Stephen Wozniak

INDUCTED IN THE CLASS OF 2000

Notable accomplishments:

• Designed, with Steve Jobs, the circuit board for the arcade game Breakout for Atari (1976)
• Designed the Apple I kit computer (1976 )
• Co-founded, with Jobs, Apple Computer Company (1976)
• Led development of the Apple II (1977)
• Contributed to development of the Macintosh (1981)

Quotes:
“I designed a game for Atari called Breakout, and that was a really incredible product. That was just so neat, to have my name associated with a product that actually came out in the field in video games. Because this was the start of a whole industry and I wasn’t really a part of it. But I wanted to be a designer and just have some little connection to it.” (Founders at Work, 2007)

“I think Apple goes out of its way to try to enhance his reputation and safeguard the ‘great’ Steve Jobs. Steve was not a nice ‘people person.’ I meet a lot of CEOs who are, and they don’t have these kind of reputations and stories about their background. Think about this: What would Steve Jobs’ legacy be had he been nice to everyone and still have sold great products, which is totally possible? He would just be the hero of all time. But his personality settled in around aged 18 to 23 and it stayed for life. It really almost never changed. So, his way of acting that way and not caring what other people thought about him – which lets you be nastier than you would have been otherwise – that was right there at the start of Apple.” (BBC, Sept. 9, 2015)

“I’m still a gadgeteer at heart. I buy a lot of prominent gadgets, including different platforms of computers and mobile devices, because everything different excites me. I think about what I like and dislike about such things. I think about the course technology has taken since early PC days and what that implies about the future. I think often about possible negative aspects of what we’ve brought to the world. I try to develop totally independent ideas about a lot of things that are never heard in other places. That was my design style too.” (Reddit, 2016)

Suggested reading:
“iWoz” by Steve Wozniak (2006)

“All About Steve Wozniak” by Paul Freiberger and Michael Swaine (2018)

“The Apple II Age” by Laine Nooney (2023)

Learn more:
Woz.org