Steve has made a fortune. How to make billions - Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak: an apple for two. About open source

). In fact, he is one of the developers of the first personal computer. His inventions and ideas can be considered an invaluable contribution to the development of computing systems. Steve Wozniak created the Apple I and Apple II personal computers, which became extremely popular among the users of that time.

Biography

1976-1989

With his school friend Steve Jobs, Wozniak organizes a company for the production and assembly of PCs - this happened on April 1, 1976. In 1980, the Apple II computer, which went on sale, made Wozniak and Jobs millionaires.

While flying a small plane in 1981, Wozniak was in a plane crash. In connection with the accident, he developed retrograde and temporary atherograde amnesia. Consistent with this fact, the fuss was forced to leave Apple. However, in 1983 he returned back and managed to work for another two years, after which he created his own company to develop remote controls for household use - in other words, remote controls. His CL-9 company existed until 1989. During this time, Wozniak managed to graduate from the University of Berkeley, which he did not manage to do during the formation of the Apple empire, and received a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering and IT. Moreover, today Steve Wozniak is giving lectures on a voluntary basis to fifth-year students.

2008

Steve Wozniak on Apple's early years, 2008

2018

Selling all bitcoins

In January 2018, speaking at the Nordic Business Forum in Stockholm, Steve Wozniak stated that he sold all the bitcoins that he had previously bought. The Apple co-founder decided to get rid of the cryptocurrency because, he said, he didn't want to get nervous watching the course change.

According to Wozniak, he acquired bitcoins in the summer of 2017, when their price was $ 700 per unit. The businessman did not specify the size of the purchase and only added that he decided to purchase digital currency as an experiment.

Soon, the bitcoin rate began to rise, and when it reached almost $ 20 thousand, Wozniak decided to sell all the crypto savings.

During his speech at the Nordic Business Forum, the engineer also noted that he was never interested in money and was not involved in trading stocks.

In October 2017, at the Money20 / 20 conference, Steve Wozniak stated that he "admires" bitcoin and considers it a potentially better store of value than gold or US dollars.

According to Wozniak, the limited number of bitcoins is a big plus of this cryptocurrency, while the money issued by the state, as well as precious metals, cannot boast of this.

Stealing 7 bitcoins

In February 2018, Steve Wozniak said that unknown fraudsters stole his bitcoins from him. The Apple co-founder was unable to recover the stolen funds due to the peculiarities of cryptocurrencies and the use of stolen credit cards.

Blockchain reveals who owns bitcoins, but that doesn't mean that the risk of fraud is out of the question. I had seven bitcoins that were stolen by scammers. Someone bought them from me online and paid with a credit card and then canceled the payment. It was that simple. They used a stolen card, so they couldn't get the money back, ”Steve Wozniak said during his speech at the Global Business Summit in New Delhi, India.

At the time of Wozniak's announcement, seven bitcoins were worth about $ 74,000.At some point in time, the value of this cryptocurrency reached $ 20,000.In this case, Wozniak's lost profit could be measured at $ 140,000. True, at one time he bought bitcoins for $ 700 apiece.

Canceling a Bitcoin transaction is often impossible, and only the recipient can refund the amount. In the case of credit cards, holders have the right to dispute the transaction, for example, if it is certain that the transaction was never completed. However, in the case of a stolen card transaction, it is almost pointless to demand a refund.

According to Wozniak, the virtue of bitcoin is that the cryptocurrency is "not governed by governments", is "mathematical and clean" and "it cannot be changed."

The businessman warned that the blockchain that determines the owners of the cryptocurrency does not guarantee protection against theft or fraud. However, he still bought and then sold bitcoin.

The Apple co-founder has changed his mind about modern technologies and new products more than once. So, before he was afraid that machines would deprive people of work, but then he realized that artificial intelligence is significantly behind humans in development.

Apple vs. Ethereum

In May 2018, Steve Wozniak compared the blockchain platform with Apple and said that the technology could repeat the revolutionary path of an American corporation. More details.

State

Home of Apple founder is up for sale

In March 2013, the Los Gatos home previously owned by Apple founder Steve Wozniak was up for sale again, SFGate reported. The house has six bedrooms and six bathrooms, the building was specially built for Wozniak according to the author's design in 1986. The area of the house is 7.5 thousand square feet, and the plot is 1.19 acres.

The house has already changed owners several times, but still retains the charm of its ultra-modern design. Those who currently own the home initially put it up for sale at the end of 2012 for $ 5 million, but could not find buyers. Making a new attempt to sell the building, they charged a lower price - $ 4.395 million.

There are many other interesting details in the house. For example, a huge open-air swimming pool, as well as a spacious play area for children. The house is well designed to use natural light, for example, the kitchen area has a transparent insert right in the dome of the roof, and one of the bedrooms has a wall-to-wall window overlooking the surrounding park.

Los Gatos is a small town in Santa Clara, California. The population of the city was about 30 thousand people in 2010. The city is located near Silicon Valley. The cost of real estate in the city ranges from $ 1 million in downtown to $ 15-30 million in the center.

Wozniak's roots are Polish. In this regard, his real name does not read like Stephen, but rather like Stefan.

Steve Wozniak is a member of the Silicon Valley polo team.

Wozniak's favorite game is Tetris.

One of Wozniak's quotes ("Don't trust a computer that can't be thrown out of the window") can be found in the computer game Civilization IV in single-player mode.

On March 9, 2009 the premiere of the next show "Dancing with the Stars" took place (there is an analogue on Russian television - "Dancing with the Stars"). Along with Denise Richards, Belinda Carlisle, Lil Kim and Steve-O, Steve Wozniak also performed. His partner is Karina Smirnoff, a professional dancer from Kharkov (Ukraine).

Wozniak dated actress Kathy Griffin for a while, and appeared several times in the TV series "Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List". In June 2008, Katie officially announced on The Howard Stern Show that she and Steve were no longer a couple.

Wozniak voiced the character of the first episode of the animated series "Code Monkeys" about game developers, which depicted Steve's parody of himself. He also took part in the recording of the 12th episode in the same capacity.

Together with his good friend Steve Jobs, he perfected John Draper's phreaker technique and designed the Blue Box, a device capable of producing signals at the frequencies needed to trick the phone system into making free calls. According to some reports, colleagues not only sold "blue boxes", but also entertained themselves through international calls - in particular, they called the Pope on behalf of Henry Kissinger.

Steve Wozniak is a lesser known in wider circles, but no less significant founder of Apple corporation. He is also called The WoZ and Another Steve. Moreover, it was Wozniak who developed the first computer of the current IT giant.

Woz is a true inventor, an engineer who strived to solve problems in a creative way. Even before the advent of Apple, his talent had already been put to good use.

“I was an engineer at HP developing the iPhone 5 at the time, their engineering calculators. I had many friends and a good reputation there. I have created things for people all over the country for entertainment, including the first hotel movie rental system and SMPTE timecode readers for the commercial video world, ”recalls Steve Wozniak.

Childhood, education, hobbies

Steve Wozniak was born on August 11, 1950 in San Jose (California), the son of an engineer, his mother is Margaret Elaine Kern (born 1923) from Washington. His father, Jacob Francis "Jerry" Wozniak (1925-1994) from Los Angeles, a California Institute of Technology graduate, worked as an engineer for Lockheed, developing missile guidance systems. It was his father who instilled in young Steve a love of electronics.

I felt like I knew secrets that no one else knows.

At school, the boy loved most of all to collect and disassemble existing calculators, radios and some other electronic devices. In 4th grade, Wozniak received his radio amateur license, and in the eighth he assembled a complex calculator that won first prize in a city competition run by the BBC.

In 1975, a computer called the Altair 8800, developed by MITS, appeared on the market. By that time, Wozniak was already working for the well-known Hewlett-Packard company.

According to him, in the company they had only one computer, which was intended to be used by about 80 engineers who were constantly standing in line. Steve Wozniak understood how important it was for a technology company to be equipped with the necessary equipment. But then, not everyone could afford to buy a computer for $ 400.

In ease of use, the Apple I was years ahead of the Altair 8800. The latter lacked a display and no real data storage. The computer received commands using switches (one program could require several thousand switches, performed without a single error), and its output device was a set of blinking lights. The Altair 8800 was perfect for the hobbyist of electronics. For this kind of people, its nature, requiring compulsory assembly, was just a specific feature, but, unfortunately, it was completely unsuitable for the general public.

In contrast, Wozniak's computer was a fully assembled and working device, on board which was a $ 20 MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor and ROM. To get a real PC, all that was left was to add some RAM, keyboard and monitor.

Apple I commercial success and company formation

Steve Jobs had ambitious plans for Wozniak's new computer. He decided that the Apple I could not only be gifted, but sold as a finished PC.

Soon, Jobs and Wozniak received their first order for 50 computers from Paul Terell, owner of the Byte chain. According to legend, the assembly and debugging of the first batch of computers was carried out with the help of relatives and friends in Jobs's bedroom, and later, when all the free space was taken, they moved to Jobs's garage. However, in 2014, Wozniak told the truth: such a complex production required a serious material and technical base, so the Hewlett-Packard laboratory was used.

The Apple I computer was listed for sale at $ 666.66. Jobs and Wozniak soon sold about 250 of their first computers.

Soon Steve Jobs proposed to create his own company and sell Wozniak's invention, but move from handicraft to industrial production. Wozniak was skeptical at first, but Jobs knew how to convince him. He did not lure Wozniak with the profitability of the project, but simply said that it would be an exciting adventure, and even if they went bankrupt, they would at least be able to tell their grandchildren that they owned their own company.

"When you do things for your pleasure, nothing stops you from being completely creative and genius."

On April 1, 1976, Jobs and Wozniak registered Apple Computer. To do this, they sold their valuables (Wozniak, for example, sold an HP scientific calculator, and Jobs sold a van (Volkswagen), rescued $ 1,300.

Wozniak could now focus on fixing flaws and expanding the functionality of the Apple I.

The Apple I was the fifth time that something I created (rather than assembled from someone else's schema) was monetized by Jobs. My game Pong gave him his job at Atari, but he was never an engineer or programmer. I have been a regular member of the Homemade Computer Club since its inception, and Jobs was unaware of its existence. I took my schemes to Club meetings and showed them there, having great success. I was not unsociable, although I was shy in my relationships with others.

Wozniak retired from Hewlett-Packard and became vice president in charge of research and development at Apple.

The opportunity to create a large company overnight still exists, but we founded Apple at such a unique moment in time when 1 person could single-handedly assemble all the parts and build a computer. Those days are over. An inventor will develop an idea whether he is hired by a large company or not. The process itself is important to him. As I look at the work experience and education requirements for getting into Apple, I understand that Steve Jobs and I would never have been hired here.

Apple II

Its new design had to preserve the most important characteristics: simplicity and ease of use.

In the new Apple II computer, Wozniak introduced high-resolution color (raster) graphics. Now his computer could display not only text and symbols, but also images: “I added the ability to output in high resolution. At first it was only two chips, because I didn't know if it would be useful to people. "

By 1978, he was also designing the low-cost Disk II floppy disk controller. Together with Randy Wigginton, he wrote Apple DOS and the file system. Shepardson Microsystems was brought in to create a simple console interface for its DOS.

Besides hardware development, Wozniak wrote most of the software that ran for Apple. He wrote the advanced programming language Calvin, a set of virtual instructions for a 16-bit processor known as SWEET16, and the computer game Breakout, which caused the addition of sound.

In 1980, Apple went public, making Jobs and Wozniak millionaires. For the next several years, the Apple II was Apple's main source of income and ensured the company's viability as its management took on much less lucrative projects such as the ill-fated Apple III and the under-lived Apple Lisa computer. Thanks to the robust revenues from the Apple II, the company was able to develop the Macintosh, bring it to market, and make it its core technology.

In Jobs (2015), Woz repeatedly asks Jobs to mention the Apple II team at the launch of the new Mac computers:

“Just mention the main guys !!! This is an important milestone in the history of personal computers. Everything here is built thanks to the Apple II. "

Interrupted flight

After Woz crashed in a plane in 1981, he effectively left Apple. According to Wozniak, he simply lost interest in her and took up more attractive projects.

Creativity is not about doing something familiar. This is when you have ideas on how to do something that you have never done before. And you take resources and do something that never existed before.

Steve Jobs was furious. He in every possible way interfered with the new endeavors of Steve Wozniak, but he could not return his friend to his native company. By the way, Woz is still listed as an Apple employee and even receives a salary.

In 82-83, Stephen sponsored two large-scale rock festivals "The US Festival", which is a unique fusion of high technology, music, people and television. He attracted such rock mastodons as Scorpions, VanHalen, U2, MotleyCrue, JudasPriest.

Few people know that Wozniak was the main initiator of the famous teleconference between the USA and the USSR, which took place in 1982.

In 1983, he returned to Apple as chief engineer and developer.

12 years after the company was founded, on February 6, 1987, Wozniak leaves Apple again, this time for good.
Wozniak then founded a new venture, CL9, which developed remote controls. It launched the first universal remote controls on the market. Out of anger, Jobs threatened his suppliers to end their business with Wozniak, or they would lose their business with Apple.

He found other suppliers to replace those with whom he had worked for four years and was deeply disappointed in his closest friend.

Wozniak went into teaching (he taught fifth grade students) and charitable work in the field of education. After leaving Apple, Wozniak donated all of his money to the technology program for the Los Gatos School District (the district where Steve lives and where his children attend school). Unuson (Unite Us in Song) is an organization that Steve founded to organize two National Festivals and is now mainly used by him for his educational and philanthropic projects.

In 2001, he founded Wheels Of Zeus to create wireless GPS technology that would "help ordinary people find ordinary things." In 2002, he joined the board of directors of Ripcord Networks Inc., which includes all Apple “alumni”.

Later that year, Wozniak became a member of the board of directors at Danger Inc., the creator of Hip Top (aka SideKick from T-Mobile).

Personal life and new hobbies

In 1981, Wozniak crashed on his Beechcraft Bonanza while taking off from the Santa Cruz aircraft fleet. The result was a complex form of amnesia. Short-term memory suffered greatly, so Wozniak did not remember either the plane crash itself or the time he spent in the hospital. He did not even remember that he became a member of the Masonic order in California after his wife. Stephen tried to recover his memory bit by bit. After his fiancée Candy Clarke told him about the accident and that they flew to San Diego, for the rings ordered for the wedding, the memory returned to Woz.

Oddly enough, Wozniak calls games on the Apple II another remedy for his cure. After the disaster, Stephen decided not to return to Apple. He married his "Superwoman" (as he called Candy) and decided to finish his studies at the University of California.

His diploma was written out in the name of Rocky Clark - such a pseudonym Wozniak took for himself during his studies, combining the nickname of his beloved dog Rocky and his wife's maiden name.

In 1987, Stephen and Candy, who are raising three children, divorced. And in the 90th year, Wozniak married the former head of the cheerleading team Susan Mulkern. In 2000, the couple broke up.

And Steve Wozniak loves good TV shows to the point that he even played himself in the second episode of the fourth season of the TV series The Big Bang Theory.

Woz is always trying to improve, invent new things and do unexpected things. For example, in 2009, the inventor entered the Dancing with the Stars program. Although I could not reach the final of the project.

Currently, Wozniak lives in Los Gatos (California, USA) with his wife Janet Hill.

Los Gatos is a small town in Santa Clara, California, USA. The population of the city was about 30 thousand people in 2010. The city is located near Silicon Valley. The cost of real estate in the city ranges from $ 1 million in downtown to $ 15-30 million in the center.

Awards

To date, Wozniak has received many awards and degrees for his contributions to the development of the US computer industry.

In 1985, Wozniak received the National Medal of Technology from President Reagan.
In 97th became a member of the Museum of Computer History and a sponsor of the Children's Museum of Discovery. The street leading to the Museum now bears his name - Woz Way.

In 2000 he was inducted into the National Invention Hall of Fame.

For his contribution to technology, Wozniak was awarded a number of honorary doctorate degrees in engineering:

University of Colorado at Boulder: 1989

North Carolina State University: 2004

University of Kettering in Flint: 2005

New Southeastern University at Fort Lauderdale: 2005

Higher Polytechnic School of Litoral in Guayaquil, Ecuador: 2008

Michigan State University: 2011

Concordia University Montreal, Canada: 2011

University of Santa Clara: 2012

Camilo José Cela University in Villanueva de la Cañada, Spain: 2013

National Engineering University in Lima, Peru: 2013

The co-founder of the most valuable company in the world - Apple - and the developer of the first commercially successful personal computer explained to RBC why people will not become immortal, will not turn into cyborgs and will not give jobs to robots

Steve Wozniak (Photo: Anton Sergienko / RBC)

Steve Wozniak is one of the most famous figures in the IT industry. In 1976, together with Steve Jobs and Ronald Wayne, he founded Apple, which soon launched the first model of the computer of the same name on the market (it is believed that Wozniak developed hardware for a computer almost alone). Steve Wozniak currently works as an engineer and scientist, collaborating with a number of companies and non-profit associations. . He is also known as a futurist: for example, Wozniak, back in 1982, was able to predict the appearance of portable PCs (laptops) in the future. He is still considered one of the leading experts in technology development. Steve Wozniak visited Moscow on April 4, 2018 to participate in the AMOCONF-2018 conference, organized by amoCRM.

"I am sincerely sorry that the development of computers has led to the emergence of surveillance tools."

- Mr. Wozniak, what technologies do you think will change the world in the coming years?

- I can't say that I know any secret technologies - you and I have heard about all the most important ones for this day hundreds of times. As Moore's Law (observation of Intel founder Gordon Moore, according to which the number of transistors that fit on a chip doubles every two years .-- RBK) is approaching its limit, more and more attention will be paid not to hardware, but to the development of new programs, optimization of algorithms, data processing and everything that will allow computer technology to bring more benefits to people. This is, in particular, the blockchain, which allows in a completely different way than before to track all user actions within the system, as well as the payment channels built on it. It is also machine learning (a class of methods for creating artificial intelligence, a characteristic feature of which is not a direct solution to any problem, but learning in the process of solving many similar problems. - RBK), which will play an ever-increasing role in our daily life.

But any benefit has a downside - society becomes "plastic": we are more and more alike, we have less creativity, individuality, independence. Even the houses we live in are basically the same. And the digital revolution makes us more and more technology-dependent and in some ways more alike.

- How justified are the fears that Big Brother, using "big data", will know literally everything about us? Governments, companies and other stakeholders are already actively monitoring people through their own electronic devices.

- I think this problem is very important, very serious. And I am sincerely sorry that the development of computers, which I had a hand in, has led to the emergence of surveillance tools that many people do not even know about. I have always been committed to liberal values and, as you know, I am one of the founders of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit organization that, in particular, defends the rights of people to ensure that companies do not share their personal information with third parties. The constitutions of different countries define what the government can and cannot do. And in the legislation of many countries, the right of people to privacy is enshrined - no one has the right, say, to wiretap telephone conversations and observe what they are doing at home, without a court order. And I don't like the fact that modern technical capabilities make it easy to violate what the law tries to guarantee us. One day people will have to start fighting for their rights - to stand up and tell the state: this will not work.

- Will cybercrime become a much more dangerous threat in the future than it is now?

- Cybercrimes are becoming more widespread and dangerous from year to year, and in the near future the situation will only worsen. I think that we must quickly limit the possibilities of committing them - as has happened previously with other types of crime. We must have time to do this before the situation gets out of control. Of course, you can never nullify the chances that someone will hack into the network you are using, steal valuable information, your money, personal data from there, or harm people in any other way. How it is impossible to reduce to zero, say, cases of car theft. But over time, we will be able, for example, to build a blockchain system in which any serious action will require confirmation from users. Such systems would be nearly impossible to hack. Now they are impossible due to technical limitations, but I am sure that sooner or later they will appear. True, in order for them to work, we will have to gradually rebuild the entire Internet. But it will become truly safe.

Tops and roots

Stephen Gary Wozniak was born on August 11, 1950 in San Jose, California. He owned 45% of the shares of Apple Computer (now Apple Inc.), but to date, Wozniak has less than 1% of the company's shares. In 1981, he got into a plane crash, after which he retired from participating in the management of Apple. Subsequently, Wozniak was involved in a number of projects, most of which never became commercially successful. In 2002, Wozniak co-founded Wheels of Zeus, a “physical reality finder” that would help people find the everyday objects they need. The project's technology used GPS tags that could be attached to a suitcase or keys, and a special search device that could track the location of these items. The project managed to attract $ 6 million from venture capital companies, but could not get promoted. In 2006, he stopped working. Later, Wozniak was involved in projects such as Acquicor Technology, Fusion-io, and Primary Data, most of which he was involved in scientific research management. But so far all these projects have not turned into a large-scale business.

Wozniak has not been formally fired from Apple and continues to be among the employees, receiving from the company a salary of $ 120 thousand a year and appearing at some official events. According to Wozniak himself, under the terms of his contract with the company, the only person who could fire him was Steve Jobs.

In 2017, Wozniak's fortune was estimated at $ 100 million, a modest figure compared to the $ 11 billion that his former partner Steve Jobs owned at the time of his death in 2011. However, Wozniak himself does not consider money a measure of success in life. “I don’t invest. I don't do that kind of stuff, ”Wozniak told Fortune last year. “I don’t want to be around money, because it can destroy my values.”

"We cannot make an artificial copy of the brain."

- Many people are afraid that robots will soon take their jobs. You used to talk a lot about the dangers of artificial intelligence, but last year you changed your mind dramatically and began to say that robots will bring a lot of benefits to humanity. Why?

- Yes, that is right. I used to think that robots would quickly take jobs away from people, pushing them to the margins of society. But, following the development in this area, I realized that artificial intelligence can never completely replace humans. I look around and see a high level of employment. Labor automation began 200 years ago, when the first factories appeared in Manchester, which sewed cheap clothes using machines. And even then, people were afraid that the machines would take their jobs, but this did not happen.

Steve Wozniak (Photo: Tony Avelar / Bloomberg News)

Yes, robots will take jobs from people in some areas, but in other areas, robotics itself and other digital disciplines will create new vacancies. For example, you will need specialists who will program robots, develop new models of them, and so on. I am sure that society will always find an opportunity to give people work, to benefit from any new technology for the society itself.

- Many futurists believe that our generation will already face a technological singularity, when technological progress becomes so rapid and complex that it will be beyond the reach of human understanding. What will happen next - people will merge with robots into some new forms of life, become a kind of cyborgs?

- On a very limited scale. I do not share the enthusiastic views of people who believe that man and machine will merge into a single organism. Of course, we will be able to put nanodevices in our body that will solve various health problems. But in fact, this will be the development of long-known things - such nanodevices will be able to deliver, say, antibiotics and other drugs to the body. But in order to penetrate into the sphere that truly makes us human - into our brain, into our thoughts, into our memories ... To introduce something new into the brain, we must first understand how all its processes work. I took courses in psychology at Berkeley and was particularly interested in how memory is organized. I can say that no one knows this yet: we do not have a clear idea of how the brain works, how it works, and we cannot make an artificial copy of it that could think. While all this is not there, there can be no question of any fusion of man and machine.

- But what about "digital immortality"? Will people be able to live forever due to the fact that their personality can be rewritten to another medium?

- You mean something like what is shown in the movie "Supremacy" (2014 film, where the hero of Johnny Depp, before dying, creates his digital copy. - RBK)? Here is the same problem as with the singularity - before transferring a person's personality to a new body or computer, and one that will allow this person to preserve consciousness, we must first adequately read the person's memory from his brain. Can we do this? No, we cannot - and for a very long time it will all remain just a fun idea from science fiction novels and films. And even if we understand how memories are encoded in the brain, imagine what mountains of information we will need to read from the brain of each person without damaging or losing anything. In the foreseeable future, it is impossible to imagine that we will be able to solve such a difficult task.

- What do you think about space tourism and private space launches? Will Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk's dreams come true soon?

- It is difficult to name any exact dates. The development of an industry depends on many factors, and the main one is cost. How many people can afford a tourist trip into space?

I would very much like Elon Musk to be able to carry out his plan - to launch ships into space with two hundred people on board at once: that is, to make flights commercially viable, which would be comparable in price to traveling by plane. I would like to see a lot of people and companies working to make space travel affordable. If I could get on a ship and fly to Mars with a one-way ticket, I would. I think that in the future people will be able to move to colonies on other planets in the framework of projects of NASA and other space agencies, as well as in the framework of private projects. But do I think that people will massively move from Earth? No I do not think so.

I'm not at all sure that humanity will live to see interstellar travel. Imagine: for a spacecraft to travel at near-light speed and reach other stars, it requires colossal energy. If we learn to receive such energy, we will probably destroy ourselves faster in a war or other catastrophe.

"Cryptocurrencies and blockchain applications have already become a part of reality"

- What about electric cars and self-driving cars? These technologies are already becoming a part of everyday life.

- The transition from conventional cars to electric ones is most likely inevitable: already now, many states have set dates from which they will ban gasoline-powered cars. But the designers of self-driving cars will have to solve a lot of problems until the moment when such cars finally become truly safe. I will note that [now] most of these models are not autonomous in the true sense of the word - for example, Tesla calls the model it has developed “completely self-driving”, but this is not so - you still need a person who sits in the cockpit and looks, everything whether the autopilot is doing it right.

Steve Wozniak (Photo: David McNew / Reuters)

- In an interview with USA Today TV channel three years ago, you predicted that existing IT corporations (for example, Apple, Google and Facebook) will dominate the market in 2075. Are we heading for a world where an IT startup has no chance of growing into a new Apple?

- I did not mean that they will necessarily dominate, I said that they will still be on the market, remaining large and successful. But something like what happened to IBM can happen to them. At one time, IBM was as huge a company as Apple is today. She now occupies a more modest place, but still makes a lot of money. So there is always a chance to build a new Apple.

- How can you distinguish really promising IT technologies from marketing bubbles? For example, cryptocurrencies - is it a bubble or part of our future?

- It is very difficult to understand, especially if you have some kind of personal interest in the success of the technology and, therefore, emotions about it. It all depends on whether the technology can survive the initial surge of interest in it. Many cryptocurrencies and blockchain applications have already become part of reality. They experienced an initial surge of interest, and now their creators and supporters will have to work to ensure that they become compatible with the existing monetary system and bring people some benefits - for example, allow them to make payments quickly.

Household futurism

From time to time, Steve Wozniak makes predictions about the development of technology. For example, in 2014, Wozniak predicted the dangers associated with the fact that more and more companies store their data in cloud services - in his opinion, in the future this could lead to numerous problems associated with the loss of control over information, including legal ones: "If you use the cloud, nothing belongs to you."

It is noteworthy that the opinion of an engineer on some issues changes with the passage of time - so, back in 2015, Wozniak frightened the dangers that the development of artificial intelligence brings with it: “Like many, including Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk, I think the future is frightening and sad for humanity ... If we build machines to do everything for us, sooner or later they will learn to think faster and get rid of slow people to make companies more efficient. ” However, last year, Wozniak announced that he had had such fears and now believes that artificial intelligence will make our lives better.

Last year, in an interview with CNBC, he predicted that bitcoin will eventually become a better standard of value than gold, since the theoretical number of bitcoins is finite (no more than 21 million), and therefore, they are not threatened with devaluation.

In April 2017, in an interview with USA Today, he made a number of predictions about how the world will look in 2075. According to Wozniak, the housing issue will be solved by new cities that will be built from scratch even in the middle of the desert. Artificial intelligence will become ubiquitous - people will communicate with interactive walls of houses, medical devices will make recommendations and prescribe medications without the help of doctors. Earthlings will create colonies on Mars, but they are unlikely to establish contact with extraterrestrial intelligence by the end of the century.

Stephen Gary Wozniak(Stephen Gary Wozniak), a genius programmer and inventor, was born in the small town of San Jose, California, 08/11/1950 in the family of an engineer and a housewife. After World War II, his parents moved from Ukraine to the United States of America.

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Steve's father - Francis- graduated from the University of Technology and worked as an engineer in the corporation Lockheed, engaged in the development of homing missiles. One of the first inventions Steve Wozniak was a calculator that won a school contest organized by the BBC. To create it Steve learned the Fortran programming language.

Before 1975 Steve studied at several universities: the University of Colorado, the University of Den-As and the University of California, but he dropped out and decided to take up new, at that time, digital development - he created the first, which, according to himself Steve, designed only to impress the Palo Alto Home Computing Club. To get higher education Steve decided after 11 years. In 1986 he graduated from the University of California with an EECS BA.

Development of Wozniak very interested in his friend - who decided that it could make good money. He convinced Wozniak in the fact that you can make good money on such a specific hobby. Steve Wozniak left Hewlett-Packard and became vice president of Apple Computer, incorporated on April 1, 1976. This is how the popular company was born under a simple and understandable name. Apple.

Jobs managed to sell the first batch of computers to a local electronics store, and friends had to sell their own things, including a calculator Wozniak to raise the required amount for the purchase of components. Thus, it became a breakthrough in the industry, far ahead of its main competitor - Altair 8800. The first batch of personal computers was sold for $ 666.66 apiece. At the time, Wozniak had no idea that the price of a computer was tied to the number of the beast - he simply added a 33.3 percent markup to the $ 500 price tag.

First year of work in the company Steve was engaged in the improvement of his brainchild. The next model was all the same simple and easy to use, and also knew how to work with graphics. In 1980, the new product appeared on the market and brought the first millions to friends. Twelve years later, in 1992, the company had annual revenues of $ 7 billion.

In 1978 Wozniak began developing the Apple DOS operating system, and also created the Disk II floppy disk controller. Also Steve worked tirelessly to create various software for Apple DOS and created his own programming language called Calvin. Within 4 days he managed to write the legendary Breakuot game and a set of instructions for the 16-bit SWEET16 processor. After a plane crash in 1981, Steve was forced to retire from the business of the company. During this time, he sponsored two major rock festivals featuring rock legends VanHalen, U2, MotleyCrue, Scorpions and married Candy Clarke, the mother of his three children.

In 1983 he returned to work for the company and worked in Apple before 02/06/1987. Steve owns a stake in the company. After leaving the corporation, Steve created a new company, CL9, to become a leader in remote control, and launched the Unuson (Unite Us in Song) charity foundation. Steve married a second time in 1990 to Susan Mulkern. They lived together until 2000. At present Steve Wozniak lives in Los Gatos, California with his third wife Janet Hill.

Awards, recognitions and achievements

1982 - initiated the USSR-USA teleconference;
1985 - Awarded the National Medal of Technology, personally presented by US President Ronald Reagan;
2000 - Enrolled in the National Inventors Hall of Fame;
2001 - Awarded the Heinz Prize and founded the Wheels Of Zeus GPS navigation company;
2004 - received his Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina for his contribution to the development of technology.

Translation

Everyone knows who Jobs is, what he looks like and what he does. Who is Steven (aka WOZ) Wozniak? There is not so much information, in the Russian Wikipedia one paragraph has been written about him, and I have not seen photographs anywhere except in the same Wikipedia. Therefore, I decided that it would also be interesting for you to read about this figure of the computer world in Russian.

Stephan Gary "Woz" Wozniak (born August 11, 1950, in San Jose, California) is an American computer engineer turned philanthropist. His inventions greatly contributed to the personal computer revolution in the 70s. Wozniak founded Apple Computer (now Apple inc.) With Stephen Jobs in 1976. In the mid-70s, he created the Apple I and Apple II computers. The Apple II gained incredible popularity and eventually became the best-selling personal computer in the 70s and early 80s.

Stephen had several aliases such as “The Woz”, “Wizard of Woz” and “iWoz” (pun; play on words with iPod). “WoZ” (short for “Wheels of Zeus”) is also the name of the company Stephen founded. He also created the initial prototype of the classic Breakout game for Atari, in 4 days. He is known for his introverted personality and finds his popularity annoying. Apple Computer also called him "The Other Steve." The more famous Steve is called Steven Jobs, he is the co-founder and CEO of Apple inc. He was also called "Woz" in order to distinguish between Jobs and Wozniak, because they had similar names. Only Jobs's name was Steven, and Wozniak's name was Stephen.

Dawn of Apple

In 1975, Woz left the University of California (he would return there later to complete his EECS studies and receive his bachelor's degree in 1986) and came up with the computer that eventually made him famous. However, he mainly worked to impress the members of the Home Computing Club, which was based in Palo Alto. He did not set himself any lofty goal.

Steve Jobs, his high school friend, had the idea to sell the computer as a fully assembled PC. Wozniak was skeptical at first, but Jobs convinced him - saying that if they did not succeed, at least they could tell their grandchildren that they owned their own company. They sold all their valuables (Wozniak, for example, sold the HP scientific calculator, and Jobs sold the Volkswagen van), raised $ 1,300 and assembled the first prototypes in Jobs' bedroom, and later, when all the free space was occupied, they moved to his (Jobs) garage. Their first computer was an engineering marvel, in the context of 1975 computing. In ease of use, it was years ahead of the Altair 8800, which was introduced earlier in 1975. The Altair 8800 did not have a display and no real data storage. The computer received commands using switches (one program could require several thousand switches, performed without a single error), and its output device was a set of blinking lights. The Altair 8800 was perfect for the hobbyist of electronics. For them, its nature, which required assembly, was actually a special feature ... but, unfortunately, it was completely unsuitable for the general public. On the other hand, Wozniak's computer, which he called the Apple I, was a fully assembled and working device, with a $ 20 MOS 6502 microprocessor and ROM on board. To get a real PC, all that remains is to add some RAM, keyboard and monitor.

On April 1, 1976, Jobs and Wozniak created Apple Computer. Woz retired from Hewlett-Packard and became vice president in charge of research and development at Apple. The Apple I computer was listed for sale at $ 666.66. Jobs and Wozniak sold 100 of their first computers to local dealers.

Wozniak could now focus on fixing the flaws and expanding the functionality of Apple I. His new design was supposed to retain the most important characteristics: simplicity and usability. In the Apple II, Woz introduced high-resolution graphics. Now his computer could display not only text and symbols, but also images: “I added the ability to output in high resolution. At first it was only two chips, because I didn't know if it would be useful to people. " By 1978, he was also designing an inexpensive floppy disk controller. Together with Randy Wigginton, he wrote a simple DOS and file system. Shepardson Microsystems was brought in to create a simple console interface for its DOS.

In 1980, the Apple II went public and made Jobs and Wozniak millionaires.

Beyond the Apple II

For years, the Apple II remained Apple's main source of revenue and ensured the company's viability as its management took on much less lucrative projects such as the ill-fated Apple III and the under-lived Lisa. Thanks to the robust revenues from the Apple II, the company was able to develop the Macintosh, bring it to market, and make it its mainstream technology — eventually supplanting the computer that paid for it all. In this sense, Wozniak can be considered the godfather of "Mac"

In February 1981, Steve Wozniak was involved in an accident on his Beach Bonanza plane while taking off from the Santa Cruz aircraft fleet. As a result, he received retrograde amnesia and temporary anterograde amnesia. He did not remember this incident and did not know that he was in a plane crash. He also did not remember his hospital stay or the things he did after he was discharged. He went about his usual business, but did not remember them. Woz began to piece together information from different people. He asked his girlfriend, Candy Clarke (formerly at Apple), if he was in any kind of disaster. When she told him about the incident, his short-term memory returned. In fact, Woz and Candy were engaged, they ordered wedding rings in San Diego and flew there to get them. Also, in his deliverance from amnesia, Wozniak thanks computer games on the Apple II.

Stephen did not return to Apple after the plane crash. Instead, he married Candy Clark (he called her "Superwoman", possibly because of her Olympic kayak accomplishments in 1976) and returned to UC Berkeley under the name Rocky Clark, Rocky was his dog, and Clark is his wife's maiden name, where he received his degree in 1976. In 1983, he decided to return to Apple's development team and needed a position as an engineer and a driving force for the company.

In 1982 and 1983, Wozniak sponsored two national festivals that celebrated the evolving technology and commonwealth of music, computers, television and humans. They were a combination of a technology show and a rock festival.

Woz and Candy divorced in 1987. At that time they had three children, two boys and a girl. Later, during an alumni meeting, he renewed his relationship with Suzanne Mulkern, the former cheerleader leader (cheerleader). They both got married in 1990, and divorced in 2000.

Careers outside Apple

February 6, 1987 Wozniak leaves Apple again, this time for good. 9 years have passed since the company was founded. Despite this, he is still listed there as an employee and even receives a salary, and he also retained a block of shares. Wozniak then founded a new venture, CL9, which developed remote controls. It launched the first universal remote controls on the market. Out of anger, Jobs threatened his suppliers to end their business with Wozniak, or they would lose their business with Apple.

He found other suppliers to replace those with whom he worked for four years, but was disappointed in his closest friend.

Wozniak went into teaching (he taught fifth grade students) and charitable work in the field of education. After leaving Apple, Wozniak donated all of his money to the Los Gatos School District technology program (the district where Steve lives and where his children attend school). Unuson (Unite Us in Song) is an organization that Steve founded to organize two National Festivals and is now mainly used by him for his educational and philanthropic projects.

In 1985, Ronald Reagan presented Wozniak with the National Medal of Technology.

In 1997, he was appointed a Fellow of the Museum of Computer History in San Jose. Wozniak was the main sponsor and patron of the Children's Museum of Discovery (the street opposite the museum was renamed in his honor, Woz Way).

In September 2000, Wozniak entered the National Inventors Hall of Fame.