Every once in a while, I need to solder something.

I don't do it frequently, so my setup is pretty janky.

I have a fan that I put in my window that pulls the air inside out.

I then take whatever I'm soldering and put it on the window ledge next to the fan.

Next, I plug in my soldering iron and get the solder and plug

ready to go. It's not a great setup, I have to stand the entire time, and the window ledge

everything is sitting on is pretty small. But I think that's what makes it great. It makes me

feel like it's the mid-1970s, and I'm pioneering one of the first personal computers, hacking

things together in a sketchy setup. In reality, I'm just doing something basic on some pre-built

circuit board, but still, it's fun. And one founder who loved building and tinkering above

all else was Steve Wozniak, someone I wish more tech founders were like. From blue boxes

to getting his first degree after leaving Apple, on this episode of In the Shell.

Hello. Hey, why we're not shipping Windows 98? Absolutely. Mr. Jobs, you're a bright and

influential man. Here it comes. It's sad and clear that on several accounts you've discussed,

you don't know what you're talking about. The key to success is developers, developers, developers,

developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers. Janice and

I don't own phones. Neither should you people, if you have any kind of common sense.

My name is Josh, and I'm able to keep this podcast independent and advertisement-free

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Steven Gary Wozniak was born on August 11, 1950, in San Jose, California. He grew up in the suburban

Santa Clara Valley, today's Silicon Valley, where technological curiosity was encouraged.

Wozniak's father, Jerry, was an engineer at Lockheed, and he passed on to young Woz,

a passion for figuring out how things work. As Wozniak recalls, his dad taught him that,

as an engineer, you can change your world and change the way of life for lots and lots of people.

This lesson stuck with Wozniak, inspiring him in a lifelong belief that engineers could make the

world better. By grade school, he was assembling his own voltmeters, ham radios, calculators,

and even simple computer games at home. He was exceptionally bright, especially in math and

science, but conventional school bored him. Wozniak has said that the first time he realized he was

good at math was after winning a third-grade multiplication contest, a moment that gave

him confidence in his abilities. He also loved pranks and jokes, seeing humor as closely tied to

creativity. This prankster streak would later surface in some of his technical exploits,

science, but as a young man in the late 1960s, Wozniak's main ambition was simply to be an

engineer. After high school, he enrolled at the University of Colorado, but he flunked out in

his first year. He then returned to California and attended UC Berkeley briefly, before dropping

out in 1971 to pursue his real passion, designing computers. At this point, Wozniak had no plans to

start a company or become famous. He just wanted to build things. I was so happy with my job as an

engineer at Hewlett-Packard, I could have been an engineer for the rest of my life, Wozniak later said.

Back home in Silicon Valley in 1971, the 21-year-old Wozniak met a charismatic 16-year-old high school

student through a mutual friend. That teenager was Steve Jobs. Despite differences in personality

and age, the two Steves bonding.

quickly over their shared obsession, electronics, pulling pranks, and a love for Bob Dylan's music.

One of Wozniak and Jobs' first collaborations was building blue boxes.

These were illegal electronic devices that allowed one to hack telephone networks and make free long-distance calls.

Wozniak learned about phone-freaking and, purely for the challenge, engineered a blue box that worked flawlessly.

Jobs, ever the opportunist, saw a chance to sell the device to other students.

Together, they sold a small number of blue boxes to college kids, splitting the proceeds.

The venture was short-lived, but it was an early taste of what they could accomplish as a team.

If it hadn't been for the blue boxes, there wouldn't have been an apple. I'm 100% sure of that.

Jobs later reflected.

Wozniak

learned how to work together, and we gained the confidence that we could solve technical problems

and actually put something into production. However, their partnership was not without

friction, even in the early days. In 1975, before Apple was formed, Jobs and Wozniak worked together

on a project for Atari, designing a prototype for the arcade game breakout. Jobs was paid a bonus by

Atari for reducing the number of chips in the game circuitry, a task that Wozniak brilliantly

accomplished. However, Jobs failed to tell Wozniak about the full bonus and paid him only a small

fraction of the reward. Wozniak would not learn of this deception until years later, after Jobs became

famous. I cried, I cried quite a bit when I read that in a book, Wozniak admitted, upon discovering

that his friends did not learn about his own.

had shorted him. By 1975, the microelectronics revolution was underway. The introduction of

the first hobbyist computer kit, the Altair 8800, had created a buzz among Silicon Valley.

Wozniak became an active member of the Homebrew Computer Club, a community of electronics hobbyists

that met to share ideas. Inspired by the possibilities, Woz set out to design his own

computer. He later said, I was very skilled at a certain kind of computer design. I knew I'd build

a computer when it was possible. That year in 1975 was the year it was possible. Working nights and

weekends, Wozniak achieved something astonishing. He developed a prototype for a personal computer

with a keyboard and video display that was far cheaper and more capable.

than the Altair. He handled everything from the circuit design to writing the software,

essentially creating the template for the first modern computer by himself. When he showed off

his hand-built computer to the homebrew club, fellow enthusiasts were impressed by its elegant

simplicity and power. Wozniak initially intended to give away the design freely to his homebrew

peers. I designed the Apple One because I wanted to give it away for free to other people, Wozniak

said. This was my way of socializing and getting recognized. I had to build something to show other

people. It was Steve Jobs who pushed Wozniak to think bigger. Jobs saw commercial potential in

Wozniak's computer, even if Wozniak himself didn't. In early 1976, Jobs convinced his friend that they

should form a company.

to sell the computer instead of giving the design away.

They needed to raise capital to get started.

Jobs sold his Volkswagen van,

and Wozniak sold his HP Scientific Calculator

to raise a few hundred dollars of seed money.

Along with a third co-founder, Ronald Wayne,

who soon bowed out,

they officially founded Apple Computer Incorporated

on April 1st, 1976.

Their first product was Wozniak's creation,

which they dubbed the Apple One.

It wasn't a polished personal computer as we think of today,

but rather a bare-bones computer board

that hobbyists could buy and add their own keyboard and screen.

Jobs managed to secure an order for 50 Apple One boards

from a local computer shop named The Byte Shop,

spelled B-Y-T-E,

assembling them in his parents' garage.

Each Apple One board

was priced at $666.66, a number Wozniak chose for its repeating digits. The Apple One proved

there was a market for Woz's innovative design. Wozniak immediately set to work on an improved

design, a machine that would truly be a consumer-friendly personal computer. The result

was the Apple II, introduced in 1977. Apple II was a breakthrough. It was a fully assembled,

ready-to-use computer in a plastic case with a built-in keyboard and the ability to display

color graphics on a television screen. This was nearly unprecedented at the time. Most other

microcomputers were sold as kits or were far less user-friendly. The Apple II became wildly successful,

especially after the introduction of the first killer app.

a spreadsheet program called VisiCalc that drove business customers to buy Apple IIs by the

thousands. By 1980, Apple had grown from two guys in a garage into a wildly profitable company.

When Apple held its initial public offering, IPO, in December 1980, the computer's stock value

instantly made Wozniak and Jobs both multi-millionaires. Through the years,

Wozniak's key contributions were indispensable. He had designed the hardware and the circuit boards

for the Apple I and Apple II largely on his own, and he even wrote the basic software interpreter

for the Apple II from scratch. Apple's early employees and investors recognized that Wozniak's

engineering feats gave the company its head start into the market. The Wizard of Woz became

a fitting nickname, as he was the quiet genius behind Apple's first two products.

Then in 1985, President Ronald Reagan awarded Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs the National Medal

of Technology, honoring their pioneering work in personal computing. As Apple grew successful,

the partnership between Wozniak and Jobs evolved in complex ways. They had started as close friends

with a common vision, but their personalities and priorities were very different. As Wozniak

himself put it, Jobs and I were always different people, right from the start. We were very similar

in certain ways, but Steve was more a part of the counterculture, and I was more mainstream.

Feet on the ground, none of these drugs and all that. When Apple was founded, these differences

became a strength.

they complimented each other. Yet as the stakes grew higher, some conflicts and philosophical

clashes emerged. One notable conflict came around the time of Apple's IPO in 1980. Jobs and Apple's

board decided not to offer early stock options to several key employees who had been with the

company since the garage days. Wozniak deeply disagreed with this exclusion. In an act that

showed his generous character, Wozniak took personal responsibility to correct what he saw as an

injustice. He quietly gifted $10 million worth of his own Apple stock to those early employees who

had been left out, saying it was the right thing to do. Another strain on their partnership was simply

the drift of their life goals. In February 1981, Wozniak survived a serious plane crash that left him

with.

multiple injuries, and temporary amnesia.

During his long recovery, Waz stepped back from day-to-day work at Apple.

He took time to enjoy life, even sponsoring a massive open-air rock concert

known as the U.S. Festival in 1982 and 1983, and explored philanthropic interests.

By the time he recovered and returned to Apple in 1983,

the company had grown much larger and more corporate.

In 1985, not long after Apple launched the Macintosh,

Wozniak decided to leave Apple.

Steve Jobs later reflected on his bond with Wozniak,

acknowledging that despite any disagreements, it was profound.

When you work with someone that close, there's a bond.

And even though he may not be your best friend as time goes on,

there's something that transcends even friendship.

Leaving Apple at just 34 years old, Steve Wozniak pursued a quieter but equally fulfilling path.

Financially secure and famous in tech circles, he returned to Berkeley under the pseudonym Rocky Raccoon to finally finish his bachelor's degree in 1986.

Wozniak also continued to indulge his inventive side by starting and supporting new ventures.

In 1987, he founded CL9, a company that created the first programmable universal remote control, a far cry from computers, but an example of Wozniak's wide-ranging curiosity.

In 2002, he started Wheels of Zeus, WOZ, a company developing wireless GPS technology, because he was intrigued by the potential of wireless gadgets.

In 2008, he became chief scientist at Fusion-IO, a data storage startup, lending his name and

expertise to cutting-edge tech once again.

He also published an autobiography, I Was, sharing his story in his own words.

Despite being a self-described engineer at heart, Wozniak didn't entirely shy away from

the spotlight.

He made playful appearances on reality TV, like a stint on Dancing with the Stars and

regularly speaks at tech conferences, where he is revered as an elder statesman of Silicon

Valley.

In 2017, he launched Woz-U, an online tech education platform designed to train software developers

and inspire the next generation of engineers.

And in 2020, he co-founded F-Force, a startup focused on blockchain.

based energy efficiency investments, showing that even in his 70s, he hadn't lost his drive

to innovate. He has been a vocal supporter of open access to technology and the right to repair

movement, arguing that people should be able to understand and tinker with devices they own,

much as he did in the 1970s. As of this recording, Steve Wozniak is in his mid-70s,

still as humble and curious as the young Woz who built a computer for fun in a garage decades ago.

His story, from a Silicon Valley kid building gadgets, to a young man launching a world-changing

company, to a seasoned philanthropist and teacher, underscores how a passion for engineering

and staying true to one's values can leave an enduring mark on the world.

Written, researched, and recorded by me, the Was This Even Necessary Podcaster.

If you are listening in an app that lets you rate shows, please take a minute to rate this one.

I would truly appreciate it.

I mentioned it last episode, but if you're looking for a great movie that covers the early days of Apple and Microsoft,

with some creative liberties of course, check out Pirates of Silicon Valley.

That's it, take care, and I'll see you next time.