Today in Apple history: Steve Wozniak leaves Apple

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A lack of respect for the Apple II leads to Steve Wozniak's departure from the company he founded.
A lack of respect for the Apple II leads to Steve Wozniak's departure from the company he founded.
Photo: Anirudh Koul/Flickr CC

February 6: Today in Apple history: Steve Wozniak leaves Apple February 6, 1985: Frustrated by Apple’s shifting priorities, co-founder Steve Wozniak leaves the company to pursue outside interests.

His departure — which comes the same year that Steve Jobs leaves Apple to form NeXT — represents yet another big change for the company. The move mostly stems from Woz’s dissatisfaction with how management treated the Apple II division. However, his desire to start a new company also plays a role.

Apple II gets no respect

In contrast to Jobs — whose skill set made him a masterful negotiator, marketer and editor of ideas — Wozniak always seemed happier before Apple’s expansion. Woz worked best in small teams of engineers crafting one- or two-person creations like the Apple II or Disk II disk drive.

As he saw Apple changing, particularly with committee-driven boondoggles like the Apple III, Woz felt less at home in Cupertino. Having made his fortune when Apple went public, he increasingly turned his attention toward non-Apple activities like an ambitious music event called the US Festival.

The lack of respect the Apple II division received made Woz particularly indignant. Apple’s first mass-market computer, the Apple II served as a sales workhorse even after the launch of the Macintosh. For instance, the day Jobs publicly revealed that the first-gen Macintosh 128K sold 50,000 units in its first three months, Apple sold 52,000 Apple IIc units in a 24-hour period.

Despite this, Apple leadership viewed the Apple II as outdated technology best phased out over time. (Cupertino continued to produce some version of the Apple II until 1990!)

Steve Wozniak leaves Apple for CL 9

Woz didn’t leave Apple to do nothing, however. He had a new concept for a universal programmable remote control capable of operating everything from a VCR to a hi-fi system. Working alongside an engineer friend named Joe Ennis, Woz called his new company CL 9 (standing for “Cloud Nine”).

Started in 1985, the company produced the 6502-based CL 9 Core remote control within two years. And, in some ways, the concept prefigured futuristic platforms like Apple’s HomeKit. However, CL 9 went out of business in 1988.

Woz also went back to school at the University of California, Berkeley, to complete his computer science degree. Because his name was well-known in tech circles, he enrolled under the pseudonym “Rocky Raccoon Clark.”

Despite leaving Apple, Woz remained a shareholder and continued to receive a salary. Eventually, he came back as an adviser after Gil Amelio became Apple CEO in the mid-1990s. But Woz’s departure on this day in 1985 marked the end of his official tenure as a regular Apple employee (if you can even use that phrase with regard to a co-founder).

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