Woz gave a lecture in one of my classes years ago and I came away impressed. He was obviously a brilliant engineer. "Naivete" is generally used in a negative manner but he had just enough naivete to get through life happy. He talked about all the chips he redesigned as a teen and it did not sound like bragging at all. We need more Woz's and less Jobs in this world.
It's not naive to try and be good and not exploit every situation to the best outcome for yourself, that's the whole point. How can people believe him to be so brilliant but also naive? Don't they see it? It doesn't take a smart man to see an apple and take it all for himself.
I like Woz, was never a fan of Jobs. And I mean that with regard to their personality — not their skillset.
My sense though, after having seen Woz talk a few times now, is that he seemed (seems?) to be on a tear to make sure his legacy is known. Now I would never say that he came across as a braggart in his talks ... but intent on making sure it is established that is was he the designed the Apple II (not Jobs, for example).
I always feel a bit of sadness though. It seems that he dropped out as the chief architect of the hardware not long after the Apple II ascendency. I'm thinking of the Apple IIGs, etc. — certainly the Lisa and Macintosh.
It feels like the industry quickly moved beyond the reach of the "hobbyist". There were no more "clever tricks" to be employed — just thousands of very dense 4-layer traces and lots and lots of components.
I know he was not a "mere hobbyist" — he worked for HP for crissakes, but the machines became more like spreadsheets, less like "art" if you know what I mean.
Woz is one of my favorite people ever, a lifelong hero for me.
I think it’s important to remember that he is the product of a very unique time in world history though.
He grew up in a time and place that was arguably the best time ever to be a human in all of history. He grew up in a society with extremely high social mobility, when a house in the bay was cheap, in a homogeneous society with high social trust, surrounded by the smartest people of his generation, in a place in the country which valued open mindedness and true progressive thinking. Things like going to college, buying a house, paying rent, or finding a mate were orders of magnitude easier than today.
Optimizing for happiness is a nice pursuit if this is the society that shapes your worldview, but today this is a luxury view that very few people can afford. The world is much more of a rat race, we have significantly lower social trust, basic survival is much harder to achieve than Woz’s time. So few people can go through life just trying to be happy instead of grinding to get ahead.
more people need to be like Woz and we need more Jobs in the world. Jobs was a person who bullied through the ego centric system and paved a good single way forward.
Remember when MS office did not include a pdf outputter because they didn’t want to hurt adobe’s feelings? Remember that? Would that have happened with a bully like Jobs? Who went nuclear on all of those analytics companies because they put analytics without declaring it?
Jobs caused a lot of divorces with the iPhone. He did! But he cut through people’s ego like scissors and in a creative field that can happen a lot. He didn’t have ego though.
I tend to have a pretty open, kind, and respectful approach to others.
It’s frequently interpreted as weakness and naivety.
I’m actually a pretty hardboiled and cynical person on the inside, but choose not to approach life in that manner. There’s reasons. Long story for other venues.
It’s always interesting to see the reactions from folks that think I’m an easy mark, when it dawns on them, that I’m not.
Kindness and generosity are not [necessarily] weakness.
When I was a student, we tried to get him to speak to at our school, but Woz wanted mucho $$$$ to speak. But it seems plenty people will pay what he asks. I guess if my job were to just go around talking about random shit I'm interested in, and I can make $10M doing that, I'd be the happiest person ever too. I don't think it's about naivete.
Edit to clarify: I'm not saying he doesn't deserve to get paid, I'm saying his being "the happiest person ever" is directly correlated to his ability to collect millions just shooting the shit in front of a fawning audience.
I'm not familiar with his personality, what is he naive about? like the kind of person that ignores sort of political and business machinations and chases personal interests?
I really hate to say it, but I had a different experience. Woz came to the fintech company where I work for a lecture and Q&A. I was super excited to see him, like a Little Leaguer meeting his favorite baseball player. However, Woz came off kinda rude, like "Everyone else is wrong. I'm right about everything." Maybe he was just having a bad day, or he didn't really wanna speak at my lame fintech company but somehow got roped into it. Or, maybe it's a case of "Never meet your heroes", but I was kinda disappointed. Woz and Kevin Mitnick were my two heroes as a young nerd.
I think the net effect of people like Jobs is a huge positive in this world. Why do you judge people that did great things by the standards of everyday interaction. You think this could be related? Perhaps there is something unpleasant about the person that had some effect on his ability for greatness? Or do you think people are like a video game with knobs where you can turn down "don't be a jerk" without affecting anything else?
Disagree, almost of all the accomplishments in humanity are driven by people like Steve Jobs not Woz. Elon Musk could be said to be a second iteration, a technical person extremely good at sales that can pursue and sell a vision.
There are a lot of people who want to be happy. Let them be happy, but it's the relentless builders/dreamers who pushes through the entire journey of getting a product out there to the people.
In this day and age, most people are attracted to "influencing". For better (giving back to society, educational) or worse (pranksters, grifters, "manosphere").
One notorious case is "Zara Dar", a PhD dropout to OF creator. Seemed to have high potential in the industry then something just flipped (money? too difficult? not fond of the grind?) and decided to go to OF.
The new world, with its hypercapitalistic tendencies, take advantage of the worst of us. It's one of the reasons for the rise of kakistocratic administration in the United States.
I love seeing all the positive comments here on HN regarding Woz.
I worked at Apple for a good amount of time, and the general rhetoric from Apple folks still there is that Woz is “insane” and not to be trusted.
I personally always found that to be so far from the truth, and the root of it really was how much Apple people didn’t like him speaking open and freely about the company (failures, success, and everything between).
You're either talking about people who worked with him at least forty years ago and had a problem with him, or people who are talking out of their ass. No doubt about which this is, but I wonder why.
You must have worked in a very odd and isolated department. I never heard that rhetoric, even once, throughout my tenure. Nor have any of my old colleagues who still work there and are quite well known internally (notorious patents, features / tentpole DRI, etc).
Woz bought 2 Model 3s thinking he would be able to rent them out as robotaxis. I'm sure he's a nice guy but I have no idea why he's (still) held up as some kind of tech guru.
> I worked at Apple for a good amount of time, and the general rhetoric from Apple folks still there is that Woz is “insane” and not to be trusted.
Are you sure they werent talking about the other Steve? Are there any stories or examples from your co-workers? I've also only ever heard good things about him as a human and engineer.
Maybe I'm not creative enough but I've tried this thought exercise with friends and it's a fun one.
The question is, try to spend $1bn on stuff. Go.
So then you start with big ticket items (like maybe a yacht or a house). That gets you to your first $500m. After that, stuff gets WAY "cheaper" where you just run out of things generally before even hitting $1bn.
And then at the end of it we try to imagine what it's like having stuff worth $250bn. And there's just no way to make that tangible.
I did try this with my son and he said he'd buy an A-list soccer team. But I feel that starts to get into "buying companies that make you MORE money" territory.
At a much smaller scale, it seems to be that $10mn is so much that you could live in a $2m house (good by any standard in any location), have a stable of cars, have full-time help, fly first class or even private everywhere, and vacation as much as you want. Or am I off by a lot given inflation?
I think the reason why so many of us look up to the Woz in the tech world is that he is genuine, in an industry where we see so much of the opposite regularly - and we want to be the same.
You know, I there aren't many celebrities, especially in tech, that I think "It would be cool to have a beer with them". Not Gates, not Jobs, probably not Musk. But Woz seems like a cool guy with great stories to tell.
I think Steve Ballmer would be pretty fun to hang out with for a bit. Maybe not a beer but lunch with Bill Gates would be alright, I'd love to pick his brain about his charity work.
I think there's 2 kinds of psychodelic oneshot. Woz & Jobs. Woz became content with all he had and Jobs turned into a psycopath. Both geniuses, both gave us a lot. I'd rather have someone like Woz be a trillionare and e/alt using his wealth for good than a money hungry monster.
This is a slight tangent, but I have not been on slashdot since the early aughts. I'm surprised that it fell into obscurity since technical forums like HN and reddit CS subreddits are thriving. Or maybe it still vibrant and I'm making assumptions?
I love the line they give Woz in the movie Steve Jobs. In the big final confrontation he says, "Your products are better than you are brother."
The movie is a fiction, but Woz apparently liked it a lot and thought that Seth Rogen did a phenomenal job playing him. So this attitude of his adds up.
> At a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island, Kurt Vonnegut informs his pal, Joseph Heller, that their host, a hedge fund manager, had made more money in a single day than Heller had earned from his wildly popular novel Catch-22 over its whole history. Heller responds, “Yes, but I have something he will never have … enough.”
The most telling thing to me about Woz's personality was this walkthrough at the CHM. Note the section about the homebrew scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsB8Hxnb52o
I had gone to SFO to drop off my mom at the airport. After dropping her, I saw somebody who looked like Woz at the Delta First Class queue. I hung back to let him do his chat with the airline agents.
As soon as he was finished, he turned around and I was sure it was him. He had his trade-marked backpack full of electronics on his torso.
Approached him gingerly to ask, "Are you, umm, Mr Woz?"
If he seemed surprised / annoyed, he didn't show.
Then I got tongue-tied... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ In a brief second, the entire history of Apple came flooding to me...
I blurted at him that he was a boyhood hero of mine and just thanked him for his contributions, etc. (which is true, I do admire him)
He seemed surprised. He said folks these days have sports heros, and was glad to hear what I said. Inquired about me / my work (also tech), my brief journey, etc. Exchanged a few pleasantries. That was it.
I didn't have any elevator pitch or anything. I came away genuinely happy having met him in person.
A key turning point in Woz's life was when he crashed his Beechcraft Bonanza, fully loaded with friends and luggage, from a runway that was too short for the aircraft load and air temperature (high temperatures require longer takeoff rolls). Woz also wasn't rated for the aircraft, but I'm not sure that really made much difference, compared to the allegedly skipped weight & balance calculation, which if performed would likely have predicted the outcome.
This accident is said to have changed Woz's outlook on life, but when I knew him years earlier he already seemed very focused on worthwhile things, like excellent hardware designs and little interest in accumulating money, compared for example to Steve Jobs.
When I heard that Woz quit Apple to become a schoolteacher in a small California town, I though to myself there aren't words of praise sufficient to describe that choice. Still think so.
About happiness in life, that only happens when the needs of the body and the needs of the soul are satisfied. Only then we can talk about happiness and piece of mind. Virtually no amount of Buddhist intention can overcome a hungry body and an empty soul.
That is not to bash on those like me that pursue this post-consumerist happiness state, only to say that you can't expect those that are hungry to overcome their state without help, as well as expect those that have their basic needs satisfied to feel guilty.
If you're engaging in philanthropy, dodging taxes is perfectly justified. The main thing to look out for is whether or not you are using the money better than the government would, which isn't that difficult.
[+] [-] deeg|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] vasco|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] JKCalhoun|7 months ago|reply
My sense though, after having seen Woz talk a few times now, is that he seemed (seems?) to be on a tear to make sure his legacy is known. Now I would never say that he came across as a braggart in his talks ... but intent on making sure it is established that is was he the designed the Apple II (not Jobs, for example).
I always feel a bit of sadness though. It seems that he dropped out as the chief architect of the hardware not long after the Apple II ascendency. I'm thinking of the Apple IIGs, etc. — certainly the Lisa and Macintosh.
It feels like the industry quickly moved beyond the reach of the "hobbyist". There were no more "clever tricks" to be employed — just thousands of very dense 4-layer traces and lots and lots of components.
I know he was not a "mere hobbyist" — he worked for HP for crissakes, but the machines became more like spreadsheets, less like "art" if you know what I mean.
[+] [-] Dig1t|7 months ago|reply
I think it’s important to remember that he is the product of a very unique time in world history though.
He grew up in a time and place that was arguably the best time ever to be a human in all of history. He grew up in a society with extremely high social mobility, when a house in the bay was cheap, in a homogeneous society with high social trust, surrounded by the smartest people of his generation, in a place in the country which valued open mindedness and true progressive thinking. Things like going to college, buying a house, paying rent, or finding a mate were orders of magnitude easier than today.
Optimizing for happiness is a nice pursuit if this is the society that shapes your worldview, but today this is a luxury view that very few people can afford. The world is much more of a rat race, we have significantly lower social trust, basic survival is much harder to achieve than Woz’s time. So few people can go through life just trying to be happy instead of grinding to get ahead.
[+] [-] loveit___|7 months ago|reply
Everything Jobs was though and the people around him and those that worked before him were important for the state of Apple as he left it.
But Woz is my fav also, and if there were many, many makers like Woz, and there are, that would be fantastic, and it is.
Woz, I love you, man.
[+] [-] nashashmi|7 months ago|reply
Remember when MS office did not include a pdf outputter because they didn’t want to hurt adobe’s feelings? Remember that? Would that have happened with a bully like Jobs? Who went nuclear on all of those analytics companies because they put analytics without declaring it?
Jobs caused a lot of divorces with the iPhone. He did! But he cut through people’s ego like scissors and in a creative field that can happen a lot. He didn’t have ego though.
[+] [-] ChrisMarshallNY|7 months ago|reply
It’s frequently interpreted as weakness and naivety.
I’m actually a pretty hardboiled and cynical person on the inside, but choose not to approach life in that manner. There’s reasons. Long story for other venues.
It’s always interesting to see the reactions from folks that think I’m an easy mark, when it dawns on them, that I’m not.
Kindness and generosity are not [necessarily] weakness.
[+] [-] ModernMech|7 months ago|reply
Edit to clarify: I'm not saying he doesn't deserve to get paid, I'm saying his being "the happiest person ever" is directly correlated to his ability to collect millions just shooting the shit in front of a fawning audience.
[+] [-] 1vuio0pswjnm7|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] micromacrofoot|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] pstuart|7 months ago|reply
He was a visionary and "got" tech -- Apple's success with him (both times) and the floundering in between demonstrate his value to their story.
Again, not a nice man and not worthy of worship but definitely of respect for what he delivered.
[+] [-] jimt1234|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] LandoCalrissian|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] bko|7 months ago|reply
I think the net effect of people like Jobs is a huge positive in this world. Why do you judge people that did great things by the standards of everyday interaction. You think this could be related? Perhaps there is something unpleasant about the person that had some effect on his ability for greatness? Or do you think people are like a video game with knobs where you can turn down "don't be a jerk" without affecting anything else?
[+] [-] ap99|7 months ago|reply
We wouldn't even know who Woz was without Jobs. Sure Jobs had character flaws but everyone does.
Is there a world where you get get a person who has all of Jobs's positive traits without any of the negative? Maybe but not likely.
[+] [-] ninetyninenine|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] rw2|7 months ago|reply
There are a lot of people who want to be happy. Let them be happy, but it's the relentless builders/dreamers who pushes through the entire journey of getting a product out there to the people.
[+] [-] xyst|7 months ago|reply
In this day and age, most people are attracted to "influencing". For better (giving back to society, educational) or worse (pranksters, grifters, "manosphere").
One notorious case is "Zara Dar", a PhD dropout to OF creator. Seemed to have high potential in the industry then something just flipped (money? too difficult? not fond of the grind?) and decided to go to OF.
The new world, with its hypercapitalistic tendencies, take advantage of the worst of us. It's one of the reasons for the rise of kakistocratic administration in the United States.
[+] [-] pbreit|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] revskill|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] testfrequency|7 months ago|reply
I worked at Apple for a good amount of time, and the general rhetoric from Apple folks still there is that Woz is “insane” and not to be trusted.
I personally always found that to be so far from the truth, and the root of it really was how much Apple people didn’t like him speaking open and freely about the company (failures, success, and everything between).
[+] [-] justin66|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] flounder3|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] Fricken|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] gitaarik|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] ProAm|7 months ago|reply
Are you sure they werent talking about the other Steve? Are there any stories or examples from your co-workers? I've also only ever heard good things about him as a human and engineer.
[+] [-] nancyminusone|7 months ago|reply
Significantly more than that, and you're a hoarder.
[+] [-] atonse|7 months ago|reply
The question is, try to spend $1bn on stuff. Go.
So then you start with big ticket items (like maybe a yacht or a house). That gets you to your first $500m. After that, stuff gets WAY "cheaper" where you just run out of things generally before even hitting $1bn.
And then at the end of it we try to imagine what it's like having stuff worth $250bn. And there's just no way to make that tangible.
I did try this with my son and he said he'd buy an A-list soccer team. But I feel that starts to get into "buying companies that make you MORE money" territory.
At a much smaller scale, it seems to be that $10mn is so much that you could live in a $2m house (good by any standard in any location), have a stable of cars, have full-time help, fly first class or even private everywhere, and vacation as much as you want. Or am I off by a lot given inflation?
[+] [-] jasoneckert|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] judah|7 months ago|reply
One of the nicest guys in the world. Humble, kind, gracious.
[0]: https://www.facebook.com/share/1BHAeRQDGP/?mibextid=wwXIfr
[+] [-] giantg2|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] NoPicklez|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] Wohlf|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] rTX5CMRXIfFG|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] martinky24|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] Pomelolo|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] lordleft|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] throw4847285|7 months ago|reply
The movie is a fiction, but Woz apparently liked it a lot and thought that Seth Rogen did a phenomenal job playing him. So this attitude of his adds up.
[+] [-] softwaredoug|7 months ago|reply
> At a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island, Kurt Vonnegut informs his pal, Joseph Heller, that their host, a hedge fund manager, had made more money in a single day than Heller had earned from his wildly popular novel Catch-22 over its whole history. Heller responds, “Yes, but I have something he will never have … enough.”
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/10651136-at-a-party-given-b...
[+] [-] codyb|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] WorldPeas|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] blindriver|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] mrtksn|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] gabrielsroka|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] aanet|7 months ago|reply
I had gone to SFO to drop off my mom at the airport. After dropping her, I saw somebody who looked like Woz at the Delta First Class queue. I hung back to let him do his chat with the airline agents.
As soon as he was finished, he turned around and I was sure it was him. He had his trade-marked backpack full of electronics on his torso.
Approached him gingerly to ask, "Are you, umm, Mr Woz?"
If he seemed surprised / annoyed, he didn't show.
Then I got tongue-tied... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ In a brief second, the entire history of Apple came flooding to me...
I blurted at him that he was a boyhood hero of mine and just thanked him for his contributions, etc. (which is true, I do admire him)
He seemed surprised. He said folks these days have sports heros, and was glad to hear what I said. Inquired about me / my work (also tech), my brief journey, etc. Exchanged a few pleasantries. That was it.
I didn't have any elevator pitch or anything. I came away genuinely happy having met him in person.
[+] [-] lutusp|7 months ago|reply
This accident is said to have changed Woz's outlook on life, but when I knew him years earlier he already seemed very focused on worthwhile things, like excellent hardware designs and little interest in accumulating money, compared for example to Steve Jobs.
When I heard that Woz quit Apple to become a schoolteacher in a small California town, I though to myself there aren't words of praise sufficient to describe that choice. Still think so.
[+] [-] dreamlayers|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] itsthecourier|7 months ago|reply
the dedication reads:
"to the terminally ill, Woz"
I adore Woz, I hope my friends keep pulling a leg on me on my worst days too. Woz is all a man need in a good friend. exemplary
bonus: it's a computer science jokes book Woz wrote
[+] [-] gchamonlive|7 months ago|reply
That is not to bash on those like me that pursue this post-consumerist happiness state, only to say that you can't expect those that are hungry to overcome their state without help, as well as expect those that have their basic needs satisfied to feel guilty.
[+] [-] mbar84|7 months ago|reply
If you're engaging in philanthropy, dodging taxes is perfectly justified. The main thing to look out for is whether or not you are using the money better than the government would, which isn't that difficult.