Wozniak Time

[Original published date: 9/12/2007 1:55:27 AM]

It was a great occasion that Trendmicro could invite Steve Wozniak, the founder of Apple Inc, to come to our office and give us a speech.

Although his speech was almost about the content of his new book, iWoz, he still gave us a impressive image of legendary engineer. Woznaik is not like another founder of Apple Inc, Steve Jobs. He is a typical engineer who loves to invent new stuff and hesitate to show up in public. Many great products produced by Apple in the 80s actually came from Wozniak's hand and they are inlcuding Apple I and II. He always treat himself as an engineer even he gained a lot of money from his founder position and the growing well of Apple, more than that, he actually shared his divident with basic employees. His value is so noble that some people call him the only good man in silicon valley.

At the Q & A period, our CCO, Jenny asked Woz that how do you think about the computer viruses and the hackers who made them? Wozniak's response is very mischievous, he said: All of my servers use Macintosh system and I have two hourses to store these machine. But as I know, not any hacker even me has the firewall and I think it is because no one want to write a vurus on Macintosh system. Two times in those days, my friends bring in some linux machines and setup their own router and firewall but they ware intruded because somebody took control the computers. As a hacker, I never try to write virus or do something bad. However, too many hackers cross that line and I do not appreciate it totally. Basically, the Macintosh platform has lower marketship so very few people try to write virus on Macintosh. Anyway, the virus issue became more and more important especially we all step into the Internet right now, and one of companies which I am in board is focus on software security.

Then, One of our engineer ask him how do you negotiate and sell your innovation idea to your boss? He said: Engineers usually are focus on the functionality and do not know the real requirement from the customers. The valuable improvement to the software maybe not always the same to the engineer and customer. In order to getting closer to the customer, engineer must work closely with marketing to reach customer's thinking. Besides it, some bosses will listen to you but some don't, there is nothing I can do about that!

I also raised my question: Do you know Kai Fu Lee? He was the employee of Apple before and how do you feel that he join the Microsoft at last? Wozniak showed his humor again, he said: does his scandal really over? (all people laughed out loud at the time) The Q&A period took about 15 mins and I can not type each question and Woz's answer here because it is so many. Just want to share the experience with you and hope everyone who listend his speech does have inspired no mater by his value or profession. To those people who are interesting in his new book, iWoz, in Traditional Chinese edition, the website produced by Yuan-Liou publisher is a good start: http://www.ylib.com/hotsale/iWoz/index.htm.

[re-post this article due to database crash.]