Submitted by “Most of the stuff written about Wozniak portrays him as an amiable buffoon. By most accounts, Woz is a talented engineer who got lucky in his early career and became fabulously wealthy. Then he dropped out to be an unsuccessful concert promoter, launch a couple of go-nowhere startups and teach school. It appears Woz has bounced from one thing to another without much commitment or direction. Along the way, he squandered much of his fortune and was a soft touch for every charity and cause under the sun.”
Luck and unluck are two sides of the same coin. We all take a wrong turn in life at one time or the other and it is these wrong turns which are the great teachers which teach us many things in life. So I believe even though Wozniak has met with failure many times, he has come out of his experiences a lot wiser.
Didn’t some one say failure is the stepping stone to success ?
I think you are missing one huge fact, Wozniak as a person, he personally has no desire to gain huge amounts of money, you will see that alot of what he has done is to try and give people who arent as fortunate as him self a chance of making their lives better be it through education or just through giving someone a chance of having an enjoyable time, and to him if that means he lost all his money, as long as it made a difference to their lives i think Wozniak wouldnt have mind the loss of his money.
I never liked Jobs. He seems to much like the slick business type to me. Then I found out what he’s like from articles like these ( http://www.classicgaming.com/features/articles/atariapple/ )
“Even though he admired the design, and admired Jobs for getting the job done, he still did not care for him. Either way, they gave Jobs the $500 plus the bonus – which turned out to be a total of $5,000! Jobs turned around paid an unknowing Wozniak the original $350 they had agreed upon.”
That’s Jobs screwing his friend out his his part of a $5000 bonus for doing a design for Atari! I bring up this story whenever I hear someone express their admiration for the rich, this show just how they get rich – by screwing over everyone they can.
Telling about Woz is that he later mentions just how hurt he was by this, not for the money but just about the betrayal. But these days he doesn’t even hold a grudge towards Steve. That’s the stuff true roll models are made of if you ask me, give me Woz, you can keep the Gates’ and Jobs’ of this world.
Edited for spelling
Edited 2006-02-12 21:02
Without Woz Apple wouldn’t exist today.
Jobs was the better entrepeneur of the two,Woz was and is the most technically profound.
Personally I think that more wealthy entrepreneurs, like Woz, should contirbute back to the community. Yes, we live in a capitalist system, but I ultimately see it as “you scratch my back, I will scratch yours”.
One thing though – what are his failed startups?
The only one I know of is “Danger” with their Hiptop communicator, and that seems to be doing well.
“Woz, should contirbute back to the community”
Oh, and I thought this whole “story” is about how he spent quite a fortune to help startups, organizations and charity, and his teaching years is also a giving back sort of. To me that’s giving back enough, especialyl since he is by no means one of those evil greedy rich.
“Oh, and I thought…he spent…his teaching years…giving…evil”
[Insert flame for insinuating that Woz gave evil here]
hehehe, good one 🙂
I haven’t seen anyone mention http://www.woz.org – his email replies are very inpirational and shows how much integrity he has – a recommended read
As a kid, I worshiped Bill Atkinson, one of the most important men in the development of the Macintosh. Bill wrote lots of UI code as well as early Macintosh applications such as MacPaint and HyperCard (which, IMHO, combined w/ a markup language, *should* have been the basis of what runs the web today). Bill is now a Nature Photographer.
I think Woz was probably naive when he teamed up with Jobs. I’ve read quite a few anecdotes about Woz and Jobs in the days before Apple regarding Jobs taking credit for Woz’s work and failing to share the promised reward. I would have walked away if that were the case with me as well. The statement regarding Woz being the more technically profound and Jobs being the better entrepreneur is probably better phrased as Woz being exploitable and Jobs being willing to exploit.
Also, I think Woz may have just been pushed too hard to stay. It’s entirely common for developers to pursue unrelated industries following a burnout. I finished college in two years when I was 19 and went on to work 7 days a week for a fast growing startup (without funding) developing their infrastructure. I reached a point where I walked away and literally decided to drive a bus for a living (I’m now back in technology).
hmmm… I think you could do much worse! Woz stands higher in my book than jobs or a lot of other names…
Despite the poor choice in words with “worship” I think that Wozniak sets a good example that people should follow. Gates and Jobs are just sitting on their successes and not letting anybody else get the glory for the accomplishments their companies made. Microsoft may have been a one man company with Gates as the leader for a long time but not Apple.
I think Jobs was a fool for dropping out of the PowerPC race just as the Cell processor was coming out but Woz could design a system that would take good advantage of 256k memory windows of local-store and crank out some decent results. The only thing that can save Apple now is if Vista’s DRM drives away a lot of independant developers.
I read that Woz gave back in many ways. I am aware of the charitable endeavors of the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation. Does anyone know how Jobs stands in the charitable world. Just curious.
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Basically you and me give more to charity every year than Jobs does.
He flat out is not a decent human being.
I dont care about bills business dealings (steve jobs are not any better) but at least gates is doing something good with his money.
no this isnt a troll, it is fact. go look up the stats on charity donations… (and jobs is not donating anonymously, thats a joke)
no this isnt a troll, it is fact. go look up the stats on charity donations… (and jobs is not donating anonymously, thats a joke)
I don’t know, as much as I dislike Jobs I wouldn’t be surprised if he privately donated to cancer research. After all that’s something he experienced personally.
I personally don’t think it’s any of our business how much these guys donate, or even if they donate.
We are so quick to jump on the bandwangon and point the finger, but donating is a personal thing, and something that shouldn’t be advertised.
I’m not going to ask each and everyone here how much of their money they donate? That is something you decide to do, and should never be forced into it by anyone!!!
Jobs may or may not donate money, but that isn’t the point. Jobs is Jobs, like him or not…
Bill Gates may donate millions, but he can. I couldn’t care less either way to be honest, that isn’t what makes me admire him or not… If Jobs suddenly donated billions, a lot of people here would still hate him, saying he was doing it to raise his public profile or something. I personally believe that when you give money, you shouldn’t say a thing to anyone about it, not advertise the fact about how good you are…
What kind of freak wants to “worship” another human being?
What kind of freak wants to “worship” another human being?
Christians (Jesus), Moslims (Mohammad), Boeddhists (Gotama Boeddha), GNUists (RMS), Cult-of-mac (Jobs).
I’m only half kidding on the last two.
Errr….dont mean to burst our bubble, but Muslims don’t workship Mohammad – that would be like christians worshiping the 12 apostles 😉
I dont think buddists worship buddah (although on this one I could be wrong)
LOL @ RMS & jobs
Buddhists don’t necessarily worship any person or thing. They just strive for Enlightnement.
-simmoV.
They just strive for Enlightnement.
Would that be E16 or E17?
Errr….dont mean to burst our bubble, but Muslims don’t workship Mohammad – that would be like christians worshiping the 12 apostles 😉
I dont think buddists worship buddah (although on this one I could be wrong)
Well look at the Danish cartoon debat where mulims are saying that any depiction of Mohammad is sacreligious, that’s worship to me. The same goes for Boedddhists and their statues. The fact both guys words are taken as gospel is a big clue too. The actual godhood thing is a sideissue, there’s plenty of christian sects that don’t believe in the godhood van christ for example.
So to draw back to the original point I would say some people worship Jobs for example, not because they believe he’s a god, but because they believe without reservation every word out of his mouth. Even beyond rationality. Hence the term zealot.
Well look at the Danish cartoon debat where mulims are saying that any depiction of Mohammad is sacreligious, that’s worship to me.
You don’t get to define “worship”. Worship has a fairly strict definition in the context of religion, and it involves considering someone to be a diety. Muslims don’t consider Mohammed to be a diety, they revere him as a prophet. The same thing for the Buddhists with regard to Buddah, actually.
Christianity makes a finer point of the distinction than most other religions. Christians worship God, but not Jesus, even though Jesus and God are one. God is worshiped and Jesus is not because God is the diety and Jesus is the man. The distinction between the two is important to consider when using the word “worship”.
Edited 2006-02-13 06:14
Yes. However, whatever the precise sense of worship, can you imagine a headline in any widely read journal that invited us to ‘forget Hewlett, worship Packard’? Its that word ‘worship’ that just raises the hair on the back of one’s neck. 3M, one of the most innovative US companies of the twentieth century. ‘Worship’ one of the founders, and if so which?
What’s interesting about Leander’s article is that he can assume in the headline that there will be a widely shared feeling of religious veneration towards Apple, and the only question will be to which of the Saints and Apostles it will be directed.
It is weird and deeply unhealthy phenomenon, and its the reason many people just want to run a mile when you suggest they should consider buying a Mac.
Christianity makes a finer point of the distinction than most other religions. Christians worship God, but not Jesus, even though Jesus and God are one.
As a matter of fact, Christians do worship Jesus, precisely because they believe he is God. There was a series of controversies about this starting with Gnosticism, then continuing with Arianism, whose details (nature, person, etc.) I won’t get into because of space, time, and topic considerations. 🙂 However, the vast majority of Christians adhere to the Nicene Creed, which puts them in the position of saying: “We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten from the Father, God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God, of one being with the Father; through [Christ] all things were made.” The idea in Christianity is that Jesus must be fully human and fully divine in order to unite God and man.
Certain modern offspring of Christianity dispute this to various extents (Jehovah’s Witnesses being the most famous, identifying Jesus with the Archangel Michael, and therefore not divine), but all “orthodox” or “catholic” Christians affirm the Nicene Creed, and thus the divinity of Christ (note the little-o and little-c).
I’m familiar with the divinity of Christ, but do Christians really worship Christ, or do they worship God? The distinction seems arbitrary, but I was under the impression that the case was the latter.
do Christians really worship Christ, or do they worship God?
Well, if Christ is God… 🙂
I think you’re confusing the issue of God the Father vs. God the Son vs. God the Holy Spirit. Worshipping God is the same regardless of whether we worship the Father, the Son, or the Holy Spirit. The notion of the Trinity is precisely that God is equally present in all three, and rightly worshipped in all three.
Certainly Catholics and Orthodox Christians worship Christ (here I’m using the upper-case c and o), as evidenced by their iconography and their devotion to the presenve of Christ in the Eucharist, which in the Catholic case is quite extreme and is literally characterized as, “worshipping Christ in the Eucharist”.
My experience with Protestantism suggests that the majority of them do the same at the official level. Ordinary Christians, however, are quite unaware of the finer points of Christian theology. In addition, it wouldn’t surprise me to encounter some Protestants who tell you that Christians worship God, “not Christ.” I wouldn’t put those anywhere near the majority, though. There is a huge variety of theology, esp. among American Protestants; some Christians repudiate free will, for example, while others insist on it so strongly that they name their churches “Free Will Baptist”.
You don’t get to define “worship”.
Luckily, nobody here needs to. We have dictionaries to do that. According to Merriam-Webster:
1 : to honor or reverence as a divine being or supernatural power
2 : to regard with great or extravagant respect, honor, or devotion
So, using that, we can recast the title as “Forget Jobs, Let’s Regard Woz With Great Respect”. That sounds like the tone of the article to me.
Please at least have the effort to spell the names of the people you are referring to correctly. Religious stuff ARE very sensitive.
Its muslims, and buddhists and Buddha.
I think buddhists worship Buddha. The buddhist community can have varying ways to worship. Some only worship the starter. However, it is definite that the religion existed before the starter — there are many buddhas instead of just one. Check out wikipedia. Esp in Chinese communities, you have even more deities springing out from everywhere…
I think the muslims don’t actually worship the Prophet. In their Quran they can only worship Allah. To them the distinction is very clear. They do not worship humans.
So, the thing is that religion is the number one thing to avoid in a discussion. You never know when your next comment will start a war. Please be careful.
GNUdists don’t worship RMS, but St. IGNUcius.
That’s a very IGNUrant statement.
GNUdists don’t worship RMS, but St. IGNUcius.
Hehe, I’ll include a little link for those who don’t get the reference : http://www.murphy.nl/~paul/20010123/rms-st-ignucius.html (RMS as St Ignucius of the church of Emacs)
Edit:fixed link.
Edited 2006-02-13 15:08
Two points.
Christ wasn’t entirely human. I haven’t heard of many human beings that can turn water into wine (and loaves into fish), walk on water, heal the sick, and ascend into the sky without some kind of technology assist… ;-p
Christians worship God, not human beings. 😉
I recently met Woz ( see my blog about it http://itorrey.com/index.php?itemid=45 )
Really great guy… and I bet he’s loaded but I met him at Marie Calendars in Mountain View. Crazy! He was very friendly.
The differences between the two is the perfect pairing for a company startup: One who is an outbursting skilled salesman (Jobs) and the other guy who can build what needs to be sold (Woz).
Rarely do you see both qualities in the same person, so no matter who we see as better than the other, Apple wouldn’t have gotten out of that garage back in 1976, if Woz didn’t have Steve and Steve didn’t have Woz.
I think it’s close to the poster model of how to start up a company, so if you’re a technical person thinking about doing that, find yourself a good salesman.
was, and is, an incredible talent.
In the 1999 book, “Apple, The Inside Story; Egomania & Business Blunders,” the author portrayed Woz as the genius behind Apple’s initial technological success with the Apple and entire Apple II line.
The author further states what many already knew:
– Where Woz excelled, Jobs was weak and out of his element.
– Where Jobs excelled, Woz was out of his element.
This was not to say that Jobs is not technical. He is very much so. He is not (and never was) of the same level of Woz.
On the other side, Jobs is an incredible businessman and Woz was not as strong in the business arena.
I always thought of Wozniak & Jobs as a “Martin & Lewis” partnering in the computer world. Seperately, they were okay, but put them together and….
Yahtzee!
my 2 cents.
Yeah, great comments. Jobs and Woz remind me of another successful duo: Gates and Allen. Marketing and technology, two halves of a complete human being. 😉