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Tuesday, December 09, 2014 4:33 PM ET
Apple co-founder Wozniak on tech trends, young Steve Jobs
By Deborah Yao
There are few tech pioneers in Silicon Valley who still remember the old days, and Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Wozniak is one of them.
The jovial engineer spoke at the BMO Capital Technology and Digital Media conference
on Dec. 9, where he regaled the audience with tales of Apple's early days and also
his views on current tech trends. Wozniak, now chief scientist at virtual storage startup Prime Data (and one-time Dancing with the Stars candidate), spoke at a fast clip,
his mind seemingly whirling at high speed.
Wearing a buttoned-up black sports shirt, black jacket and slacks with bright blue Nike
sneakers, Wozniak was greeted like a big celebrity at the conference. Attendees
ogled and snapped photos with him.
In a fireside chat, he was asked where he thought technology trends were headed. "I
would characterize myself as a fan of wearables," Wozniak said.
But he has not yet found a device that is not at least a little bit clunky, a situation that
he believes is changing. Wozniak predicts that technology will keep improving to a
point that it will become an extension of human actions and thought. Devices, he said,
will become "more and more natural to a human. It's not just a tool I have to learn how
to use."
For example, Wozniak said LCD displays could be printed on folding materials,
envisioning a day when people could change the color of their shirt by pressing a
button. He pointed out that Sony already has a watch printed on e-paper that can
electronically change its appearance.
Smart wearables have already come a long way. Wozniak remembers playing around with early versions sporting small screens and sometimes low
speaker volume that frustrated him. He is anxious about trying Apple Watch, which is slated to come out in 2015. "The Apple smart watch might be different
enough to make it, but it's going to be a luxury fitness band. Visually, it looks so different," he said.
Wozniak likes Google Inc.'s Google Glass for its novelty, not practicality. "I really love it as a technologist [but] not as a product that makes any sense for the
world," he said. "It's still more awkward than your phone."
When it comes to mobile payments, he understands why Google Wallet did not gain traction. It was unwieldy to use: Consumers had to buy the phone, run
the right app, type in a passcode and tap the phone on equipment at retail stores, where it was even supported. Wozniak said he went through the steps
and used Google Wallet at 7-11. But when he tried it at a drug store chain, the payment failed to work because while the retailer did support the system, it
did not keep it up-to-date.
He said Google's problem was that it developed the software but not the hardware, thus it depends on smartphone and other manufacturers to embed
mobile payments capability in devices. They did, but only on certain models. Google Wallet was thus limited to a handful of phones.
Apple has the advantage of developing both the software and hardware itself for its mobile payments initiative. As a result, Apple Pay was available
immediately to all its customers through the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. Moreover, Wozniak said consumers do not have to open up the phone to use it. They just
have to tap it against the point-of-sale device.
Asked about his days at Apple, Wozniak revealed early experiences that may have shaped the company's famous obsession for product perfection and
secrecy.
Early on, Apple made the mistake of rushing to market without working out all the kinks first. "We had a lot of failures in the first 10 years at Apple. We only
had one successful product – the Apple II computer," Wozniak. Apple III failed due to some "bad marketing mistakes," he said. For instance, Apple rushed to
market Apple III with scarcely any software.
Marketing, led by co-founder Steve Jobs, drove engineering. But Wozniak said Jobs did not understand computer technology. His talents laid elsewhere. "He
had a beautiful vision, saw where the world was going to go. He was right on," Wozniak said. Jobs could put together disparate pieces of information and
come up with a solution. "He was always able to spot a better way. Almost always," he said.
Wozniak's best memories of Jobs occurred around the time before they started Apple. They were friends who went to concerts together, shared ideas
about the world, talked about technology, built things and joked a lot, he said. "When we started Apple, I had a goal in my life … to just run engineering. I
didn't want to run a business," Wozniak said. "Steve wanted to be an important person. … He became a business man."
Source: S&P Global Market Intelligence | Page 1 of 2
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Jobs always wore a suit in his 20s, an age when "your personality solidifies," Wozniak said. "He remained that [businessman]. Nobody noticed me. I'm just
an engineer."
But Jobs did not do well controlling different parts of Apple's early business and left. When he returned in 1997, Jobs believed that business success came
down to one thing: making good products. While Wozniak did not exactly say so, this could be the genesis of Apple's obsession with perfection.
Wozniak said he also learned another thing at Apple: "Don't show it to Bill Gates before it's ready."
In his biography, Jobs accused the Microsoft Corp. co-founder of stealing Apple's idea for a graphical user interface to form the Windows operating system.
Gates has retorted that Apple got the idea from Xerox.
Ironically, for all of Wozniak's contributions to Apple, he cannot even get fiber broadband service at his home in Northern California. It takes hours to
download a movie from iTunes, he said ruefully.
Source: S&P Global Market Intelligence | Page 2 of 2