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Comment by surfingdino | Hacker News Reader

He had a driven business partner who helped turn his passion for computers into a multi-billion corporation. He always struck me as immature. Not a great businessman, not a great engineer, more of a hobbyist who got lucky and quickly reached the limits of his knowledge and ability with the original Apple.

His myth has greatly outgrown his accomplishments and I have a feeling even he is not comfortable with it, he'd rather be showing off his Nixie watch to friends.

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Woz was a great engineer. He was years ahead of any other engineer on the planet in terms of building awesome PC designs. Millions of the computers he designed and programmed were sold, for billions of dollars. The computer he created was the "Model T" of the personal computer industry. It's hard to be more technically accomplished as an engineer.

He could not have done it without Steve Jobs. But Steve Jobs could not have done it without him, either.

Steve Jobs was a major believer in the idea of the 100x engineer. During his entire career, he always tried to hire them.

And why did Steve Jobs believe in hiring 100x engineers? Because he knew and worked with Steve Wozniak.

This is an unfair and snide take on Woz. We are literally standing on the shoulders of giants — Woz happens to be one of them.

Knowing when you're at the limit of what you're able/willing to do and ducking out to go have a happy life strikes me as more mature, not less. Certainly he was a hobbyist and certainly he got lucky but what he did was still impressive for the time and choosing to step away is admirable imo

That driven business partner had a publicly articulated strategy of finding great people and surrounding himself with them.

He sought out Woz because of what he could do.

That's an amazing life.

Yeah he had luck. And so what ? Good for him. He is not claiming anything else.

I don’t know if there is a real myth around him but it doesn’t looks like he is trying to maintain it.

The guy really looks like he just wants to be happy in life and would prefer not be a celebrity.

It looks like he is a worse entrepreneur than Jobs, sure, but a better father and a better human overall, that’s pretty sure. I feel like that’s a pretty mature behavior if you ask me.

>not a great engineer, more of a hobbyist who got lucky and quickly reached the limits of his knowledge and ability with the original Apple.

I suppose you feel you are a better engineer, no? It's good to see hubris is still alive and well in tech.

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