Following the career of Steve “Woz” Wozniak, one can be forgiven if the general impression is of an amiable—perhaps even naive—fellow following his muse over the years, wandering in and out of colleges, marriages, Apple stints, and business ventures. Clearly Woz lacks the single-mindedness and ambition that has driven Steve Jobs to become a billionaire, but Woz has done well enough for himself by trying to do good by others. And in Woz’s worldview, that’s all that counts.
Woz met his first wife through a popular Dial-a-Joke operation he was running from a bank of phones in his Sunnyvale apartment when he worked at Hewlett-Packard. Normally his answering machine played a Polish joke that he had recorded earlier, but Woz happened to be home when Alice Louise Robertson called, so he picked up the phone, identified himself as Stanley Zeber Zenskanitsky, then blurted out, “I bet I can hang up quicker than you,” before slamming down the receiver. Woz won that bet, but Alice called right back and the two hit it off. They were married on January 11, 1976, not long after their playful start. But Wozniak didn’t pay as much attention to his wife as he did the electronics that were his life, and on March 1, 1977, she filed for divorce.
After creating the Apple I and II, Wozniak was regarded as the resident genius at Apple, and he was free to tinker on whatever projects interested him. However, by many accounts, it was hard for him to stay focused on the Apple II. After all, it was never his intention to build a company. He originally created the Apple I so that he could satisfy his long-held desire to have a computer of his own. Once he had accomplished that feat, he wasn’t particularly challenged by churning out revisions and modifications to his original designs. Woz hated having to attend countless meetings, preferring instead to play practical jokes, fiddle with electronics, drive fast cars, and gamble in Nevada’s casinos.
Ever since it became clear to Woz that his ownership in Apple was worth more than he could ever spend, the soft-hearted Woz began giving away 1,000-share blocks of stock to friends, family, and fellow Apple employees whose contributions Woz felt had been overlooked. Woz’s generosity was well intentioned, but it inadvertently forced Apple to go public sooner than had been planned. As president Mike Scott explains, “There are some magic numbers in a company’s history, and one of them is 500 shareholders. Once you have that many shareholders, you must file all sorts of paperwork with the SEC.” Because Woz had been distributing so much stock unbeknownst to Apple’s executives, the firm was on the verge of being a de facto public company, so Scott decided to pull the trigger with an IPO on December 12, 1980 (see “Millionaire Mania”). The spectacularly successful IPO minted 40 new millionaires at Apple, from secretaries (or “area associates”
as they are known in AppleSpeak) to executives. Woz’s ex-wife Robertson certainly couldn’t complain. The stock she got in their divorce settlement
Courtesy of Steve Wozniak
Steve Wozniak, shown here with a framed Apple I, was free to follow his muse at Apple, but it was hard for him to stay focused with all the non-engineering demands upon his time.
Woz’s Wanderings
Woz’s Wanderings
was reportedly worth $42.4 million when Apple went public. For his part, Woz’s remaining shares were valued at $116 million, providing him the funds to fuel his fantasies.
After the IPO, it was even more difficult for Woz to focus on producing at Apple. He was rich beyond his wildest dreams, and he was in love again.
In August 1980, Woz had begun dating an Apple employee named Candice Carson Clark, a former member of the U.S. Olympic kayak team that competed in Montreal in 1976. The two were engaged on Christmas, just after the IPO, and although the future must have looked bright at the time, everything was about to change drastically.
Scott was exasperated at Woz’s perceived goldbricking. He felt the founder was setting an awful example with his lackadaisical work ethic.
Scott asked Randy Wigginton to write an Apple II spreadsheet to compete with Personal Software’s VisiCalc, reasoning that Wigginton would in turn solicit the help of his mentor, Woz, which he did. Scott pushed Woz hard in January 1981 to complete the necessary math routines, and Jobs even managed to convince Wozniak to participate with his fledgling Macintosh project.
Taking a break from the pressure at Apple, Woz decided to log a few more hours at the controls of his Beechcraft Bonanza A36TC (he bought the turbocharged, single-engine, six-seat plane for $250,000 the previous November). On the afternoon of February 7, Woz and Clark were joined by Clark’s brother and his girlfriend for a flight to San Diego to design wedding rings. While taking off from the Sky Park Airport in Scotts Valley (the airport closed in January 1983), the plane climbed abruptly, stalled, then bounced down the runway, went through two fences, and crashed into an embankment (the NTSB investigation cited premature liftoff and inexperience—Woz had flown only 50 hours—as the probable cause of the accident). Clark’s brother and his girlfriend escaped with relatively minor injuries, but Woz and his fiancée were both seriously hurt. Clark recovered quickly after plastic surgery, but Woz had severe facial injuries, a missing tooth, and a concussion that prevented him from forming new memories.
Suffering from anterograde amnesia, Woz had no recollection of the accident and would forget who had visited him during his hospital stay.
Just as Apple employees were recovering from the shock of almost losing one of the company’s founders, Scott’s “Black Wednesday” firings on February 25 decisively woke the company from its IPO-induced dream state. In the aftermath of the layoffs, there was an executive shake-up at Apple that resulted in Scott’s removal from power.
Having cheated death, Woz had little interest in the corporate politics at Apple. “The company had become big business, and I missed tinkering.
I just wanted to be an engineer,” Wozniak told People. Upon recovering from his accident after five weeks, Woz took a leave of absence from Apple, though he remained on the payroll with a stipend salary. Wozniak married Clark in Lafayette, California, on June 13 (country singer Emmylou Harris performed). A week after his wedding, Woz enrolled in the University
“I feel shitty.”
Steve Wozniak, on his condition after crashing his plane
Courtesy of Raytheon Aircraft Company
In early 1981, Wozniak was almost killed while at the controls of his Beechcraft Bonanza, like the one shown here.
Woz’s Wanderings of California at Berkeley’s summer program to complete his B.S. degree
in computer science. Woz had bounced around from the University of Colorado at Boulder and De Anza College in Cupertino, and then attended Berkeley in 1971, but took a year off to earn money for his tuition. That year off turned into a decade, during which he founded Apple and became extraordinarily wealthy. Now seeking anonymity, Woz enrolled under the name Rocky Raccoon Clark (a combination of his dog’s name and his wife’s maiden name).
Woz’s part-time pursuit of his degree left him plenty of time to dabble in other interests. Hoping to recreate some Woodstock magic and share his good fortune with a
“few thousand of my closest friends,” Woz formed a corporation called UNUSON (short for “Unite Us In Song”), which sponsored the US Festival, a three-day “celebration of contemporary music and technology.” The first US Festival was held Labor Day weekend (September 3–5) in 1982 at the 500-acre Glen Helen Regional Park in Devore, California, just north of San Bernardino. Working with legendary promoter Bill Graham, Woz shelled out over $8 million on entertainment alone, with 18 different bands performing (The Gang of Four, Ramones, The English Beat, Oingo Boingo, The B-52’s, Talking Heads, and The Police on day one; Dave Edmunds, Eddie Money, The Cars, The Kinks, Pat Benatar, and Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers on day two; The Grateful Dead, Jerry Jeff Walker, Jimmy Buffett and The Coral Reefer Band, Jackson Browne, and Fleetwood Mac on the third day). There were also exhibits, demonstrations, and seminars focusing on the impact of technological developments, the personal computer (Apple was among the exhibitors, of course), and educational and ecological problems. The air-conditioned exhibit tents were popular places to escape the dust and triple-digit temperatures, if not to stimulate the brain between rocking musical sets. UNUSON hoped to sell all 300,000 tickets in advance at
$37.50 for the weekend or $17.50 for a day. Unfortunately the event was marred by low paid attendance (gate-crashers and ticket counterfeiters were common), 340 arrests, and about a dozen drug overdoses.
Undeterred, Woz tried again over Memorial Day (May 28–30) weekend 1983, with 25 different bands on the schedule (The Clash, Men At Work, Stray Cats, Flock of Seagulls, The English Beat, Oingo Boingo, Wall of Voodoo, INXS, Divinyls on day one; Van Halen, Scorpions, Triumph, Judas Priest, Ozzy Osbourne, Motley Crue, and Quiet Riot on day two;
David Bowie, Stevie Nicks, Joe Walsh, Pretenders, Missing Persons, U2, Quarterflash, Berlin, and Little Steven and the Disciples of Soul on the third
In 1969, Wozniak was reprimanded for excessive use of the University of Colorado’s computer system. But success trumps youthful indiscretions, and on December 22, 1989, the university granted him an honorary doctor of science degree.
Clark gave birth to Wozniak’s first child, Jesse, on September 2, 1982, the day before the first US Festival.
“It came to me that I wanted to throw the ‘party of the century’
for computer hobbiests [sic]
and clubs. I wanted it to be big, and I knew I was one of the few people who could do it.”
Steve Wozniak
US Festival program guide
Wozniak again teamed up with Bill Graham by investing
$3 million in Graham’s $19 million Shoreline Amphitheatre (www.shorelineamp.com), which opened in Mountain View, California, on June 29, 1986.
Courtesy of Steve Wozniak
Woz’s Wanderings
day). Woz lost an estimated $20 million on the two US Festivals, but he had fun and still considers them successful. “If I do this for another fifty-five years, I’m in trouble,” Woz quipped to rock promoter Barry Fey.
In June, two years since he took his leave of absence, and scant days after the second US Festival concluded, Wozniak entered the building on the Apple campus where the Apple II division was housed and humbly asked for something to do. Apple had just introduced the Lisa and Apple IIe that past January and was preparing to launch the Macintosh at the beginning of 1984. John Sculley, who had been on the job as president and CEO for just two months, realized that Woz’s return would be a great morale booster for the Apple II group. Woz was welcomed back with open arms and put to work making the Mac’s mouse work on the Apple IIc, which would be released the following April.
After completing the Apple IIc mouse, Woz led an ambitious project known by the code name Apple IIx. It was based upon the new 65816 processor from Western Design Center, which was backward compatible with the 6502 in the Apple II. The IIx would also feature a second processor slot, enabling it to run IBM PC and Macintosh software. However, the project was killed in March 1984 because Western Design Center had difficulty producing working chips on time, and Jobs was adamantly opposed to allowing the Apple II line to encroach on the turf he had staked out for the Macintosh. Woz was once again set adrift in Apple with little real work to perform. His legendary status brought endless distractions in the form of phone calls, fan mail, speaking engagements, and “meeting after meeting, after meeting,’’ he complained. Apple’s bureaucracy frustrated him, but even more upsetting was that his baby, the Apple II line, had been “ignored in the hope that it will die and go away.”
“Steve Wozniak looks like a Steiff Teddy bear on a maintenance dose of marshmallows.”
Reporter Jay Cocks (Time, January 3, 1983)
“It’s amazing that we were able to pull those festivals off and great fun was had by virtually all. I run into more people that thank me for those festivals than thank me for Apple. You had to be there to know how wonderful it turned out.”
Steve Wozniak, on the US Festivals
The engineers from the Apple IIx project went on to create the Apple IIGS. Although he was no longer at the company when it was released in September 1986, Wozniak’s signature appears on the first 10,000 Apple IIGS enclosures produced.
Courtesy of Dan Sokol
Widely reported to have lost millions of dollars, Wozniak considers the US Festivals successful, if for no other reason than they were great fun.
Woz’s Wanderings The simmering situation finally boiled over during a heated telephone
call to Sculley following the 1985 shareholders’ meeting. The normally subdued Woz lit into the CEO, “As the third-largest shareholder, I want you to know I’m upset and so are a lot of people in the Apple II group. These people work on Apple IIs and all they hear is ‘Mac, Mac, Mac.’ It hurts me to see people so demoralized. When I came to work this morning, the engineers, managers, and secretaries were just ready to send in their resignations, they were so angry about it. The shareholders were given the impression that the company’s total revenues were coming from Macintosh.” Sculley attempted to mollify Woz, but he could not be placated. On February 6, Apple announced Woz’s intention to pursue other interests yet again. Apple’s PR staff tried to put a positive spin on his departure, insisting that Woz would remain on the payroll as an engineering consultant paid $20,000 annually, but he harshly and publicly criticized management for favoring the Macintosh when the Apple II line accounted for 70 percent of Apple’s revenues.
At the time of his departure, Woz owned four percent of Apple, worth an estimated $70 million. He promptly sold the bulk of his holdings at around $30 per share and used $500,000 of the proceeds to finance a new venture cofounded with fellow Apple engineer Joe Ennis. Their firm was initially called MBF Incorporated. The initials stood for “My Best Friend,” because Woz envisioned that his new product would become a fun, easy-to-use home appliance. MBF was quickly renamed CL9 (short for “cloud nine”) as work began on creating a device to control audio and video consumer electronics. Woz didn’t have to wait long for Jobs to strike back in retaliation for his very acrimonious split from Apple.
On March 17, during a visit to frog design (www.frogdesign.com) in Campbell, California, Jobs saw a drawing of Woz’s new product and told industrial designer Herbert Pfeifer that he had to stop working for CL9.
Because Apple was frog’s largest client (in 1982 the firm created the “Snow White” design language used on the successful Apple IIc), owner Hartmut Esslinger had no choice but to accept Jobs’ demand. Jobs denied any personal motivation, stating, “We don’t want to see our design language used on other products.” But Woz saw things differently. “Steve Jobs has a hate for me, probably because of the things I said about Apple,” Woz opined.
Just seven months after Woz walked out of Apple, Jobs himself resigned after losing a boardroom battle with Sculley. For the first time in its history, Apple was without either of its founders, and it looked to be foundering in the wake of faltering Macintosh sales. Jobs began unloading his massive holdings in Apple stock at what would prove to be fire sale prices. Meanwhile, Woz bought back $5 million worth of Apple stock in December and announced plans to buy as much as $15 million more. “It’s not an investment. It’s just because it’s right,” Wozniak said at the time. “I’m very excited about Apple. The morale is up, and the company’s products are moving in the right direction.” After the purchase, Woz had approximately 750,000 shares of Apple when the stock was trading at $20.
In what must have been an awkward moment, considering their high-profile breakup just two weeks before, the two Steves were jointly awarded the National Medal of Technology by President Ronald Reagan on February 19, 1985. They received the highest honor bestowed upon America’s leading innovators for their achievements at Apple Computer.
Woz’s Wanderings
Woz finally received his bachelor’s degree in electrical and engineering sciences from UC Berkeley during a ceremony held on May 17, 1986 (he had left several credits shy of graduation, but was awarded equivalency credits for work done at Apple). When he gave the valedictory address, Woz told his fellow students, “Happiness is the only thing life’s about. You don’t buy a computer unless you think it’s a road to greater happiness. You don’t do anything in life unless it’s for happiness. That’s the only way you can measure life, by the number of smiles per day. It’s food, fun, and friends.”
Unfortunately for Woz, marital happiness eluded him once again. On April 30, 1987, Wozniak filed for divorce from Clark, citing irreconcilable differences. He sought and was granted joint custody of their children, Jesse John and Sara Nadine (their third child, Stephen Gary Jr., was born seven months after the initial divorce petition was filed).
As his second marriage was being dissolved, Woz’s business was finally bearing fruit. CL9’s first product was Tyrone, a low-cost remote control signal booster that was abandoned after disappointing sales. CL9 tried again with CORE (Controller of Remote Equipment), a $199 sophisticated multipurpose remote controller released in September 1987. Not only could CORE “learn” the codes necessary to control many different devices, it could also be programmed to perform multiple commands at specific times. For instance, with a touch of a button, it could turn on a VCR, television, and cable box simultaneously, then set the channel and begin recording. Unfortunately, CORE’s reception was mixed. Those who could figure out how to program the controller loved it, but it proved too complex for most users. Woz had sunk a total of $2 million into CL9, and all he had to show for it was a meager profit eked out in the first quarter of 1988. “It’s not doing too well,’’ Woz admitted.
“It’s profitable, but keeping it going, putting more money into it to sell the product—after this number of years—well, I’d like to sell it.’’ After CL9’s president, Martin Spergel, failed to find a buyer for the company or licensee for its technology, in 1990 the assets were assumed by Robert Retzlaff, a CL9 employee. Retzlaff’s Celadon (www.celadon.com) continued marketing CORE under the new name PIC 100 (programmable infrared controller) for several years, and Celadon sells descendents of the device to this day.
Following his divorce from his second wife and disappointment with
Following his divorce from his second wife and disappointment with