Do we like Steve Wozniak?
Our score: 7 out of 10. A decent record with no harmful words found, one dodgy venture and a thin paper trail on LGBTQ+ issues.
Stephen Gary Wozniak was born in San Jose in 1950, the son of a Lockheed engineer, and he was a kid who simply built electronics. He co-founded Apple with Steve Jobs and Ronald Wayne in 1976, working out of a family garage. Woz did the inventing, Jobs did the selling, and the Apple II is the machine that made the company.
He left Apple in 1985, but he never really stopped tinkering. In 1990 he co-founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation with Mitchell Kapor, which gives legal help to computer users facing prosecution. He later wrote his memoir, iWoz, and took a chief scientist job at Fusion-io. So the Silicon Valley nerd who did something for digital rights is a fair summary.
The stain is Woz U, the coding bootcamp carrying his name. In 2018 CBS News spoke to more than two dozen current and former students and employees who complained about errors in course content and sales pressure. The company's president acknowledged content errors, said a quality control system was in place, and denied students were pressured to enrol. Woz himself declined interview requests. A professor later sued him in Arizona, alleging he took the idea for a Woz-branded school, and Woz's side said no deal had been reached; I couldn't confirm how that ended.
The latest thing is a bit of fun. In a March 2026 CNN interview, reported by Fortune, he said “I don't use AI much at all” and that its writing can sound “too dry and too perfect”. He added that he has disconnected from the technology quite a bit. The man who helped start the personal computer era now sounds like your nan about chatbots.
He is also on the receiving end of a scam. In 2020 he led a lawsuit against YouTube and Google over Bitcoin giveaway videos that used his likeness. A California appeals court in March 2024 reversed an earlier ruling that had found the companies protected by Section 230, saying they may not be completely shielded. That is Woz as plaintiff, so it sits in the column and not in the court record.