Instead of predicting the future, Apple was forward-thinking from the outset and took the first steps toward global computing for everybody, co-founder Steve Wozniak has said as part of a series of interviews marking the company's 50th anniversary.
After a lengthy interview with current CEO Tim Cook on Sunday discussing Apple's culture, Monday saw more commentary about the company's early history. This time, it was Steve Wozniak's turn.
Talking as part of a CBS Sunday Morning piece on the anniversary posted to YouTube on Monday, "Woz" first jokingly boasts that the story of Apple started when he was born.
Speaking from a sidewalk where Woz and co-founder Steve Jobs met, neither of them knew at the time that their creation of a circuit board would turn into a company.
"Steve Jobs wanted a company and he did it, and I was his resource," he laughs in the piece. Those initial 150 sales of Woz's first computer led to the sale of six million for the second attempt, the Apple II.
To Woz, it was "so far above any of the other computers coming out." Apple didn't foresee the future of computing, he admits, but that the company instead decided to take a "step forward ahead of others."
The interview then moves on to commentary from CEO Tim Cook, calling Jobs a "once in a thousand years kind of person." Former head of hardware John Rubenstein referred to Jobs as being "brutal" in wanting the best from his team.
An old culture
The piece eventually returns to Wozniak, discussing how the company's current culture was born from those early days. He insists the reputation sprung from the founders, before admitting he is still fond of the corporate behemoth.
"It's hard to be 100% perfect, but I still admire Apple the most of all the tech companies," he claims.
The piece concludes with Cook calling Apple the sum of all of the products it's made and the people it's enabled. "The artists, the musicians, it's the everyday people who have done remarkable things to change the world."
To Cook, this is enough reason to look towards the next 50 years.
A continued legacy
Monday's piece features brief elements from Cook's Sunday interview, which saw the CEO discuss his work with Jobs and the transition. In that interview, he admits Jobs gave him advice to never ask what Jobs would do, and instead to do the "right thing."
It was also revealed that Jobs wanted a proper corporate transition for Apple, and to avoid having a Disney-style paralysis of thinking following the departure of Walt Disney.
Cook also insisted that Apple's culture was hard to replicate due to requiring the right people and time to go through repeated cycles of change.
Correspondent David Pogue's accompanying book, Apple: The First 50 Years, is on sale from Amazon for $46.50.
