Steve Wozniak (Co-Fonder of Apple) Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words - 1

Steve Wozniak (Co-Fonder of Apple) - Essay Example Wozniak’s father played an important role in his early life to help him gain an interest in electronics. He used to get his son electronic equipments so that he could learn on his own. He gifted Wozniak a radio kit at the age of seven and a heavy electronics kit the next year. Wozniak used to experiment on the equipments and learnt from those experiences. He used to buy pieces from the market and tried making his own electronic accessories. Every time he succeeded in making one, he would try again to make it but with the use of fewer accessories. The books never really appealed to him but still he was well ahead of his classmates and was able to build a computer in his 6th grade that could play tic-tac toe. When he turned fourteen, he made a fully fledged computing device which could do binary additions and subtractions, for which he also received an award. In his own words, "It was all self-done; I didn't ever take a course, didn't ever buy a book on how to do it. Just pieced it together in my own head."(Wozniak & Smith, 2006) By the time he was enrolled in college he was expert enough to design and build functional computers. One of his early inventions was the ‘blue box’ which he created to make long distance phone calls for free. Although this was illegal, it showed Wozniak’s talent in the use of electronic circuitry. He applied to Caltech University for higher education but his application was rejected. He joined the University of Colorado in the year 1968 to pursue engineering major but transferred to the University of Berkeley for his sophomore year. The theoretical study in his university courses never really appealed to him. He was more interested in the practical work and that is why he decided to drop out of university after his junior year (Cantlay). In 1975 the only concept of personal computers was that they were available in kit form and had to be properly assembled in a big box which contained a lot of switches and wir es. The first ever personal computer kit commercially available was known as the Altair 8800 which could only do limited tasks even after being properly assembled. The amount of work required was tedious and did not always end in the correct way. Wozniak decided to build a personal computer for himself because he was unable to afford an Altair 8800. His idea behind a personal computer was that it should be user-friendly and could do more tasks like calculation and load video games. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were intent on taking the personal computers to general public. They founded the apple Company and decided to promote their first product under its name. Wozniak pioneered the company’s first personal computer device and named it Apple I. The Apple Company brought about a major breakthrough in the computer industry by making the personal computers available to millions of people worldwide. The computers that were previously available in the market were not user friendly and mostly had to be bought in different parts and assembled at home. Wozniak was thinking ahead of the time and he planned on building computers that could also have a video display. The big companies like Hewlett Packard and IBM was skeptic on the idea of using microprocessors for computers and the prospect of success did not seem very bright for Job and Wozniak’s newfound Company. (Kendall, 2000).  Wozniak and Jobs sold off some of their personal belongings in order to pool in money for the equipments needed to build the computer. The first Apple I was built in a garage