The Wonderful Wizard Named Woz

is not a joke. We may eventually be able to get him back on as a guest, but he's this is his his final episode as a host of tech Stuff and uh and he got to choose whatever topic he wanted. Unfortunately, almost all of them were ones we had already covered. Well. Actually, it surprised me that we didn't have a podcast on the person that we wanted to talk about today. Yeah, we've We've mentioned him in

several podcasts. Yeah, but yeah, definitely one of text more colorful characters, right, and that, of course is the wonderful wizard named was yes, Steve Stephen Gary Wozniak. Yeah, um, one of the co founders of Apple. He was born in on August eleventh, and uh. He came from a family that was technologically inclined. Yes, his dad was an engineer at a little company called lockeed Martin. I feel like I've heard of that company. Yeah, and uh and yeah he um. As a as a kid, he became

very interested in engineering and electronics. Did you did you hear about what his favorite book series was that kind of inspired him? No? Actually think did it was? The I looked at a lot of interviews. He's actually if you've never seen an interview with Wozniak, he's a very animated individual, well spoken, very passionate about what he does. It's clearly he truly enjoys technology, like there's no irony there.

He just loves it. And though he doesn't necessarily love all the things that we do with technology or the way that companies handle technology, he's not He actually is not so not such a big fan of big companies. But we'll get into that. But no, as a kid, his favorite book series was the Tom Swift series. So Tom Swift, if you don't know, he's a young man who is a kind of an engineer who could build

just about anything at his own company. He would fight evil and and solve mysteries and things of that nature. And in fact, just as a tangent, Tom Swift plays a role in a in a totally different technology has nothing to do with Wozniak. Can do you do you happen to know what Tom Swift? It's actually his Tom Swift's name is lent in a way to this technology. Really, Yeah, it's Taser. Oh right, Taser stands Taser's technically an acronym.

It stands for Thomas A. Swift's electric rifle. You know, I think we mentioned that a long time ago when

we talked about the Taser. Yeah, I think so, but yeah, he In an interview, he credited the Tom Swift books as igniting his imagination at the idea of creating things like electronics and being able to have kind of, you know, the equivalent of these adventures, and having a dad who was an engineer at lockeed Martin didn't hurt because it turned out he had a really good person to go to when those science fairs came up in elementary school.

Well yeah, yeah, and uh, it certainly wouldn't have hurt his interest in technology to have a family that understood and supported those interests too. They go, oh, you know, hey, this is something I like too, so you know, yeah, we should uh stop clowning around, he said foolishly. I was a a Tom Swift e. Nice, he's a he's a Yeah, he had a He credited his dad and some of his teachers in elementary school as really inspiring him. Essentially, he said that, uh, you know when he started to

excel at science. Uh, the teachers responded, and that just drove him to make even more accomplishments in that area. So by the time he was in sixth grade, he actually built a fairly primitive but a working computer that could play Tic Tac Toe. And you know, we all know from the documentary War Games that it's just a short hop, skip and a jump from tic tac toe to thermonuclear war. Of course, you know, shall we play a game? Thanks Whopper? Hey, nice you remembered the name

and everything. Yeah, I've I've watched that documentary several times. So the old cup modems where he actually had to put the phone and I'm sure actually was probably remembers those days. Oh yeah, we'll get into the a little bit too. Well. It was has also got a bit of a mischievous streak in him. Um, a bit, a bit of a mischievous street. That was a bit of an understatement. Yeah, well do it well. At sixth grade,

he also got his ham radio license. So obviously he was very much interested in electronics and technology and communication. All of these things would play a very large role in his choices further down the line. And according to Waz he said he never took any courses on building electronics or computers. He just learned how to do that all on his own, at least at least in the elementary in high school years. Once you get to college.

He actually was pursuing originally, uh, when he when he first enrolled, he was pursuing a degree in electrical engineering and computer science at the University of California at Berkeley. Yeah, and that's that's sort of a lesson for all of us. You know, Um, sometimes programming and fiddling with electronics and those kinds of things can seem really daunting, and it feels like, you know, used are dabbling in and it feels like you need a degree in computer science or

electrical engineering to do these things. You don't. You just have to have an interest and get the right right place to start. And it also helps to uh surround yourself with an other fellow enthusiasts. Yeah, and it didn't hurt that that was is categorically a genius in certain arenas, so that gave him a leg up as well. But

tales details. Yeah, well, while in while in the both in high school and in college, he began to associate with other people who are really interested in electronics and technology. Uh and uh he was part of a homebrew computer club. Yes, that would be v Homebrew computer club. Yeah. Back back in the mid seventies. Um was was at the University of California at Berkeley. UM and uh he was he was interested in attending this, uh, this nearby computer club,

the Homebrew Computer Club. And uh there were actually quite a you people of note who are part of this um. But they were interested in before you get into the details of that kind of thing, this group was really kind of interested in what you could do with computers because, uh, in the mid nineties seventies, we weren't talking about uh machines like the Apple too, where you had a monitor sitting on top of a computer with a keyboard and

you would program stuff. I mean, we were uh, they were interested in in large part and things like the Altaire, which had no monitor. You you would read, um, the the output of this device by the blinking lights or you know in German dustprincn light as many a many many jokes have gone. But really, I mean, it wasn't It wasn't something that the average person would probably be likely in picking up, simply because there was kind of

a barrier of entry. It was hard to understand for people who were sort of passing lee interested in it. And we talked about the IBM s and the machines that corporate customers would use where you had punch cards and and you know printing and large storage devices and things like that. Well yeah, I mean those were far more easy in some ways to understand because there were more ways to interact with those machines, but they were also hugely expensive and took up a lot more space

than something like the Altaire. This is the kind of device that got people thinking, you know, I could have a computer in my house. I could do things with a computer. I could program this thing. This, this could be fun. What could I do with this? And that's really what this group was all about. And there were other people uh interested in this as well, like a guy named Jobs, and I believe a couple of guys named Alan and Gates to show up in the logs.

And there were there were other people who interacted with all of those guys that that floated in and out of that culture out there in California around that time. Yeah, this is this is the birth of the personal computer age. We're talking about the the very early days and uh and of course Bosniac plays a very large role in that. But also uh he had other interests in in finding out how stuff works, which you know, we can appreciate, um, like the phone system. He was he was known to

engage in a little phone freaking now and then. We actually have talked about phone freaking in the past. Essentially, what phone freaking was was finding out how the telephone system worked and then exploiting that knowledge by being able to to create things that would allow you to make free phone calls. UM. Usually it would involve recreating a certain kind of tone that the phone would then um

not recognize the fact that you were dialing. It wouldn't register that, so it acts as if the line had not been engaged. Whereas you could actually make the call for free. So, um, there are a lot of different

kits that you could do this with. There, of course, was the famous UH whistle, Yes, uh, the the Captain crunch whistle, or you could whistle into a phone and UH with this particular toy whistle that came in the Cereal and UH it would recreate the exact pitch you needed in order to UH to hack the phone system. That changed before too long and they had to start creating electronic devices that could generate. Normally it would be two tones together to be able to uh to actually

hack into a phone system. Yeah. Well, um, if if you haven't done any research into into phone freaking, or listen to the podcast from Man that was a long time. It was basically that the deal was that they had the system in place so that the the phone company could do maintenance work and the phone technicians out in the field could use these certain codes. Um. In the case of one of them, it was a high E played three times and that would unlock the system. It

was a very analog system them at that point. And UH you know they the phone company actually published information on this in their Bell Technical Journal, which was available at your local library, and certain people figured this out and and he whistle. This is famous because a famous phone freaker named Captain Crunch is named that because he realized that the toy whistle that you found in a box of cereal, I'll let you guess which brand. Um, Yes, exactly,

how did how did you know? Um? You could? You could play exactly that note. That's all you needed. You all you had. All you had to do was know that the code and have that whistle. Um. And of course Bell went nuts trying to get the technical that copy of the Technical Journal back off the shelves. That this was a mistake to let that information get outside the door of Bell. Yeah, that was not a great move. We published this, you're not supposed to want to read

about it. But but people who were interested in electronics, we clearly something as complex as the telephone uh system would be fascinating to them, and that included people like Wasnia. Yes, absolutely, and uh it's it's famous that he and Steve Jobs were actually building phone freaking systems for other people, um, and and trying to sell them, which they did right on a small scale, and that which kind of set

the ground for for their future endeavors together. They He actually did withdraw from the University of California before completing his degree and began to work for HEWITTT. Packard and was an an engineer there. He actually worked specifically on

designing calculators. Meanwhile, Jobs kind of came up with this idea. Now, but when you talk about jobs in Wosniac, they had very different roles when in those early days of Apple, right, Steve Jobs was an idea guy, he was a business guy, and he was a marketing guy most more than anything else. He was a marketing genius. Yeah, I've been reading Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs, and I'm still not quite done with it yet, but I have passed through the early

stages of Apple. Will be there and uh, apparently when they were working on the Apple one, which was a very basic computer um As a matter of fact, it had the very early machines weren't really machines. They were a set of boards basically motherboards and pieces that you would assemble into a case and use it as a computer UM which sold for as Jonathan likes to point out, the sum of six d sixty six dollars and sixty

six cents. Wozniak likes repeating digits. Yeah apparently, well, according to them, it had nothing to do with the symbolic nature of this in uh, in religion, it was more. Yeah, there was no but it's hard to imagine that it

and it's an Apple computer. Yeah. Of course. They also say that Apple was chosen for other reasons than the Yeah, that's funny because because Wozniak said that he had just guessed at some point that the reason why Steve Jobs wanted to call the company Apple was that Steve Jobs had worked for a while at an orchard in either Washington or Oregon, and that that perhaps gave him the idea, which may or may not be the case, because he said the thing about Jobs was that he would come

up with ideas but not necessarily explain to you how he came up with him. Yeah, yeah, that's true. We also should point out that there was this time in jobs life where he was expanding his consciousness a little bit. Yes, yes, um. Jobs attended to read college up in Oregon and did not finish there, but was was very interested in a number of things, including UH, expanding one's horizons to the use of chemical substances, which a very very diplomatic way

of putting it. That's not and I don't get the sense that that is interested in that. I think he likes to expand his consciousness through technological means, which again shows that difference. Jobs was this marketer and Wasasniak was the engineer. He was the guy who was really designing

the technology. And well that was that was actually exactly my point was according to the Isaacs and story, Um was wanted to give away the design for the original boards for the Apple One, and Jobs said no, no, no, we could sell this thing. We could make a company. And that intrigue was just enough to go, okay, yeah, let's give it a try. Yeah, because before, at at the Homebrew Computer Club, Wasniac would distribute designs that he

would come up with for for computer kids. He would design them on paper and then he would just distribute copies of it to the other members. And Jobs was getting to the point where he's like, you know, if we didn't give these away for free, I bet people would pay for them. And so yeah, he he convinced Wozniak to go in with him on a venture together. And this was the idea of Apple. Yeah, and it wasn't It wasn't easy. Um, you know, Wozniak was a

little reticent to leave HP. I mean, you think about it if you were if your buddy is telling you, hey,

let's go start a company. Meanwhile, you're in with a very strong technology company and you're you know, you've got a good job, it's secure, and it's like, well, they're on on the one hand, you got the allure of of you know, this opportunity to do something really cool, but hey, you know, there's not a lot of security, and it's starting your own company can be a challenge, and it can be a lot of work, and it

can be scary. Yeah, and it first guaranteed right at first, he did continue to work with HP, didn't quit immediately. And in fact, one of the stories about founding Apple is that they had to in order to raise the capital they needed, which was not that much by today's standards. I mean, even if you were to convert into today's dollars, they it was a fairly low investment. In fact, that was one of the things that Steve Jobs was able

to to use to convince Wosnia to try. It was because the investment was not going to be prohibitively large, but it's still required that they raised some capital, and they did it by selling off stuff that they owned. And Wasniac sold off his beloved scientific calculator, Yes, which at the time was pretty hot piece of technology. Yeah, for around something something to the tune of around five hundred dollars at the time, which you know in the seventies.

That's that's it's still a good chunk of change, right, It's it was even more so back then. And uh the interesting thing to me was that when I read an interview, a more recent interview, Wasniac really downplayed that. He said he said, uh, well, here's the thing. I'm still technically working for HP. And because I worked for HP, I could buy the next new calculator before it came out and at a lower price than I did the

older calculator. So, uh so I thought, even at this company that I'm working on with jobs goes belly up, I still, um, I still have the protection of working for this other company, and I can get my calculator back. Yeah, that's true. Um, which is an important part of context that I think a lot of people miss. Um. But yeah, the the Apple one did reasonably well within those circles,

and they started working on the Apple too. Um jobs play, I mean, jobs played a good part in the getting it into stores, but Wazn'tiak had a lot to do with the back end of that machine, especially the the Basic language implement implementation. There you go, he was unfamiliar with Basic at first, and uh, just kind of funny. It's funny it's as good with hard but not with Basic.

It's also funny that he got really uh he started to really stay the Basic version that HP uses, which is not the same as the Basic language that that Bill Gates was working on. So um, it was he was coming at it from a different approach because he was you know, I think at the time he was actually working under the assumption that was essentially the same thing. But it turned out it was two different versions of

Basic to two pretty significant different versions. Also, I should point out, so so they founded Apple in nineteen seventy six, and it wasn't it was just nine seventy seven when Apple two came out, So that that first Apple, we should really point out, it was more like a almost like a run of prototypes. It would they only made a small relatively small number of these because, for one thing, they didn't know how big the demand was going to be.

They knew that their fellow computer enthusiasts would enjoy this kind of thing because they also shared the vision that computers would one day be an integral part of our lives. But at the time, the average person, like the average consumer, didn't necessarily have any desire or knee for a computer, at least they didn't think they did. And uh, and so it was. It was definitely not a sure thing when they were first getting started. But ninety seven Apple two comes out, and uh, I think, uh I think

you could describe its success as being meteoric. Oh yeah, yeah, well, um, that's one of the reasons that Wozniak says that he worked so hard on the basic um structure for the two microprocessor was was simply that he realized that basic was going to be a big help to people who were going to adopt these, and he wanted people to understand that computers could play a significant role in their

personal lives. And so he said, you know, this is you know, I basically hunkered down to do this because I knew this was going to be important and that's That's something that you see when you look at that Steve Wozniak's career is that he obviously he's willing to put his his back into it and really work on something that he is very passionate about like this, um the very other you know, there were other things too.

He talks about having to write the disc operating software for the the earlier machines, and he didn't This was not something that he was familiar with. Yeah, he had never really used magnetic storage like that, but he made it work because he knew it was important. Um. Not that not donet to discount other people all over the world who do this every day. But I'm saying, you know, as we're looking at Steve Wozniak, this is uh technology is is clearly part of his DNA, and it's it

he he needs to to make it work. One of the things that I read about him too in the Isaacs and UM biography of Jobs was that uh um, apparently he was just really good at finding innovative solutions to the challenges that that came up while they were creating the actual machines. He his engineering expertise. It's more than just it's sort of like a virtuoso and a

musical instrument. You have people who can play the instrument, but there are very few people that can that can pick it up and do something really brilliant with it that you wouldn't expect to do because they don't teach this. It's just the thing that you sort of inately have. Yeah, and apparently he is. He just got that um ability to to look at a technology and know how it works and go, well, you know what, I know this isn't work in this way just for kicks. Let's plug

this in this way and see if that works. Yeah. He he had a real interesting attitude too. He said that, you know, in general, like in a broad stroke, he said, if he could build a machine that had two hundred chips in it, he would then look at that design and say, how can I build a machine that does the exact same thing this thing does, but with a

hundred fifty chips? And he would do it. And then after that he'd say, okay, well, how can I build a machine that does all the things this machine does, but only with a hundred chips and just continue to Lee refined that design so that it was more and more elegant and more efficient in each iteration. That was sort of his thought process, which is, you know, that's

a good thing. Well, it's funny you should mention that because there there is another story that Jobs in Bosniak were working together at Atari to develop a game machine. Now I don't think Wosniak was that, if my memory serves, it's been a few days since I've read that. Uh, if memory serves, Wosniak wasn't actually working for Atari. Um. Jobs actually kind of convinced him to work on this project.

But they they were supposed to. They were trying to create this machine, and the challenge was it's like, hey, you know, if you can do this with uh fewer chips in this time period, we'll go ahead and go with this idea. So Jobs knew that Wosniak had the the expertise to make it work, and he did that.

The point of doing this was to save money because these chips were not cheap UM, So the fewer components that you could use on the circuit board, the more money you could save in doing that and make the project more cost efficient in the end. And uh, thanks to was they actually made it work. Of course, Uh, they're known for Breakout. The two of them both worked

on Breakout UM, which is a classic Atari game. Um but uh yeah, I mean that that paid off both on that project and their work they did for Apple, because they would continually revise the design to make it, to make it more cost efficient and make it more effective. Because what was is one of those people that believes that UM technology should be accessible to people. Um. I was gonna say, well, you might say, well, hey, Apple is known for having high priced computers. What are you

talking to? High price computers and closed systems. Yes, two things that you would imagine would be antithetical to that philosophy. Well, that's true, And uh but I would argue that, um, we need to take a look at the exit of Wozniak from Apple because, um, a lot of that did not surround the Apple to the Apple two was a very affordable machine, which is why it ended up in a lot of people's homes, in a lot of schools. Yeah.

So in order to get there, we need to we need to to get back to like about well nineteen eighties when Apple went public, and that was of course a big event. In nineteen eighty one was a huge year for Wozniak in both triumph and tragedy. Uh In one he returned to UC Berkeley to finish out his degree in electrical engineering and computer science under an assumed name. I would also guess that he probably cruised through a

lot of that. Probably, Yeah, the fact that the fact that there may have been courses that were referring to his own work might have might have done that. But also that year he um he was the X, a man who has a lot of different interests in one of those was piloting air planes. Yes, and he owned his own private airplane at this point because Apple very quickly was a huge success, you know, launched in nineteen seventy six, and by one he had enough to have

his own private plane. And he was piloting his private plane and crashed while trying to take off at the Santa Cruz sky Park. And it was a pretty serious crash and he was very badly hurt in that. In that accident, I suffered from amnesia for quite some time. Yeah. Yeah, he had a lot of different injuries, memory loss. It took about two years of rehabilitation for him to get

back to how he was before the accident. But around that time, the Apple two was really starting to become a true success story, like a huge success story in personal computing and UH and by three, so this is just a couple of years after Apple has gone public.

Three years after Apple's gone public, it was valued the company was valued at nine hundred and eighty five million billion dollars if you looked at its stock, if you were to value the company by how much stock was out there in the price that stock was trading at, so just under a billion dollars. And again the company is not even ten years old yet, so you know, Wasniak's work was really starting to pay off for the

company and for Wosniac at the time. He also UH in addition to this, while he was going through his recovery period, got involved in another one of his passions, which is music. Hosted the now infamous US festivals in California, UM which were both were which were known for being huge, I mean very very large events. Think of UM things like um um, you know Lollapalooza now or Lilith Fair. I mean kind of events like that where you're trying. I know I am, but I don't go to large

outdoor events like that. Or the festives. Well, yeah, but they did have a verse line of different kinds of Yes, actually they were. They were sort of in competition into some degree because Coachella had been had been out for many years, more than a decade out in California. Um, but they it was sort of a blend of technology and music, which makes me think more of south By Southwest now than than that. But at that time that's

not the kind of events that we're going on. There were more i think inspired from the many years earlier Woodstock and events like that, where it was just the large outdoor music festivals. But they were also known for extravagance. Um. You know, there were some artists like uh van Halen and David Bowie who were taking home more than a million dollars in early eighty two and eighty three, the early eighties, I mean, um and, which were tremendous sums

of money at that point. Um and and it's I think regarded by a lot of people now the US festivals sort of that's sort of a punchline to a joke, although I'm not sure what the setup would be, UM, But I don't know that it was completely unsuccessful. I just think that it was sort of a tribute to was his generosity and the fact that he paid people really uh, you know, generous sums of money. But I think he was just having a good time with a lot of people. Yeah, he also took this time to

start getting into philanthropy. Yes, he began to really invest, specifically in the education system near his own home. He began to uh to help UH schools get computers and training on how to use the computers. He was very enthusiastic at fostering education, which is no surprise considering, you know, his father had helped him and he does credit his you know, several teachers went in his elementary school days as really being the inspiration for him to pursue his interests.

So it's not a big surprise that he wanted to to kind of pay it forward and and do that on himself. So he began to do that and UH. In fact, his his contributions to technology and philanthropy led up to him receiving the award the the National Medal of Technology in nineteen five. He was awarded that by the United States President, who at the time was Ronald Reagan and received that and it's the highest honor bestowed on America's inventors and innovators. Yes, the award has come

up several times over the course of tech stuff. UM you know probably was as one of the people we would actually have heard of. UM. They were and Jobs were sort of rock stars in the early eighties because of the the the prominence of the Apple two UM and you know, there were there were cover stories on magazines, business magazines, UH and UH and news magazines about these guys. They were, They were sort of well known. Of course,

Jobs is a little bit more outspoken. He's known as the um you know, more of the the marketing face of the company, especially UM recently, but even back then in the in the early days of the company. UM as technology went on at Apple, though, as things started to change and they started focusing on, uh, diversifying the lines, UM was, you know, was sort of not as integral to the the creation of machines like the Apple three, the Lisa, and the Macintosh like he had been with

the Apple too. And I think that was partially due of course, to the to the accident and the need for his recovery. He just he just wasn't as um as UM available during that time as he would have done otherwise. Yeah, and then um in by night five,

big changes were happening at Apple. Uh. The biggest was that Steve Jobs left the company and that depending on how you define it, he was either fire because he was having some really nasty conflicts with the with Apple's board of directors, or he was just marginalized to the point where he just stopped showing up to work. Um. But really, I mean essentially they kept giving him a d a smaller role over time and distancing him Steve Jobs,

that is, away from the main operations of Apple. And so Steve Jobs left in night Fiveniac stuck around with Apple for a couple more years. He would not leave the company until seven. Yes, and to some degree he still holds a consulting role with the company today. Um. His and he he left the company, but Apple still I guess it's safe to say they never completely severed their relationship, although he doesn't go into work there like he used to. Um. And he's and you wouldn't necessarily

call him an Apple evangelist either. I mean, he says in frequent interviews he will say or frequently in interviews, I should say, he will say he loves Apple, but at the same time he is not shy to criticize Apple for things that he views as as hum as a as as failures or as mistakes. He is very he is known for being very honest and very upfront and just uh, you know, giving his opinion. He's a straight shooter when it comes to that, and not in

necessarily a mean way, but very matter of fact. Um yeah, actually uh. When he started to work on some other projects that one of the first was cl nine, which was a company that was known for creating the first programmable universal remote YEP. And so this again shows that

wozniak interest in electronics was still very, very high. He just I think wosnia is one of those guys who really likes to find a new challenge and know once he's done that, once he's managed to to accomplish whatever that challenges, then he's ready to move on to the

next one. In fact, again from listening to him talk, I would say that that's just one of those things he really values, is the idea of innovation, research and development, building new stuff and not just making constant improvements over older technology. In fact, that might have been one of the reasons why he left Apple was that he was starting to see Apple turned into this company that was more interested in releasing incremental updates to its technology rather

than truly innovating and building something that's really cool. And in fact, that's that's a criticism that he has leveled recently at Apple over the last few years, saying that Apple seems to be content to release new versions of truly innovative and amazing products. You know, he loves things

like the iPad and the iPhone and all that. He things those were great, But why he doesn't think is great is that Apple seems to be content to just give updates to those products rather than try and create something wholly new. Now, that may not be completely fair. There may be some things developing an Apple about which we know nothing that could blow our minds any day now, like the Apple TV that we keep on hoping will

come out. But you know that that the perception that Wozniak has is that, uh, Apple's not currently really in that innovative space. In fact, recently he said that Microsoft was showing more of that sort of innovative approach. Doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be a success for Microsoft. But he was saying that you know, Windows eight, Windows Phone ate the surface tablet, all of that was kind

of pointing. It was such a radical departure from the stuff that Microsoft had been doing that it was a much more innovative approach than what Apple was currently doing. Right. Well, um, you know he uh he ended up butting heads with cl nine with Apple. Um. He was trying to contract the design firm Frog Design, uh to get the product

designed for him. And Apple had brought Frog Design to California with the idea that they were going to be their designers, their product designers, and Apple said, no, you cannot do that. That was part of their their U their UM contract with them. Um. But yeah, he very much uh you know, had an idea because he knew that these guys were innovators in the way things looked and felt. Um. So it doesn't surprise me much that that was likes um the kinds of products that Apple

comes out with. But uh, you know, they had a similar design sense. But Apple did not appreciate that at the time. UM. Oh, and uh, we didn't mention, but well it's probably looking at the timeline here, UM, probably should mention some of the other things that he got into of the years. Of course, he's been a speaker UM for many many years now, including dating back to that. That time he was sort of a coveted personality for UM keynotes and different kinds of addresses. Uh and uh.

He started several companies. C All nine was just one of them. Wheels of Zeus was one of my favorites. Yes, the acronym Wheels of Zeus is laws in in two thousand one. And that was back uh in the early days of trying to come up with uses for GPS. Yeah. The idea being that if you can have a wireless GPS UH network, then you would be able to locate stuff. Really, that was one of his ideas. He said he wanted

to help people be able to locate things. Yes, all right, that was you know so yeah, and was or as in Wheels of Zeus not Wasniak. But Wheels of Zeus lasted for about five years that it closed up in two tho six. Also, U and uh he in going back a bit. No, No, it's fine. I just want to mention, you know, being a co founder of the

Electronic Frontier Foundation. I mean this is huge. The Electronic Frontier Foundation or e f F is an organization that advocates for openness and freedom on the internet in the computer world. They are also known for doing things like helping provide legal assistance to hackers that are being pursued by by government officials or or you know, by law enforcement. They're known for helping out folks who might otherwise be

seen as troublemakers. Um. But it's really all about promoting the freedom of information and the trying to keep as as much of the the manipulation or or or um. The just just trying to keep the government out of controlling technology in all its forms. Mainly it tends over the last several years, it tends to mostly be about the Internet, but it's it goes beyond that. Yeah. Yeah, and then they are very interested in uh, you know,

privacy issues issues. Uh, not to uh, not to protect what you might call black hat hackers, um, but more to give people the opportunity to uh control their technology lives a little bit more openly and and do more with it rather than having that spoken for for them. Yeah. Wazniak has has really come across as someone who who wants the individual to have as much control and say in that sort of thing, and less of that should

go to things like corporations and governments. So uh, you know this, it's obvious why he would want to co found an organization like BFF. And in two thousand he was induct it into the Inventor's Hall of Fame and also received the Hinz Award for Technology, the Economy and Employment. Yes, I wanted to mention the Hines Award, So I'm glad you did that. And it's not the Hinz Doofenschmertz Award.

Curse you Bury the Lady Pass. But yeah, I mean this is this is a period, um, the early two thousand's where we kind of didn't hear a lot from him. I mean, he's not the kind of person that that um you read about in the society pages so much. Although until the late two thousands, well you know, making appearances on shows like Kathy Griffin in My Life on the d List. Yeah he was dating her at the time, yes, yes, Um, he's also been on the Big Bang Theory and of

course Dancing with the Stars cutting a rug on a segue. Yes, yes, he uh he showed. I watched some of that, and I have to admit he showed a tremendous sense of humor about being on that show. Um, and he's as a dancer. He is a really incredible programmer. Nice. Um an excellent compliment and I am neither. So I really can't talk, but I will. I will say that that, but I think he would probably agree. Um yeah, he

uh yeah. He seemed to really kind of have fun with his own, you know, public persona, although he's not you know, he's not like a celebrity in the sense of jumping out and trying to attract attention. That doesn't seem to really be his his style. He's even been known, like on on launch days for Apple products to go

and wait in line at an Apple store. There was one story where uh he, I remember it was it was one of the early iPhones, I want to say, where he was walking to the Apple store to go get in line, and then he got ushered into the front of the line, and he actually felt badly about it because he was like, you know, he didn't feel that he should necessarily be treated any differently than any other customer. Um And but a lot of people who were in line are like, dude, that's woznia. He can

totally go in. It's okay, Yeah, I would. I would imagine that that he has enough of a following where you know, there there would be a certain amount of tolerance among the other shoppers that day. Um. He's also known, of course, over over time to be a rather uh playful prankster of sorts. He's famed, of course for many

different stunts with two dollar bills. Um, I have actually tried to pass two dollar bills which are completely legal, and they and have people confused by them because you don't see them all the time, which of course lends itself to was a sort of sense of humor. Now you can buy, as he will point out, complete sheets of one dollar, two dollar, and five dollar bills from the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. You can get a sheet of an uncut sheet of bills. They're completely legal,

they just haven't been cut apart. In fact, they're perforated. So he has been known to buy sheets of these, you know, separate them and have them laminated into a pad, and go in and buy stuff and peel off a series of two dollar bills, which are of course are numbered sequentially. It's very weird two dollar bills are weird to begin with, and then you add that it looks like this guy just peeled off money and handed it

to me. Am I supposed to take it. Apparently he's been to Vegas and tried this stunt and had UH security people come and UH talked to him about exactly what's going. I've encountered Vegas security. I know exactly what you're talking about, And of course if it were me, I would be sweating like he he keeps doing. Really, I didn't know that that the government doesn't, you know, make these perforated bills available. Really, I bought these from some guy. What what's great is that I wouldn't have

had the nerve. I should also point out that while two dollar bills are unusual here in the United States, in other places there are two dollar coins. So for our friends in Canadia, Canadian yes, and our friends in Canadia, your tunis are very adorable. I like, I actually do like tunis. I like Looney's and tun yes. I agree. If you would like to send me Loony's and tunis, do so at the house. Stuff Works address, Carol Jonathan Strickland. Kids,

go check your parents. No never mind, um but uh but but yeah, what you were talking about about innovation and openness and technology. He has recently, as of the time we're recording this, in late Ben photographed in front of the large uh different versions of Google androids. We have Android people, and people go it's the Apple co founder in front of the Android androids. Well, yeah, because he tries pretty much everything. Yeah, he's just a computer omnivore.

He actually says that he will. You know, he loves he loves technology, and he loves gadget doesn't doesn't necessarily love what corporations are doing or what governments are doing, but he loves the technology. And he specifically, I had an hour and a half of sleep last night, folks, I went and watch The Hobbit anyway, So he specifically really likes, uh, platforms that are that allow you to do lots of stuff, right, So the Android platform gives

a lot of flexibility to users. It's something that can be overwhelming to someone who's not necessarily an enthusiast, but for someone who really likes hacking and getting their their hands dirty with technology, the Android platform is very attractive because it's you can make a lot of changes yourself, you know, and and Google facilitates that depending on which handset manufacturer and which carrier you're with, it or may

not be very easy to do. But he also says he likes to try everything because he doesn't want to form a a prejudice against any particular platform without giving it a real fair shot, And so he goes out when a new phone comes out, he'll go out and buy it. So often, like I've seen pictures of what Wozniak was carrying on a given day, and it's usually something like five or six smartphones and then maybe a tablet and then maybe two computers. It's like, you figure

it's got to be around fifty pounds of technology at least. Yeah. It It kind of reminds me of the nineties version of Gilbert where he used to have the gadget utility belt. Um you actually knew some people like that? Um yeah, yeah, I used to try and do that, but then my pants kept falling down. Do you looking like a fool with the pants on the ground? I was, in fact? Yeah.

So currently he's working at a who fusion Io or Fusion Eosion what's fusion dash Io as a chief scientist and that's the company is a data storage and server company. So he's he's currently that's you know, his technical job

title at the moment. But he does do a lot of speaking events and you know you'll still see him at things like a TED conferences and other big events where you know, they need to have someone there who who really knows the ins and outs of technology, who is truly uh an advocate for technology for the consumer, and who just you know, he's just very passionate and

loves to share that with other people. That's it's a great couple of qualities to have, Like, there are a lot of people who are really passionate about what they do, but they don't necessarily communicate that or share that with people. But Wasniac seems like, you know, you would have to tie him down for him not to to to be a brilliant over his love of tech. Yeah, it's uh from from just about all accounts I've read about about Steve Wozniak, He's he's not the kind of person who

who hides his emotions very well. He's, uh, he's excited about a lot of stuff, and when he is, he you know, he shares that with you. Um, I should say that he doesn't hide his his excitement for technology very well, because he's uh, he's really gregarious when it comes to that. He may not be necessarily outspoken about his personal life as much or or want to jump

into the spotlight. But if you ran into him and he had fifteen minutes to talk about some kind of technology with you, I don't think it would be much of a stretch based on Again, I've never met him, but uh, if he wanted to strike up a conversation with him about virtually any kind of technology, I don't think he would turn you down, or if he did, he would do it politely. Well, it seems like just

a just a great guy. He does he does. I would be very interested to talk with him, except I would be intimidated that he discovered that I'm a complete idiot within like two minutes of chatting with me. Well, I mean, it doesn't take the rest of us that long. You know, maybe I'm hoping that he would just have a lot of optimism. Well that I'm teasing. That wraps up everything I have about Woznia. Do you have anything else you wanted to mention, not not really about Steve Christy.

Do you have anything to say to our listeners. Yeah, actually I do. OK, UH, so you know, I'm I'm teasing. UM. I want to thank everybody, uh for the opportunity to uh to come into your well, if it was a radio, I would say living rooms and your your your computer, headphones or earbuds or whatever you happen to be listening to us on UM. You all have been very supportive

of tech Stuff over the last few years. UM. You know, certainly when when Jonathan and I have um had made mistakes on the podcast or uh said things that you found uh that you wanted to share with us. Pretty much just about everybody has been really friendly about that. And and and we've opened a dialogue between tech Stuff and the listeners, and I just feel, um like everybody

has been really really supportive, UM and fun to work with. UM. I'm not uh, I'm I'm leaving basically just because it's it's sort of a good time their tech stuff is going to be moving in in a different direction, UM and UH, I have other stuff that I want to do that's not in the podcast world, So you know, it's just sort of a good time for me to to uh to split off. But I'm certainly excited to see what's going to happen with tech stuff in the

the days, weeks, months, years, millennia to come. Uh, there's there's still a boatload of tech that that we haven't really talked about, and uh, you know, it's gonna be fun to see what what they do with with tech stuff once I've I've moved on, and Jonathan too. I want to say thanks to you because it's been an awful lot of fun doing the podcast with you and all the other stuff that we've text stuff live and uh, the different video projects that we've that we've worked on together.

It's it's been the week Oh my gosh, yes, and listener mailsh listener mail in the Infamous Collects and uh, yeah, it's it's been an awful lot of fun working with you everybody. I we we tease each other about about working together, but Jonathan and I have had fun working on it. I think I'm I'm speaking for Jonathan safely in that case. And uh, the the whole the battle with Josh and Chuck, which was waged completely on the podcasts and not actually in the office, and the vigor

with which our listeners actually picked up on it. We're going really they seem to think we actually do hate each other. We don't. Uh No, those guys are great too. And and you know, I really do appreciate everything that uh uh Discovery and How Stuff Works has done and uh um the listeners for for tuning in every week and sharing with us on on social media. Um, it's been an awful lot of fun. Thanks for for everything. Yeah, you know, and I just have to say it has

been It's been a heck of a ride, Chris. I mean we we are the the last remaining original hosts of the first batch of podcasts that How Stuff Works put out. That's true, you know, out of all the other podcasts have come out, they their hosts have changed, sometimes more than once. And we stayed the same team for over four hundred and fifty episodes, which is an incredible achievement that you have not strangled me in that time.

Uh considering that over that time we spent more time together than I spent with my wife, that means that you and my wife are the two people in the world I can count on not to strangle me after prolonged exposure. And Chris has been my editor for thanks is early. Chris has been my editor for the last several years, and I've had four editors while How Stuff works, and out of all the editors, Chris by far was the easiest to work with. Not to say that the

other editors were bad. They were great people too, and and continue to be great people. But but Chris would take it upon himself to do a lot of the work that normally would come back on to a writer. So I've been spoiled, and frankly, I'm scared now, but it has been a blast. It's been great. You know, Text Stuff would not be what it is without your h contribution in your voice. Uh. The fact that we both have this sort of goofy, dorky sense of humor

has really brought it together. It's evident in the podcast, it's evident in the videos. I think, Uh, I think that my life would be totally different and much poorer for it if I had not gone on this this podcast adventure with you. So thank you very much. And uh, guys, that is it for the the the the initial era of tech Stuff. On the next podcast, the new era will begin. So if you would like to get in touch with me and my mysterious new co host, whom

you will meet very soon. You can write us at tech stuff at Discovery dot com or contact us on Twitter or Facebook. Are handled. There is tech stuff hs W and uh I'll talk to you really soon. Thanks everybody for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how staff works dot com