From the history of Apple: Steve Wozniak is leaving Apple

Steve Wozniak aka Woz was also one of the co-founders of Apple. Engineer, programmer, and longtime friend of Steve Jobs, the man behind the development of the Apple I computer and a number of other apple machines. Steve Wozniak worked at Apple from the very beginning, but he left the company in 1985. In today's article, we will remember his departure.

Steve Wozniak has never made a secret of the fact that he feels more like a computer programmer and designer than an entrepreneur. It's no wonder, then, that the more Apple expanded, the less Wozniak—unlike Steve Jobs—was satisfied. He himself was more comfortable working on a smaller number of projects in teams of a handful of members. By the time Apple became a publicly traded company, Wozniak's fortune was already large enough that he could afford to focus his attention more on activities outside the company— for example, he organized his own festival.

Wozniak's decision to leave Apple fully matured at a time when the company was going through a series of personnel and operational changes, with which he himself did not agree. Apple's management began to slowly push Wozniak's Apple II into the background in favor of, for example, the then-new Macintosh 128K, despite the fact that, for example, the Apple IIc had significantly greater sales success at the time of its release. In short, the Apple II product line was too outdated in the eyes of the company's new management. The aforementioned events, along with a number of other factors, ultimately led to Steve Wozniak deciding to leave Apple for good in February 1985.

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Steve Wozniak, Co-Founder

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But he certainly wasn't even remotely thinking about retirement or rest. Together with his friend Joe Ennis, he founded his own company called CL 9 (Cloud Nine). The CL 1987 Core remote control came out of this company's workshop in 9, but a year after its launch, Wozniak's company ceased operations. After leaving Apple, Wozniak also devoted himself to education. He returned to the University of California, Berkeley, where he completed his degree in computer science. He continued to remain one of Apple's shareholders and even received some form of salary. When Gil Amelio became Apple's CEO in 1990, Wozniak returned to the company temporarily to act as an advisor.