For many people, once they hear the name “Apple”, Steve Jobs would always be the first thing that comes to mind, since for so many users around the world, Steve Jobs symbolized Apple and was the only one worth mentioning whenever the biggest Tech company in the world was mentioned, but this is not at all true as Apple’s success relied on the efforts of two Steves and not one.
Known by his nickname “Woz”, Wozniak and his back-then business partner, Jobs, decided to launch a company back in 1976 with the name “Apple Inc.” with the hopes that their tiny business can maybe one day become a successful computer manufacturer.
However, despite starting the company together, their roles and what they did for Apple were completely different. Whereas Jobs was known as being a leader and a visionary who took Apple’s big decisions and decided which direction Apple was going to head, Wozniak was the one actually responsible for building and developing the devices to be sold.
He is the person who would sit in an office for hours on end, building the circuits and searching for any means of improving their devices and making them even the tiniest bit more efficient no matter how long that took, and he was indeed great at his job and was widely known as one of the main pioneers of pc manufacturing as everything that Apple achieved was surely built on his product development.
His work for Apple started with the development of the “Apple computer” which was later known as the “Apple I”, and it was the first computer ever that Apple produced. This computer was then used as the base for the “Apple II” which was also made by Wozniak and was a tremendous success, considered by many to be the first-ever successful mass-produced computer, and was a big hit for Apple taking their annual sales from $775,000 to a staggering 118 million dollars and putting Apple on the map as a big company to watch for.
Woz would then go on to lead a few other projects, but throughout this period of time, he grew frustrated and it was only a matter of time before he left.
Wozniak was indeed a genius, and he had a certain way of handling the development of his devices and certain aspects that were really important to him such as keeping everything “open,” as he would say. He wanted things to be easy and accessible to everyone. He wanted to share their designs with the public hoping that users can modify them and make them even better, but one person really did not agree at all with this mentality, and this was the origin of all his problems at Apple.
Jobs had a very different approach when it came to their products, which was that everything should be “closed” or more restricted and that practicality for example was not the biggest concern when it came to their devices.
For example, while designing the Apple II, Wozniak managed to make a computer that had 8 expansion slots, which was very impressive back then and made the computer versatile and capable of doing so much. Jobs did not agree with that approach and told Wozniak that the Apple II should be released with only 2 slots since you would only ever need to connect to a printer and a modem.
Needless to say, Wozniak did not accept that and thought it was a useless decision that can only do them harm. He told Jobs that if the computer was not released with 8 slots, he would take his design and leave, and after this fight, Jobs agreed to that, and Wozniak ended up being right as his computer was a massive success as mentioned before, but these fights and different attitudes were the reason that Wozniak felt drained and no longer enjoyed his work as much.
Wozniak himself said, “that is one of the big drives that Steve had, to keep things closed and self-defined and not really expandable on the outside so much. We started this company with the Apple II, and it was totally open, everything. We published our schematics, our designs, the things people could look at and improve their way, so am totally into that open-Source thinking.”
Again, while creating the Apple III, Jobs’s decisions and limitations made the device a lot worse, and only made Wozniak more frustrated with time, as he decided to make the computer with no fans or air vents and instead use an aluminum base for heat dissipation, and yet again, Jobs was wrong, and this time, as the device was actually made with Jobs’s plan this time, it failed miserably and was an embarrassment as it had so many problems and several hardware issues, with overheating being a big problem due to the lack of a proper cooling system.
After the horrible failure that was the Apple III, both Jobs and Woz believed that they can still redeem themselves if their next project was successful, and that is when, they started working on their newest device, the Macintosh.
Wozniak was leading the project until 1981 when he sadly suffered a plane crash and had to stay away from Apple for 2 years, in which Jobs actually took over the project and was handling their newest device. The device was not looking good when Wozniak returned as Jobs had a lot of impractical solutions and approaches and indeed a very closed design that made Wozniak sure that it would fail.
He was again correct, as Jobs’s ideas caused the device not to succeed, and the Macintosh’s sales would not begin to increase until Jobs would leave Apple in 1985. In fact, one full year after the release of the Macintosh, the Apple II still made 85% of Apple’s revenue, but still, the design team of the legendary device was never accredited by Jobs or even included in any events.
With that, back in 1985, Wozniak finally decided to leave Apple as he grew frustrated, saying that it was “the bane of his existence” and that the company has been going in the wrong direction for 5 years now.
He would then go on to lead a few other projects such as launching “CL 9” and making the first universal remote control. He would also start teaching more.
Conclusions and personal thoughts
At the end of the day, a ship that had two leaders is always bound to sink, and this was the case with Apple. Jobs and Wozniak could not both lead the design process, as this was always bound to create problems and fights. Jobs should have simply trusted Wozniak a bit more and left him to do what he truly excelled at while focusing more on his leadership role which was exceptional as well.
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