Stephen Gary Wozniak is an American electronics engineer, programmer, philanthropist, and technology entrepreneur. In 1976, he co-founded Apple Inc. with partner and co-founder Steve Jobs. He has remained an employee of Apple in a ceremonial capacity since stepping down in 1985. After permanently leaving Apple in 1985, he founded CL 9 and created the first programmable universal remote, released in 1987.
About Steve Wozniak in brief
Stephen Gary Wozniak is an American electronics engineer, programmer, philanthropist, and technology entrepreneur. In 1976, he co-founded Apple Inc. with partner and co-founder Steve Jobs, which later became the world’s largest information technology company by revenue and the largest company in the world by market capitalization. He has remained an employee of Apple in a ceremonial capacity since stepping down in 1985. After permanently leaving Apple in 1985, he founded CL 9 and created the first programmable universal remote, released in 1987. He then pursued several other businesses and philanthropic ventures throughout his career, focusing largely on technology in K–12 schools. In the early 1970s, his blue box design earned him the nickname “Berkeley Blue” in the phreaking community. He is of Ukrainian and Polish descent. He was born and raised in San Jose, California, the son of Margaret Louise and Francis Jacob “Jerry’s” WozNIak. He graduated from Homestead High School in 1968, in Cupertino, California. He dropped out of UC Berkeley and befriended Steve Jobs in 1971. In 1973, he was working for Atari, Inc. in Los Gatos, California when he was assigned to create an arcade game for the company. In 1975, he started developing the Apple I into the computer that launched Apple when he and Jobs first began marketing it the following year. He primarily designed the Apple II, introduced in 1977, known as one of the first highly successful mass-produced microcomputers, while Jobs oversaw the development of its foam-molded plastic case and early Apple employee Rod Holt developed the switching power supply.
In 1979, he had a major influence over the initial development of the original Apple Macintosh concepts from 1979 to 1981, when Jobs took over the project following Wozariak’s brief departure from the company due to a traumatic airplane accident. In 1969, he returned to the San Francisco Bay Area after being expelled from the University of Colorado Boulder in his first year for hacking the university’s computer system and sending prank messages on it. In June 1971, he designed and built his first computer with his friend Bill Fernandez. Predating useful microprocessors, screens, and keyboards, and using a punch card and only 20 TTL chips donated by an acquaintance, they named it “Cream Soda” after their favorite beverage. A newspaper reporter stepped on the power supply cable and blew up the computer as a good prelude to my thinking 5 years later with the Apple I and Apple II computers. Wozoriak has credited watching Star Trek and attending Star Trek conventions while in his youth as a source of inspiration for his starting Apple Computer, Inc., in 1976. His mother said that she intended it to be spelled “Stephen,” which is what he uses. He and Jobs became friends when Jobs worked for the summer at HP, where Wozriak, too, was employed, working on a mainframe computer. He later read an article titled “Secrets of the Little Blue Box” from the October 1971 issue of Esquire.
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