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Yeah ... but it's also true that Wozniak is `out of the business' because he wanted to, not because he was forced. It was more his choice to be the one he is (out of all the bussiness-games and stuff), rather than anything else, BTW, I really sympathize Wozniack's outgoing-ness and humbleness. He's really cool.

Ying and Yang-- they are both pioneers in different ways. I deeply respect Woz, but I AGREE with Jobs. Winning is evrything in the end. We still have 95% of the computing populace bogged down in the Microsoft tar pit. We have help people out that "by any means necessary" to quote Malcolm X.

This is why Jobs is the super CEO and Wozniak is out of the business.

Wozniak is out of the business, would still be considered rich by most standards, and gets to do whatever he wants all the time. Plus, Jobs can't buy his way out of being a major league asshole (has he mellowed in old age as the rumors have suggested?).

Do you really think Woz would've gotten where he is without Steve? Being a good engineer can make you comfortable. It'll rarely make you rich, unless you either have other qualities or connections.

Do you really think Woz would've gotten where he is without Steve?

The number of slick marketers outnumber the number of great engineers like Woz. If anything, you can thank HP for passing on buying Woz's Apple.

There are dozens of great engineers working at Apple. There are perhaps thousands more working throughout the tech industry. Yet, there are only a relative handful of people like Jobs, who have built mutli-billion dollar empires. More generally, there are a lot of great ideas out there, with great engineers behind those ideas, that never see the light of day because there isn't someone like Jobs there to capitalize on t hem.

It's interesting that patrons become historical footnotes to the developments they fund.

There are lots of great salesman out there that sell crack. But who had the better odds - Woz meeting up with one of thousands and thousands of VCs, salesman, businessman in the valley that would recognize the greatness of the Apple II or Jobs meeting up with a great engineer like Woz, who had a working home computer, would just let Jobs in for half, and also put up with Jobs antics?

You didn't have to be a svengali to push something like the Apple II, and Woz wasn't isolated in Bumfsck, USA.

How many of those thousands and thousands of businessmen took great ideas and ran them into the ground? How many of those built successful businesses of their great ideas?

Steve Jobs did both. Actually a lot of "successful" business people failed pretty regularly. There are a lot of successful business people in the world. There have been many historically.

Steve Jobs failed with NeXT. Steve Jobs failed at keeping Apple's market share that it enjoyed in the 80s. Steve Jobs failed with Lisa. Steve Jobs failed to work with IBM on licensing NeXTSTEP.

There were/are thousands and thousands of businessmen in the valley that would have easily known what to do with the Apple II - and would have had the means and business acumen to take an obviously great product and put it into millions of households. Mike Markkula had the resources and connections to do it.

I assure you that you are WRONG. I worked for a company that was co-founded by two men I knew personally. One was a brilliant engineer, honest, upstanding. The other was the smoothest talker and charmer you could ever have met. Together their company soared... then the genius left (and I a little later) to form his own company and guess what...

The original company with the smooth talker lived on, the other folded...

You can throw together so-so products and market them well and succeed beyond your wildest dreams... but you cannot build a great product and succeed if you can't convince your own mother of its worth.

That sort of hypothetical is unresolvable. Who knows? What would make anyone think Steve Jobs would be doing something more than selling cars if Steve Wozniak hadn't been his friend? A lot of the '70s/80s computer successes became absurdly wealthy in a short period of time, permitting them to do all sorts of things that they may have otherwise never had the opportunity to do. It's not like either of them urinate pure liquid sunshine. NeXT was a failure. Cloud 9 was not a sparkling success. IT/Ginger/Segway was one of the biggest jokes of the earliest parts of this century. Or bigger than the Internet. I forget which.

What would make anyone think Steve Jobs would be doing something more than selling cars if Steve Wozniak hadn't been his friend?

I don't know. I think the fact that he turned around Apple after his return is an indicator that he actually has a talent for this sort of thing, and didn't just get lucky. Like it or not, it takes some skill to successfully lead a big company like Apple, and while he may be an (allagedly) abrasive asshole, Jobs has that skill. Going by his suggestions, Wozniak obviously doesn't.

If Steve Jobs had never been Steve Wozniak's friend, he never would have been in a place to lead Apple Computer anywhere. Without the initial success of Apple Computer he would have never obtained the capital for NeXT, or Pixar. It has little to nothing to do with liking whether it takes skill to be a CEO of a business. All tasks require skills.

Sure, opportunity is everything. Jobs wouldn't have gotten somewhere if Wozniak hadn't given him an "in". However, the history of computing is full of great engineers like Woz. People like Jobs, who can build a successful business on a great idea, those are much harder to find.

Saying "all tasks require skills" is pointless. Some skills are harder to come by than others. My point is that Jobs has skills that are harder to find than the ones Wozniak has.

My point is that Jobs has skills that are harder to find than the ones Wozniak has.

What is the basis for that statement?

The ratio of the number of successful businesses to the number of technically good ideas out there.

Face it: they both needed each other, it was the use of both their respective skills that made the company what it was. When they didn't need each other any more, they split up. They're both doing what they prefer and are happy with it. Who needs these little bickering matches of "This Steve was more important--- no, this Steve was."

The fact of that matter is that they were both excellent at what they did, they had complementary skills, and they got lucky enough for everything to come together in their favour.

"NeXT was a failure."

I'm not so sure about that. Many people consider the acquisition of NeXT by Apple as the thing that saved the company. In some ways it was a reverse takeover.

Hey Mac OS X for Intel doesn't even support classic! That means NeXT code is more prevalent in the current OS than the original Apple code base.

You may think NeXT was a failure but in the end Steve J had his way...

rayiner: Do you really think Woz would've gotten where he is without Steve? Being a good engineer can make you comfortable. It'll rarely make you rich, unless you either have other qualities or connections.

Being a good businessman implies having good connections, otherwise you have nothing to sell and no one to sell to. (In fact from what I've seen, some businessmen are only connections.)

Do you really think Woz would've gotten where he is without Steve?

That question works in reverse too.

The idolatry of Jobs is not surprising, as he's the most public, easily-worshippable face of Apple, but it can get a bit silly. The way some Mac fans gush about him, you'd think he single-handedly designed the PPC architecture and wrote every line of code in OS X.

This is why Jobs is the super CEO and Wozniak is out of the business. Ideology and multi-billion dollar corporations don't mix...

Totally wrong. In order to be successful you have to have an ideaology, something that makes you different from everyone else and something that you truly believe in. Without it you're simply another faceless corporation that spends billions drifting from one fad to the next without any thought whatsoever.

Of course, it depends what kind of ideology you have, but having one and knowing what you're about is better than nothing at all.

Ideology is different from direction. Direction is abot knowing where you are going, ideology is having specific and rigid beliefs about how to get there. Corporations need to have focus, so they know what needs to be done. At the same time, corprations can't be ideological, but that might prevent them from doing what needs to be done.

Apple is really an excellent example. The x86 transition was, from the business perspective, what needed to be done. Jobs didn't let ideology about "we're different" stop them from doing that.

Edited 2006-02-25 21:22

I watched "Pirates of Silicon valley" the made for TV movie the other evening, whist laid up in a Hotel room on business. Whether the film is entirely fact is debatable, but it does show why Woz left and why Jobs is his own worst enemy. It paints a nasty picture of Gates too... It's worth watching (again?) if you take it with a pinch of salt. Very compelling, almost "The Doors"-esque style in many elements.

Perhaps 5% of the peole have 98% of the ego.

Why does the techy 5% of the market feel that they speak for the other 95%?

Is it because, most of the time, that 5% gets the honor to be the unpaid consultant of said other 95%? Because the other 95% wouldn't know a computer if it bit them in the rear and needs the 5% to tell them that they can't go wrong with < enter computing platform here >?

It's just a thought. Maybe the techy 5% feels they are the voice, since they call the shots when it comes to the casual computer user.

Whoa-- have you OWNED an iPod. Sure they look cool. Sure, the ads are hip. But they SELL becuase they blow away everything else on the market. I plug mine in at the end of the day and-- bamm- automatically, it's filled up with content for the next day. No hastle. I don't CARE if Joe Schmoe general MP3 player gives me 5oo more meg for $25 less.

"As for the x86 Macs: nobody know whether they are going to be succesful. For all we know, they might end up sinking Apple. The jury is totally out on that one, so don't dismiss Woz just as yet"

We do know. They will be successful beyond anyone's imagining. How do we know this? Because the first models out show a SIGNIFICANT speed increase with bump in cost; without being really buggy or anything. Vista is going to look like molasses in january when Microsoft foists it on the market in 6 months, or whenever the current release date is.

But you know that technical ualities alone don't necessarily guarantee success of a product. It is debatable whether PPC-based Macs are technically superior to PCs. Yet, Mac-heads would always buy a Mac, no matter what. Part of the reason is the existing apps, another part is OS X, but there is a big part that is mystique and a bit of elitism (and I don't mind the latter, personally). Who knows whether the Intel-based Macs will have the same, untangeable, quality/dimension.

Just for the record, I didn't mod you down, I think your post was reasonable and civilized. Unfortunately, I can't mod you up, either, I have no mod points left (in fact, I have the impression they somehow vanished since last night).

OK, I grew 1 modpoint, so gave it to you. Fair is fair, and sometimes one has to right what others did wrong.

Even though I still mostly disagree with you ;oP

I thought Woz died in a car accident years ago or something...??

Hehe, no, he was in a serious plane accident years ago. I remember him joking about that at least he got his teeth fixed finally.