Woz on Apple's 50th: We didn't predict the computing future, but took the first step
Instead of predicting the future, Apple was forward-thinking from the outset and took the first steps toward global computing for everybody, co-founder Steve Wozniak has said as part of a series of interviews marking the company's 50th anniversary.
Steve Wozniak - Image Credit: CBS Sunday Morning
After a lengthy interview with current CEO Tim Cook on Sunday discussing Apple's culture, Monday saw more commentary about the company's early history. This time, it was Steve Wozniak's turn.
Talking as part of a CBS Sunday Morning piece on the anniversary posted to YouTube on Monday, "Woz" first jokingly boasts that the story of Apple started when he was born.
Speaking from a sidewalk where Woz and co-founder Steve Jobs met, neither of them knew at the time that their creation of a circuit board would turn into a company.
"Steve Jobs wanted a company and he did it, and I was his resource," he laughs in the piece. Those initial 150 sales of Woz's first computer led to the sale of six million for the second attempt, the Apple II.
To Woz, it was "so far above any of the other computers coming out." Apple didn't foresee the future of computing, he admits, but that the company instead decided to take a "step forward ahead of others."
The interview then moves on to commentary from CEO Tim Cook, calling Jobs a "once in a thousand years kind of person." Former head of hardware John Rubenstein referred to Jobs as being "brutal" in wanting the best from his team.
An old culture
The piece eventually returns to Wozniak, discussing how the company's current culture was born from those early days. He insists the reputation sprung from the founders, before admitting he is still fond of the corporate behemoth.
"It's hard to be 100% perfect, but I still admire Apple the most of all the tech companies," he claims.
The piece concludes with Cook calling Apple the sum of all of the products it's made and the people it's enabled. "The artists, the musicians, it's the everyday people who have done remarkable things to change the world."
To Cook, this is enough reason to look towards the next 50 years.
A continued legacy
Monday's piece features brief elements from Cook's Sunday interview, which saw the CEO discuss his work with Jobs and the transition. In that interview, he admits Jobs gave him advice to never ask what Jobs would do, and instead to do the "right thing."
It was also revealed that Jobs wanted a proper corporate transition for Apple, and to avoid having a Disney-style paralysis of thinking following the departure of Walt Disney.
Cook also insisted that Apple's culture was hard to replicate due to requiring the right people and time to go through repeated cycles of change.
Correspondent David Pogue's accompanying book, Apple: The First 50 Years, is on sale from Amazon for $46.50.
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Comments
Steve Jobs was the mastermind and he definitely predicted the future in a sense. sure, in the early days, he borrowed ideas from Xerox and did one better. By the time he returned to Apple, he was on his own path. he figured out how to wrangle the Wild West of the internet and make it profitable and manageable for musicians and law abiding consumers alike. He knew what a computer or portable device should and should not be - in spite of the entire world doing the opposite. He knew what a mobile phone should be and shaped the current landscape before anyone had a clue. It took the competition years of failure before simply straight-up copying Apple to try to approximate their success. he even took the humble mouse and made it spectacular with touch scroll and gestures. Apple under Steve even started up the AI route with the original Siri (yes, we know. Siri was bought and added in). though it wasn't AI as we know it now, it was leading edge tech when it launched. apple has been in ML for a while now. So Steve definitely saw the future before it arrived and set Apple on a course to shape and lead that future. I don't know how Tim let Siri languish, but then again visionary outlook wasn't really his thing. He was more the guy to take what we had and make it everything it could ever hope to be. If Steve were around today, he would most likely be chairman of the board, directing Cook as CEO. And Apple would have their photo in the dictionary next to the word "AI." So I Can't agree with Woz too much here. But I agree a little bit concerning the Xerox Parc stuff from the nascent Apple days.
there was only one Steve. If Woz wasn't around, Steve would have met another. He had a way of getting the most out of people. From the guy he pushed to make an impossibly tiny power supply to Woz, to the guy he made invent a mouse that could work on his lap, shaping computing post-Apple to then taking that tech back to Apple, etc. etc. etc. Steve was very deserving of his visionary legend. he saw things way ahead of time and somehow knew exactly what to do to get there and get there right.
It seems that some of the early Apple guys were really instrumental in getting everything off the ground, but they often overestimate their role and diminish Steve. Cook on the other hand, who is responsible for Apple being THE tech superpower int he world, stays humble, undersells himself, and offers the most realistic takes on what Apple was, is, and will be.
it seems clearer with every story that PARC team sold themselves out of Xerox so they could do exactly that invent the future some where it would make it into production.