Stephen Gary Wozniak was born in San Jose on 11 August 1950. He designed the Apple I on his own, for free, to impress his friends at the Homebrew Computer Club. Jobs saw the business opportunity. Almost fifty years later, at Apple's 50-year celebration, Woz still gets the spotlight — and, he says, a weekly check for about US$ 50, employee number 1, the only one who never left the payroll. The cover shows the SLAC auditorium in 1975: a metal chair, a coffee urn, the bare board on the table.
HP, Blue Box, the club
His father was an engineer at Lockheed. Homestead High — the same school as Jobs, whom he met through a mutual friend around 1971. Berkeley, then HP in Cupertino, calculators. Woz wanted a real computer on his desk, not an LED kit. In 1971–72 he and Jobs built the Blue Box, the device that mimicked the telephone operator's tone. Woz handled the circuit; Jobs handled sales. John Draper (Cap’n Crunch) was involved.
The first meeting of the Homebrew Computer Club was on 5 March 1975, in Gordon French's garage in Menlo Park; later the club moved to the SLAC auditorium. The Altair 8800 was the toy of the moment — Intel 8080, front panel, no video. Woz looked at it and designed something else: MOS 6502 (cheap), video on a TV, a keyboard, a computer you could see. He brought the board. The club applauded. Jobs, who was not part of the hardware crowd, applauded that applause.
Apple I, Apple II, the slots
Paul Terrell, Byte Shop, ordered 50 assembled boards. Jobs financed it with his VW Beetle and Woz's HP-65. Around 200 Apple I units, US$ 666,66, no power supply, no case, no keyboard. The Apple Computer Company, 1º April 1976, with Ronald Wayne. The story of his partner on stage is in The story of Steve Jobs.
The Apple II, 1977, is what matters to anyone who solders. Color video (Woz's clock trick), Integer BASIC in ROM that he wrote himself, eight expansion slots — the decision to open up the machine. Floppy disks, VisiCalc, the first PC a business would buy that was not an IBM. Almost 6 million Apple II machines by 1993. The Macintosh later treated the II as a poor relation; Woz never entirely forgave that, and still used a Mac for the rest of his life.
HP had the right to turn down the Apple I — Woz was an employee. It declined. He resigned to join Apple, but for years still introduced himself as the engineer who liked HP. Employee #1. Jobs was #2. The numbering is playground theology; the circuit is what remains.
The Cessna, the US Festival, Rocky Raccoon
On 7 February 1981 Woz took off in a Beechcraft from Santa Cruz and crashed. Anterograde amnesia: weeks without forming new memories. Apple was already a different company. He returned, fought the bureaucracy, and in 1985 left day-to-day operations — without leaving the payroll. He funded the US Festival (1982 and 1983), rock and technology in the desert, and lost a fortune. He returned to Berkeley and graduated in 1986 in EECS under the name Rocky Raccoon Clark, to avoid turning it into a circus.
CL-9, 1987: the first universal remote control. Wheels of Zeus (W.O.Z.), GPS — the rough grandfather of the AirTag, two decades early. Fusion-io, chief scientist, until SanDisk bought it in 2014. Primary Data closed in 2018. Efforce (2020), blockchain for energy efficiency. Privateer Space (2021), orbital debris; in 2026 the company bought Orbital Insight. Silicon Valley Comic Con with Stan Lee, 2015. Woz U, 2017, a technology school. Autobiography iWoz, 2006.
2026: the fifty-dollar check
In August 2026 Woz turned 76. He lives in Los Gatos. He remains on Apple's payroll as a digital design fellow — a ceremonial position, the check he describes as US$ 50 per week (other accounts mention a larger stipend; the message is the same: he has not retired). Net worth in the US$ 100–140 million range: he sold most of his shares when he left, and the 7% from the IPO in 1980 would now be worth tens of billions. He says he does not care. EFF, education, the stage. In 2025–2026 he speaks poorly of much of AI (“disappointed”) and favorably of real intelligence, that of graduating students.
Apple turned 50 on 1º April 2026. The original contract with Jobs and Wayne went to auction. A signed Apple I board, for US$ 800 thousand. The boy who only wanted to show his circuit at the club became a relic. The other Steve, the one in the turtleneck, died in 2011. The engineer keeps going from stage to stage, T-shirt, anecdote, the same voice.
Wrap-up
Woz is the argument that the personal computer came from a hobbyist who wanted a TV and a keyboard, not from a business plan. Slots. BASIC in ROM. 6502. Homebrew as a university. Jobs packaged it; without the circuit there was nothing to package. Without Jobs, the circuit might have stayed at the club — and on some days Woz still thinks that would have been better.
The cover shows the auditorium: fluorescent lighting, a schematic on the wall, the board on the tablecloth-covered table, the six-color apple on the wall. It is not Cupertino. It is Menlo Park, 1975, the night an HP engineer brought a real computer to his friends.