Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak talks Apple's past, present and future

The Apple co-founder discusses the iPad and his love of hardware engineering

In 1976, when Steve Jobs persuaded his friend Steve Wozniak to start a company to sell the Apple I - the computer Wozniak had built - the pair had no way of knowing what their company, Apple Computer, would become.

A local computer shop in Palo Alto quickly sold the first batch of Apple Is and Apple Computer never looked back: in 1980, the company went public and Jobs and Wozniak became multimillionaires.

Now more than 30 years after it was established, Apple is the biggest technology company in the world in terms of market capitalisation and is a byword for cleverly-designed and cool consumer technology.

And although he left the company in 1987, Wozniak's engineering genius and design philosophy that were at the root of the company's early success continue to have an influence today.

The iPod, iPhone and iPad continue to shift millions of units and stick to Wozniak's ethos of making technology easy to use and ready to go straight out of the box.

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak built the Apple I and was instrumental in the company's early success
(Photo credit: Fusion-io)

Since leaving Apple, Wozniak has founded several other companies including wireless GPS company Wheels of Zeus and a holding company for acquiring and developing technology companies, Acquicor Technology. He's also taught computer science to high-school students and regularly speaks to organisations around the world. He's currently chief scientist at solid-state storage company Fusion-io.

More recently, Wozniak - affectionately known as The Woz - has taken part in US TV dance contest Dancing with the Stars and appeared in US sitcom The Big Bang Theory.

silicon.com caught up with Wozniak to discuss the early days of Apple, his views on Apple's evolution into the huge tech brand it is today and what the future holds for the company.

The early days of Apple

Released in 1976, the Apple I was essentially a pre-assembled motherboard for which users merely had to provide a case, screen and keyboard. What made it significant was that it represented a shift from computers that people had to build themselves, to computers that were ready to work as soon as they were unpacked.

That a pristine example of an Apple I recently fetched £133,000 at auction shows how important the device was in the development of personal computing.

The Apple I was initially pitched at home users but it soon became clear that enterprises too could take advantage of Apple's technology. The main factor in this shift was, according to Wozniak, the arrival of VisiCalc for the Apple II, the spreadsheet program credited with turning the hobbyist personal computer into a business tool.

"All of a sudden VisicCalc came out and our sales shot up 10 times to small businessmen. We said: 'Oh my god, the market is business. We've got to build a...