Steve Wozniak Talks Gadgets, the Role of Engineers

"Kiss an engineer," Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak told the audience at the Gartner Symposium in Orlando yesterday, in a wide-ranging discussion that touched on his approach to gadgets and engineering in general.

Wozniak said he likes to try lots of different gadgets; you have to hold it in your hand to feel what it's like. He is very impressed by smartphones, but not yet by smartwatches. He did, however, express enthusiasm for Google Glass, saying "you look so cool" while wearing one. It is so small and convenient that even though it isn't ready for the mass market, "it triggers ideas," he said.

Wozniak encouraged the audience to embrace engineering and do what excites them, talking about how when he started "Introduction to Computers," it was a graduate level class, and he used five times more computing power than was expected by the university. "You have to make things fun," he said.

Much of the talk involved Gartner analysts David Willis and Ken Dulaney pulling items out of an "IoT mystery box" and getting Wozniak to associate something with the items.

For instance, they pulled out a CD, and Wozniak talked about how that was "a huge step for data," because it could store so much more than a floppy disk. He initially predicted that someone would make it so a CD could hold two movies, but a friend said that, instead, we could have a chip that will hold 50 movies.

A "million dollar bill" got Wozniak talking about Apple Pay and Google Wallet. He tried Google phones for payment but found that sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't. He said there wasn't a critical mass yet for Google because each phone was different. Apple has 10 million potential users of Apple Pay, but people will still carry credit cards and cash because it doesn't work everywhere.

Wozniak called an Ethernet cable "my old friend" and he noted that Ethernet and Wi-Fi are about the only two standards that are the same everywhere in the world. But he complained that the hotel wouldn't let him set up his own Wi-Fi network.

A battery reminded him that this is one technology that hasn't advanced very far, with him saying lithium ion is the only significant advance he's seen in his lifetime. He spoke of the wonders of wireless charging using non-Apple phones, and said "I prefer anything that saves wires."

A model car got him talking about how the Tesla was designed from Elon Musk's personal point of view, and why that was important for great engineering. He said he designed the Apple II only for himself, and that it was Apple's only success for the first 10 years. Steve Jobs also developed the iPhone for himself (and then didn't share it with Bill Gates, unlike the Macintosh.)

Wozniak is enthused by the concept of self-driving cars, as they won't make mistakes, but noted that everything with a computer in it fails. He said he's afraid that the first accidents involving such cars will lead to a horrible public reaction, and that self-driving cars might get banned too early.

And when showed a lock, he talked about how he would like to have a ring that is connected to a phone to allow for two-factor authentication. But he said he expects physical locks will be around for a long time.

I was interested in Wozniak's take on the changes in startups over the past few decades. He noted that startups used to be split off from older, bigger companies, and Silicon Valley was founded by executives who had left other firms. Now, he said, most startups are young people without much experience. Big companies are trying to do new things, but they rarely see that level of advancement.

He said it used to be that the military and then big business had the best technology; now consumers and cars get more technology.

Going forward, he said voice recognition is the biggest part of the future. He said he liked the concept of the Newton Message Pad, but was even more impressed by Google Now and Siri. Asked if this will lead to assistants like those seen in the movie Her, he said he used to believe that systems will get consciousness, but that didn't feel good. "So now I prefer to believe Moore's Law is near its end."

He did say that computers don't learn the way we do, so we need new ways to approach chips, such as the way IBM's Neuron chips are more like the human brain.

As a final word, Wozniak urged people not to "pick sides too much." He said you can disagree on the choices others make, and on what platforms are the best for you, but shouldn't call the other choices bad. People should be able to disagree, but shouldn't criticize the platforms they don't choose, just appreciate the reasons for others' choices.

His big takeaway was that "engineering matters." He said engineers should have fun and little bit of looseness in doing their jobs, and that managers should include engineers in making big decisions, but give them time to think about solutions.