‘Steve Jobs played no role in the design of early Apple devices’ …Apple co-founder, Steve Wozniak, claims Jobs“didn’t know technology”
Apple’s co-founder rarely shies away from speaking his mind but Steve Wozniak’s latest comments could be seen as his most insightful yet.
Speaking to YouTube channel Reach A Student , he revealed more about the early days of the firm and said his business partner Steve Jobs “didn’t know technology.”
The 65-year-old admitted Jobs played no role in the design of the Apple I and Apple II computers and instead “just wanted to be important”.
The interview was conducted by 14-year-old entrepreneur Sarina Khemchandani who runs the YouTube channel.
She asked: ‘I’ve overheard you were able to overcome many hardware and software issues in the making of the early Apple computers. What role did Steve Jobs play during this time?’
Wozniak replied: ‘Steve Jobs played no role at all in any of my designs of the Apple I and Apple II computer, and printer interfaces, and serial interfaces, and floppy disks and stuff that I made to enhance the computers.
“He did not know technology. He wanted to be important, and the important people are always the business people. So that’s what he wanted to do.”
Jobs and Wozniak met in 1971 when they were introduced by a mutual friend.
They later decided to set up a business after both attending the hobbyist Homebrew Computer Club in San Francisco.
The Apple I was hailed as the first ‘real’ home computer and was hand built by Wozniak in a garage in 1976. It went on sale for $666.66, and 200 were made.
Steve Wozniak has previously slammed smartwatches, called upon his old firm to work with arch rival Google and even criticised the accuracy of Siri.
More recently he made a U-turn about his views on the rise of artificial intelligence.
Having previously dismissed claims AI could threaten humanity, the 65-year-old admitted he can now see some of the predictions coming true and that human-like computers could be a dangerous reality.
He even quipped: “Will we be the gods? Will we be the family pets? Or will we be ants that get stepped on? I don’t know.”
“Computers are going to take over from humans, no question. If we build these devices to take care of everything for us, eventually they’ll think faster than us and they’ll get rid of the slow humans to run companies more efficiently.”
After approaching a local computer store called The Byte Shop, Jobs and Wozniak built a further 50 Apple I computers and went onto to design a range of successors.
The first iPhone wasn’t launched until 2007.
Wozniak continued: “I wanted to be the engineer, in a laboratory, like a mad scientist. So that was my thing.
“The Apple II computer was the only successful product Apple had for its first 10 years, and it was all done, for my own reasons for myself, before Steve Jobs even knew it existed.
“So I had created it, and it was just waiting for a company.
“And Steve Jobs was my good friend, the businessman.”