1d ago

[...] Steve Wozniak [75th birthday]: "I gave all my Apple wealth away because wealth and power are not what I live for"

www.pcgamer.com 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'

You gotta love the Woz.

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'

82 comments

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

This is why all of the megarich are selfish assholes.
The good people give their money away.
- And the good people never brag how charitable they are for doing so.
- Or they have an epiphany and realize they have, perhaps not ‘fuck you’ money, but at least ‘bite me’ money. Then they sit in a row boat and fish or something. Greed is a pathology and we do a favor to those inflicted with it by taking it away faster and faster the more they steal from us.
- The good people don't become billionaires in the first place
  You have extra money to name a hospital wing after yourself? Should have been taxed appropriately in the first place so that the hospital didnt need to sell naming rights just to fill a funding gap....
  You have extra money to donate to your family charity? Should have been paid as appropriate wages to your workers instead of accumulating in your personal net worth....
  All billionaire philanthropy is a failure of policy that allowed them to unjustly accumulate those billions through exploting others, thereby creating most of the problems that they "solve" through their philanthropy later in life

And that's why he's 75 and happy and Jobs is dead and no one will know his name in 20 years.
- no one will know his name in 20 years.
  I'm not a fan of Jobs but that's quite a claim. No one will remember one of the most successful CEOs of all time in 2 decades?
  Wozniak will leave the public consciousness way sooner than Jobs. Outside of tech circles, pretty much nobody knows who he is now.
  
  Sad, unfair, infuriating, but probably true.
  
  People still talk about Jack Welsh's impact on business culture and he retired in 2001.
  
  20 years might be pushing it, but he'd be gone 34ish years by that point. He wasn't much of a philanthropist. Is there any Steve Jobs Parks? Plazas? His early death didn't lend him much time to create a legacy. He'll be known in business and tech scenes, sure, but the pop culture knowledge of him will be negligible. Does the general public know about the CEO of IBM 35+ years ago? The current crop of CEOs are like WWE wrestlers in their persona compared to Jobs. Being present for the smartphone revolution was something, but does anyone remember the CEO of the company that introduced the laptop? Jobs wasn't a Carnegie or Rockefeller.
- Yup, being a CEO is the number one leading cause of pancreatic cancer...
  
  Nope but being an idiot and treating it with a fruit diet is certainly a factor.
  
  You're right. Ignorance got Jobs. Stress doesn't help though.

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

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.

Oh what a world it would be if people like Wozniak and Swartz weren't fucked over by their original techbro "friends"

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.

Fuckin' class act.

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".

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!

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...
- why call them saints? just call them good people
  
  Because it has more gravitas!
  
  It's important to recognise exceptionally good imo.
- 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.
- 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.

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

The Woz is BOSS!

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

Psssh Steve jobs gave his life.
- he spent all his money on fruity juice
  
  Should have used more lime!

It’s wild the simping done for Gabe on Lemmy. Gamers acting like he’s THEIR billionaire and steam is THEIR corporation and pretending he ain’t evil
- He's significantly less evil than other billionaires and Valve provides a pretty solid service at a fair price. Not very many companies even reach that bar. Giving them credit for that isn't unreasonable.
  All billionaires are bad but I'll take Gabe over a Bezos or Zuckerberg every day of the week. There's a huge difference on how those guys see/treat the world.
  
  That’s like saying someone is the nicest serial killer on earth
  Edit: it is disheartening seeing so many people on here defending billionaires, we are fucked as a species

Steve Wozniak's net worth is not definitively known, but it is estimated to be around $100 million. He continues to receive a stipend from Apple for his role as an employee emeritus. In 2006, this stipend was estimated to be $120,000 per year
"I gave all my wealth away"...
- The full quote:
  I gave all my Apple wealth away because wealth and power are not what I live for. I have a lot of fun and happiness. I funded a lot of important museums and arts groups in San Jose, the city of my birth, and they named a street after me for being good. I now speak publicly and have risen to the top. I have no idea how much I have but after speaking for 20 years it might be $10M plus a couple of homes. I never look for any type of tax dodge. I earn money from my labor and pay something like 55% combined tax on it. I am the happiest person ever. Life to me was never about accomplishment, but about Happiness, which is Smiles minus Frowns. I developed these philosophies when I was 18-20 years old and I never sold out.
  
  Smiles minus frowns.
  This right here is the ultimate KPI, yet I've never seen it in a dashboard or spreadsheet. Woz is a legend...
- The 120M aside, which is almost certainly pulled out of someone's ass, $120k/yr isn't that much. I'm sure that almost ever engineer at Apple makes more than that.
  
  Like, he's not going to be starving, but it's not exactly megayacht level either.
  
  120k in silion valley in particular is barely a livable wage. CoL is incredibly high there.
  
  I would hope all their engineers make more than that. For Apple that should be entry level.
- Steve Wozniak’s net worth is not definitively known,
  They literally TOLD YOU THEY DON'T KNOW and you're still listening to their estimates as if they're fact.
  but it is estimated to be around $100 million.
  estimated BY WHO? AND HOW?
  
  Business insider mentions the yearly $120000.
  Market realist estimates it to be 100 mil net worth, but is substantially smaller that it once was, at an estimate of 10bil.
  Listen - the point is not what he is worth. The point is that even though he has given away all his apple wealth, he is still a very rich man, who can afford to have this point of view.

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