The Other Apple Founder
Before Apple went public in 1980, Woz gave away a lot of stock to friends and family, or sold shares at face value to fellow engineers whom he felt weren’t fairly recognized in the stock allocation. In fact, Woz gave away so many shares, he forced the company into an early, possibly premature IPO. (The company had to go public or be in breach of SEC rules dictating private companies can have no more than 500 shareholders.) […]
When I visited Bruce [the proprietor of a private computer museum], he was in the process of organizing his collection. On one dusty workbench sat several old Apple machines and a long cardboard contraption called the “Mac chimney.” A tapered box open at both ends, the Mac chimney was an after-market add-on designed to stop the original Macintosh from overheating. Placed on top of the Mac, it drew heat upward by convection.
Bruce thought it hilarious. It was big and preposterous and ruined the aesthetics of the neat, compact machine — it looked like the Mac was wearing a dunce’s cap.
The chimney was necessary only because Apple cofounder Steve Jobs, the driving force behind the machine, couldn’t stand the sound of a cooling fan. So the Mac shipped without one, even though it needed it, and a lot of users were forced to buy cardboard chimneys to stop their machines melting on their desks.
Bruce thought the chimney was a charming example of Jobs’ uncompromising genius. Jobs wasn’t always right, but he always got what he wanted. Bruce noted that most people couldn’t jury rig their own fan because the case was sealed shut, requiring an unusual screwdriver to crack it open.
Next to the Mac sat an old Apple an Apple II GS Woz Edition — a limited run of the last of the Apple IIs, named in honor of its chief designer. As I reported at the time:
“Damer popped the lid to reveal the GS’ motherboard. It’s a classic Woz design,’ Damer explained. ‘Few chips. Lots of slots. Open.’
“He gestured to the original Macintosh, the brainchild of Steve Jobs, sitting on a bench nearby.
“‘The Mac is from the same time but is the total opposite,’ he said. ‘Jobs closed it up. You need a special screwdriver to open the case. No slots. Closed and proprietary. There’s the two cultures of Apple right there. One open, one closed.’”
I was a big fan of the Apple II series. I was not a fan of the Mac. That cultural difference has a lot to do with it.
Here’s a recent interview with Woz:
After my initial year at Berkeley I started the first dial-a-joke in the Bay Area. Back then you couldn’t really get an answering machine unless you were a movie theater. Even then, you’d have to lease it from the phone company. So that’s what I did. I met my first wife when she called the dial-a-joke line. Usually I’d just turn the machine on, but I happened to answer that time. I said, “I bet I can hang up faster than you,” and hung up. But she called back and we talked. I’ve always been extremely involved in pranking. Some of my pranks are so complicated that they take days, even months, to work out. I think humor is a creative act. Pranks are just a creative form of logic. My iPod is filled with comedy as well as songs.
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