Steve Wozniak [75th birthday]: "I gave all my Apple wealth away because wealth and power are not what I live for"
On his 75th birthday, Apple legend Steve Wozniak pops up in a comment thread about his 'bad decision' to sell his stock in the '80s with a devastatingly zen reply: 'I gave all my Apple wealth away because wealth and power are not what I live for'
When I was in college studying Comp Sci I did a whois on Woz's domain and sent an email to the registered email (this was generally before the days of free whois protection), not expecting a response, just mentioning how cool his work on the Apple I & II was among others, and how as a CS student was exciting to see where technology had gotten to, asking him what he was up to.
I got a response a day later, thanking me for my email, talking about how he loved hearing from students, telling me about his current dancing with the stars stuff (this was in late 2009), among some other quips and such.
Felt incredibly down to earth and casual, and while I know it only took him maybe 5 minutes to write that email, or maybe it was even copied and pasted, it was super cool to get a response from such a tech icon.
Gaben also does this
And that's why he's 75 and happy and Jobs is dead and no one will know his name in 20 years.
Oh what a world it would be if people like Wozniak and Swartz weren't fucked over by their original techbro "friends"
I am the happiest person ever. Life to me was never about accomplishment, but about Happiness, which is Smiles minus Frowns.
Words to live by.
yea this is the guy Elon tried to PR himself as (and possibly succeeded for a while when he wasn't as popular), but shit starts to smell fast.
There are a few real deals out there, but they never get the same attention as the con artists. Apple brought back the wrong Steve.
It was him, not Steve Jobs, who deserved to be Apple's guiding light.
But could he curl his goatee like jobs? I think not!
Here's a guy that actually tried to make something good, even if the other guy didn't let him. He worked to live and not lived to work. Yet he still has 10 million and a couple of houses, which definetely doesn't make him a billionaire, but he has enough to put him in the "fuck you" position
One of the rare birds you kinda got to let slide with his wealth. To the best of my knowledge he hasn’t used that wealth to abuse people.
Yeah maybe he's like bill gates and gave away large portions of his wealth, to himself...
Stuff like this needs to be thoroughly checked before it becomes "heartwarming".
Edit: my point: don't just trust them, verify.
Edit: seems to have angered the bill gates boot lickers lol
Bill Gates's wealth is listed as about $118 billion. Steve Wozniak says his is "maybe $10 million plus a couple of homes," so perhaps $20m if they're very fancy homes. This makes Bill Gates about $117,980,000,000 richer than Steve Wozniak - a completely different category of wealth. I'm sure there are plenty of asshole millionaires but asshole billionaires are immeasurably more dangerous. Woz couldn't play the Bill Gates kinds games with his money even if he wanted to.
Anyway, I consider myself pretty left, and pretty pro-workers owning the means of production, but I think we should be going after the billionaires first, and not wasting our time on millionaires unless they're doing something unusually bad.
Fuckin' class act.
The Woz is BOSS!
Can we make "secular saints" a thing? Why should we reserve the title of "Saint" specifically for the Catholic Church? I think we should just get in the habit of referring to any unambiguously good person, who has performed great acts of generosity and selflessness, as a saint. They don't even have to be religious. If someone wants to interpret it religiously, they can say that anyone so good is almost certainly bound for Heaven, but it need not be religious. Why can't we have secular saints? Why can't we have Saint Stephen of San Jose or Saint Fred of Latrobe?
Does the word "paragon" apply in this case? That's what I think of when I see someone outside of religious context that I would aspire to emulate.
I'd love for some kind of "social model of a great human" canonization process... A bit like the Nobel prize, something determined by a committee or something, but it would have to be people that were actual genuine fucking awesome humans.
I'm thinking Steve Irwin, Fred Rogers, etc...
I like this.
Tangentially related - I was thinking the other day about how it seems like the rich used to feel obligated (for whatever reason) to use some of their wealth for the good of the world. But can you even imagine a 'Musk Foundation' or a fucking 'Zuckerberg Foundation'? No because they don't have even an ounce of shame or a shred of conscience. I don't know what it would even take but I do think it's far past time for us to start talking, bare minimum, about their obligations to the country and world that gave them so much.
Sure, let's not give them a choice though. Aggressive wealth tax caps at $100M, you get a park plaque and sainthood for each billion we redistribute to UBI.
This reads like a shot at Jobs.
I saw the Woz at El Burro Restaurant in SJ once and my wife said: Oh it's the guy from dancing with the stars! 🤦
I had no idea he was on that show. I bet if he heard your wife say that, he would have been super happy.
Wow, some uplifting news which proves there are still some good people on this earth. I needed that, thanks! <3
I had an Apple IIgs back in the day "signed" (printed) by Woz. I'm glad that dude is still living his best life.
This one wasn't signed, but I have fond memories playing "Thexder" on an Apple IIgs in my grandparent's basement growing up. You can guess where my username came from.
That game sure was hard to play with all 4 arrow keys in a line on that keyboard...
There is a Thexder game for the PS3 & PSP, if that interests you.
Thexder NEO - trailer
I'm a good 15 years younger than Steve Wozniak, but Steve Wozniak has always been a person I've aspired to become more like. He's one of my personal heroes, and I hope to die a man as close to what the man he's always been.
They say not to meet your heros, and it's usually good advice. Imma go out on a limb and say it doesn't apply to Woz.
+1