This is how you tell what kind of guy Woz really is:
Around the time of the Apple IPO in late 1980, Woz decided to give away stock options to the earliest Apple employees who had never gotten options -- including Randy Wigginton, Chris Espinosa, Kottke, and Fernandez. He gave them each a stock grant out of his own chunk of shares. It was a generous move, especially towards Wozniak's old neighbor and friend with whom he'd built his first computer and helped become Apple's first employee.
Actually you do. There are many cases of Steve realizing he was wrong and changing his position. In his Eulogy Jonny Ive talked about it as one of his best known features.
But this doesn't fit the "steve jobs is a tyrannical asshole and apple's success is only a fluke of marketing and apple is evil" narrative that is so popular among google worshipers.
That person was arguing against the simplistic story lines that are created when we treat tech companies like sports teams. It came off some what badly but I believe it was correct. There are tons of stories of steve jobs swallowing his pride and admitting he was wrong but they are not spread as widely because they don't fit the public perception of him.
> (a) Under this plan, officers and key employees have been granted options to purchase shares [of qualified stock] ... (c) [the same for non-qualified stock]
See also http://www.npr.org/2012/04/04/149870751/a-rare-mix-created-s... : When Fairchild's investors back east took the option to buy the company, its executives didn't understand things like giving stock options to employees. "Their attitude was much like everyone else on the East Coast," Rock says. "Companies could give out a few options, but only to top executives. They were all very staid and white-shoe." ... Rock says one executive called the idea of stock options creeping socialism. "They did things the way their fathers did them," Rock says.
Quoting from http://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive... : "With Rock's backing, they decided to form a company called Intel that wouldn't be stingy about granting options to employees. "We didn't include everybody, but almost everybody," says Moore, who retired in May as Intel's chairman. (Noyce died in 1989.) Other startups followed Intel's example; by 1977 it hardly raised eyebrows when Apple Computer--another startup backed by Arthur Rock--granted options to all its employees."
Followed by "Ironically, outside of Silicon Valley the stock option was becoming an endangered species. Congress, at the urging of Senator Albert Gore Sr. of Tennessee, had begun in the 1960s to whittle away at options' tax-advantaged status, which some denounced as an unfair boon for the rich."
I think that establishes that in Silicon Valley by the time that Apple was founded, employee stock options of the type that Apple did were a popular thing.
I think you don't get the point of danmaz74's comment. Job hired his childhood friend as first employee, making him quit his job to work in the garage, and when the company goes well and they start talking about IPO, he doesn't bother to give him stock options as a reward for being instrumental to Apple's success.
That's pretty much ungrateful, and doesn't have anything to do with modern startups.
>> He said Omnibotics will "build smart home electronics and I'm hoping that we can finally make it possible to make your house more responsive to you, to give your house a user interface other than mechanical switches and knobs."
Wondering how that vision loops back to his childhood in the Japanese styled home. What kinds of interface? What definition of simplicity?
Around the time of the Apple IPO in late 1980, Woz decided to give away stock options to the earliest Apple employees who had never gotten options -- including Randy Wigginton, Chris Espinosa, Kottke, and Fernandez. He gave them each a stock grant out of his own chunk of shares. It was a generous move, especially towards Wozniak's old neighbor and friend with whom he'd built his first computer and helped become Apple's first employee.