I recently went one-on-one with Ronald Wayne, co-founder of Apple.
Adam: You grew up before there was an iPhone, before there was a cell phone, and before there was the internet. What drove your interest in technology, and what drove you to pursue a career in technology?
Ronald: I can only say that I began as a tinkerer, fascinated with the world. I regarded the world as a huge sandbox with all the toys I could play with. I was curious, and I responded to that curiosity by trying to find answers to everything that came across my focus.
The world then was vacuum tubes. That was the world. I don’t remember much of the Great Depression, except that I lived through it, and World War Two. It was after World War Two that surplus stores started popping up like mushrooms everywhere, including stores carrying enormous quantities of electronic parts, dirt cheap.
I’d been tinkering with electronics or electrical things for a long time, ever since I was a very young child, so I could pick it up fast. Suddenly, all these parts were available, dirt cheap. I sent it to the Government Printing Office for a course on basic electronics. With that material, I taught myself basic electronics and vacuum tubes. As time went on, I taught myself transistor logic, then integrated circuits. I think I was working on microprocessors about the time I retired.
My education, unfortunately, because of circumstances, ended with my graduation from the School of Industrial Arts in New York in 1953. That’s the extent of my formal education. At the same time, I concluded my career with a sixteen-year stint as Chief Engineer at a small company called Thor Electronics in Salinas, California.
What really did the trick for me was that I spent the first part of my professional career job shopping. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the term. Manpower is the closest to it in the field of electronics technology. I worked with many different companies on an intermittent basis, projects that lasted only a few months or sometimes two years.
I did two years at Lawrence Livermore Laboratories, where I set up their model-building shop. Because of that activity, I became what was called a polymath. I wasn’t only an electrical engineer. I was a technician, a tech writer, an illustrator, a machinist. I did all sorts of different things.
That made me, unintentionally, an ideal candidate for employment in any small company, because once they hired me, there were three or four people they didn’t have to hire. The area I worked in was so fascinating that I spent all my time in the office when I was working at Thor Electronics. I was there every day of the week. My boss came in one Sunday and saw me at the drawing board. He said, “What the hell are you doing here, Wayne?” I said, “Well, what am I supposed to do? Sit in the apartment and listen to my arteries harden?”
I was thoroughly entranced in everything I was doing. Weekends and holidays meant nothing to me.
Adam: And when you love what you do, there’s a much better chance that you’re going to be great at it. It’s really hard to be great at anything that you’re not passionate about. Greatness requires dedication. Greatness requires time, and you’re going to be a lot less likely to put in the time if you don’t have passion.
Ronald: Oh, absolutely. Many kids have come to me and said, “What should I do for a profession?” My response has always been the same: find a profession that you enjoy so much you’d be willing to do it for nothing, and you’ll never work a day in your life. You’ll be having too much fun.
Adam: What did you learn from your time at Atari?
Ronald: Atari was a gem moment in my experience. I went in as a product development engineer and chief draftsman. On my first day, I needed a component for a job I’d been assigned to. I went to the guys on the floor and asked, “Where’s your purchased parts system? I need to select a part.” They showed me a three-ring binder with page after page of five-digit numbers. After each number, somebody had scribbled a nondescript generalization of whatever that part was supposed to be.
I said, “I can’t find anything in this kind of system.” They said, “Go out to the stock room and you’ll find the part you’re looking for, and the part number’s on the box.” I went out to the stock room and, to be candid, I almost lost my breakfast. They had no system.
I went in and talked to Mr. Alcorn, the chief engineer. I said, “Look, we’ve got to do something about this.” He said, “No, we don’t. You’re chief draftsman. You do something.” That was the first time in my life I’d ever had that kind of an experience. I put that system together in three months.
Two things came to my attention while I was there. The company had been in business for a few years. They were employing 300 people and producing Pong as fast as they possibly could because of the sales they could make. But when I called a parts company for a part, they told me, “Well, the company is on credit hold.” I thought, what’s going on here?
It turned out their lack of a documentation system for purchased parts was costing them an enormous amount of money. They were successful in the product, so it didn’t make sense except for the fact that the absence of that system was dragging them down. After I put the system in, several years later, the company sold for $28 million. I really do believe I was profoundly helpful. They realized that and treated me like gold after that event.
Atari was a magnificent enterprise. Nolan Bushnell had an interesting philosophy for running a company. Anybody who came in to work for them, even a cleaner, if he came in with an idea for a new game, Bushnell would pick the guy up, drop him into the lab, and say, “Build it.” A lot of things didn’t work well, but he got a lot of new games out of that activity. Creativity was something he looked for, and when he found it, he exercised it.
Adam: It was during that era that you cultivated relationships with Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, and the three of you came together to form this historic company that we know as Apple. You were brought in as the adult in the room. You were a couple of decades older than Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, and you played a critical role in bringing Apple to life.
Ronald: I was in my 40s. They were in their 20s. Jobs regarded me as a source of information he didn’t previously have access to, and I could act as their mentor. I decided to join with them because I had twenty years of experience in the business, and in all facets of the business as a polymath. I wanted to mentor them. I wound up being the guy who drew up the founding contract, becoming a partner, the founding partner in Apple Computer Company.
The first problem Jobs came to me with was that he and Wozniak wanted to form a company to produce personal computers. I thought it was a slick idea, the right product at the right time. I had no question it would be successful.
The problem was that Wozniak did not understand the concept of proprietorship. Woz was a whimsical character, and he was very protective of the circuits he designed. To have his designs become the property of Apple, he resisted that enormously.
Jobs called me in and said, “Can I get this guy to understand the importance of proprietorship of circuit designs?” I said I could. We met one evening in my apartment in Mountain View, California. I think it took me about twenty minutes to get them to understand the concept of proprietorship.
Once Woz agreed, that was the moment Jobs jumped up and said, “That’s it. We’re going to form a company. Woz will have 45%, I’ll have 45%, and you’ll have 10% as a tiebreaker.” I was supposed to be the tiebreaker in case there was any dispute between the two of them, but what they really needed from me was skills they did not yet have. I almost lost my upset. I was surprised, but that’s how it began.
Adam: What are the best lessons you learned from that experience?
Ronald: It’s hard to answer because there are so many facets to it. I assisted them. I provided skills they did not have. I created the first logo for the company. I admit it was not a twentieth-century logo. It was a nineteenth-century logo. Woz was whimsical, and I caught some of that, so I created a whimsical logo. That logo has since become a worldwide icon, the Newton logo.
I also did the manual for the Apple One, including the schematic diagrams and so on. Later, Jobs asked me to design the enclosure for the coming Apple Two. He didn’t tell me they had come upon a large sum of money to work with. I thought they were still two kids who didn’t have two nickels to rub together. So I did a design that had no tooling. It was all fabricated parts.
One thing I did was build a design that was unique to the industry at that time. The circuit board was mounted horizontally in a horizontal case with an integral keyboard, not a separate keyboard. It was horizontal so a monitor could sit on top of it. That concept, monitor on top, horizontal structure, integral keyboard, became the basis for many of the computer designs Apple came up with later on. The geometry of what I designed went on to be the geometry for all future Apple computers.
Adam: You had a long-standing relationship with Steve Jobs. You were his mentor, and he tried bringing you back into the company after you left. What are the best lessons that you learned from your time with Steve Jobs?
Ronald: He did ask me to return, and I chose not to. By that time, there were minor strains in the relationship, and I felt it would not be productive for me to go back at that particular point in time.
Difficult to say. He was a complicated person. He could be irritating, and at the same time, he could be instructive. I followed along with whatever his needs were, although we did have fundamental disagreements.
The importance of any partnership is having a strong coexistence relationship. If you have difficulties, work them out. Put them together. Make sure you don’t come unglued. Maintaining a good relationship in a partnership is critical. If you have difficulties, they should be worked out immediately. Otherwise, they grow and become an interference with what you’re doing. Maintain good, solid communications in every relationship. It’s vital. If you find things that are strange or not working out, resolve them as quickly as possible.
One of the problems, as I’ve told you, I became a polymath. I was skilled at anything and everything I could get my paws on. I was a machinist, a tech writer, an illustrator, a junior engineer, and finally a formal engineer. At the same time, I found that as skilled as Jobs was in his craft, there were holes in his experience that startled me. For example, he didn’t know that aluminum was an electrical conductor. That knocked me off my pins. I was surprised. His information was sketchy and focused entirely on whatever direction he was going, which was primarily marketing.
Adam: What made Steve Jobs so successful?
Ronald: His drive and ambition. Once he got his teeth in something, he would never let go. He was an absolute bulldog. He was very focused on whatever direction he wanted to go, and nothing was going to stand in his way.
Adam: What did you learn from your time with Steve Wozniak?
Ronald: Steve Wozniak was the electronics genius. That’s what made him successful. I added to my own knowledge considerably from working with him, skills and understandings I didn’t have before. He was as much a mentor to me in electronics as I tried to be to the pair of them.
Adam: It is widely reported that you sold your 10% stake in Apple for $800, twelve days after the company’s founding. What is the real story?
Ronald: I never sold my interest in Apple, and I certainly didn’t sell it for $800. That $800 number came from a different source altogether. I separated myself from the enterprise because of fundamental disagreements with my associates. Several weeks after I left, I got a letter in the mail from Steve Jobs. No letter, no note, no explanation, and a check for $800. I thought it was a gratuity. I never sold my interest in Apple to anyone at any amount.
Adam: How can anyone be a great mentor?
Ronald: Find out the core interests and the core intelligence of the person you’re dealing with, and play on that magnificently. Provide them with whatever fundamental knowledge they need that you see is missing or can be expanded on. Take it from there. You’ll probably be acknowledged as a gift-giver if you do things like that.
Adam: What should everyone understand about AI?
Ronald: Utilize AI to whatever extent it helps you. A lot of people are terrified by AI, largely because it has a tendency to be misused. But every invention in human history has been picked up by somebody who abuses it. You can’t stop the growth of knowledge and understanding and new ideas simply because people will abuse that knowledge. AI is an important invention. Not as important as the wheel, perhaps, but pretty close.
Adam: How can anyone become more successful, personally and professionally?
Ronald: Pick a focus. Stay with it. Pursue it, no matter what gets in the way, and you’ll succeed. One way or another, you’ll succeed.
