May 98 Factory Floor
Volume Number: 14
Issue Number: 5
Column Tag: From The Factory Floor
An Interview with Steve Wozniak
by Dave Mark ©1998 by Metrowerks, Inc., all rights reserved.
This month's column is particularly special to me. I had the distinct pleasure of getting
the chance to interview Steve Wozniak (gee, do I need to mention that Steve is one of
the founders of Apple?) In reading over Steve's comments, I was reminded of my early
Mac days and of the reasons I fell in love with the Macintosh. Enjoy...
Dave: What is your current relationship with Apple?
Steve: I don't have any official involvement at Apple, although I am happy to
represent the company in many appearances that I make. I spend a lot of time keeping
up with the products first hand and have found that when you buy and maintain
hundreds of computers over the years you get a lot better understanding of the
customer issues than insiders have.
Dave: What do you think about Apple's future?
Steve: I worry about it as we all do. I think that the Macintosh is so good and popular
that its sales will continue to carry the company for many years given a reasonable
effort not to sell things for less than you build them. I think that we're in good
management hands that way. I fret about the Macintosh future. It's getting harder and
harder to find Macintosh drivers for the latest interesting hardware devices. For
example, digital cameras and Fax machines with printing ability.
Since so much of the world is now saturated with computers it's very difficult to make