms. Jobs liked to make fun of Amelio, which always struck me as a little ridiculous.
People like to latch on to Jobs's personality quirks as being strange, wonderful advantages but I can't help but wonder how much more successful he might have been if he'd actually developed a better ability to work with and persuade people like John Sculley and his board. The world could have been pretty different if he'd had the people skills to hang in there at Apple. NeXT being developed within Apple might have meant big early success, which might have meant things going a pretty different way in the nineties...