Steve Wozniak: The Engineer Who Built Apple [Outliers]

When Apple went public, Steve Jobs and the board excluded many early employees from stock options. In response, Steve Wozniak created the "Woz Plan," selling his personal shares at a steep discount to these colleagues. His actions were driven by a personal code of ethics, ensuring the team that built the company was rewarded.

Wozniak firmly believed that revolutionary products are not invented by committees. He advised inventors to work alone, comparing the process to art. This solitary approach, free from corporate bureaucracy and marketing-driven compromises, allows for the creation of truly novel designs without dilution.

Wozniak's insistence on eight expansion slots for the Apple II, against Jobs's preference for two, created a third-party ecosystem that drove sales. This open architecture's success funded the company, enabling the development of Jobs's later closed-system products.

Unable to afford physical components, Steve Wozniak spent years designing computers on paper. This constraint forced him to compete with himself to use the fewest possible parts, a skill that became a critical competitive advantage for Apple's early, cost-effective hardware.

Apple never intended to build a business machine. The Apple II became one because VisiCalc, the first "killer app," required a feature set (RAM, floppy drive, display) that only Wozniak's computer happened to have. This accident transformed Apple's market overnight, proving platform success can be driven by unforeseen uses.

Driven by a philosophy that engineering is the highest calling, Steve Wozniak never wanted to manage people or run a company. His primary motivation was to stay a hands-on engineer at the bottom of the org chart, a counter-cultural mindset that shaped his design choices and his relationship with Apple.

Wozniak believed patience, not just intellect, was his core engineering skill. He learned this through years of gradual, step-by-step learning in childhood projects. This allowed him to focus on perfecting each stage of a design, avoiding the common pitfall of trying to skip intermediate steps.

The Apple III was a commercial disaster because its design was finalized by marketing and Steve Jobs's aesthetic vision before the engineering was proven. This approach, which forced engineers to cram immature tech into a small case without fans, was the exact opposite of the engineering-first process that made the Apple II successful.