The A&E Biography Special:
Originally aired December 13, 2000
Woz:
They made it seem as though I did no engineering work on the remote control. In fact, I stayed in a hotel in Phoenix for a week or two, away from distractions, and completed the code for one of the microprocessors of the CORE. In Hawaii I decided not to do the code myself for the other microprocessor. I had worked closely with engineers on hardware specifics and general directions. I had selected the processors and LCD and keyboard myself too. So I did not sit that product out.

They said that the CORE was too complicated and more and failed. That's not true. It was never tested. Soon after putting it out, I decided that I did not want to continue the business but instead spend time with my family. It was a major life decision, because our product (and another one we had) was very good, to this day. It was the only one until recently that was programmable and had its own clock. I let a friend of the company make and sell the product, without anything for myself, just so that the work would be going somewhere. http://www.celadon.com.

They made it seem as though I was a billionaire or something. Some that continued in business became billionaires eventually. My first wife may in fact be a billionaire. But my ideals led me to give the bulk of my wealth away and not that much remains. This deliberate error (to sell advertising) leads to tons of very uncomfortable email that I have to handle.

They said that I have "up to 5 hours a day of email" when I had told them that I have 5 hours a day minimum (on holidays mainly) and that I normally have 8 to 20 hours a day and that it's brought havoc to my personal life for a year or more. I still have all this email, plus what is coming from the show.

They showed me saying that I finally decided to start Apple to "get rich" but cut it there and left off my explanation that what changed my mind was that my friend explained was that I could BE AN ENGINEER (not a businessman) and still get rich. I knew that the purpose of starting the company was to get rich before, while I was saying "no" to starting Apple. I just didn't want to start it and have to be a businessman.