Wozniak woz here

The software took more work than the hardware, because Wozniak had to work out all the 0s and 1s of the machine code on paper, and then type them laboriously into the computer. He could not afford a system that would automate the work.

Wozniak is quick to point out that it was somebody else’s software that made a phenomenal success of the Apple II. Tens of thousands of the computers were bought simply to run Dan Bricklin’s Visicalc, the first electronic spreadsheet.

The Apple II was Wozniac’s crowning achievement. He was part of the team that designed the Mac, with its graphical interface, but crashed a plane before it was launched and his life changed forever. He was in hospital for five weeks and on his release decided to go back to college to graduate – something he had not yet got around to doing.

He is insistent that he did not leave Apple, as if this would imply that he was disloyal, and he still has a token presence on the payroll. But he admits that he had difficulty adjusting as the company got more successful.

“For the first two or three years everything we did was so important and critical. But then it got to the point, after we went public, that we had lots of engineers. We had big projects. We had money to organise the projects. Apple was going to be successful without me being an essential part of it.”

He was wealthy by this time and blew millions of dollars on running music festivals. But he also spent years teaching mostly 11-year-olds. He has now set up a company called Acquicor with former Apple executives Gil Amelio and Ellen Hancock, to acquire and nurture other companies they believe have a future.

He says he “loves where Apple is heading now” and speaks almost with adulation of Jobs, despite relating how the man who still works as Apple chief executive shafted him over one of their first design commissions.

“I was not doing it for the money,” he says in an echo of those idealistic days when California was a hippie Mecca. “I was doing it for the fun. The fact that someone lied to you… it was a small thing compared with a genius who is running Apple Computers and Pixar Animation, and is now with Disney and who brought us the Ipod.

“These are big things in the world that matter to people. How well he behaved on a personal level… there are far worse stories than I tell. We remain good friends.”

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