Satellites Position The Wizard For A Global Return
The Age
Friday January 25, 2002
The wizard called Woz is back in business in Silicon Valley. Steve Wozniak, the legendary figure who with his college partner, Steve Jobs, co-founded Apple Computer.
Wozniak yesterday emerged from retirement after 10 years to set up a new technology company called Wheels of Zeus (WoZ) - a play on his nickname. He says it will develop consumer products based on wireless communications, using global positioning satellite technologies.
Woz appears to be closely following the thinking of his erstwhile partner, Jobs, who nearly four years ago returned from the wilderness to retake the helm of Apple and haul the company back from the brink of financial death.
Jobs believes the real future of the personal computer is no longer as a platform for word processing and calculation, but as the powerful hub of a plethora of digital devices upon which modern life is already dependent. The Internet and wireless technologies, which Apple is already pushing, are central to these ideas.
Wozniak, regarded by many of Silicon Valley's cognoscenti as the real genius in the foundation of Apple, already has three major Cali-fornian venture-capital companies behind his new start-up.
The broad idea, he said yesterday at the company launch in Los Gatos, California, was to ``help everyday people track everyday things".
Initially, he said, the company would not make or market its own products but would look for licensing and marketing arrangements with consumer electronics and computer companies.
Since Wozniak maintains contact with Steve Jobs, one might speculate that the Wheels of Zeus could soon roll out new digital devices to join Apple's iPod, regarded as the coolest MP3 music player on the market and the harbinger of many things to come.
Many technologists have looked at global positioning satellite (GPS) devices and seen possibilities, but development so far has been hampered by relatively high cost. Yachtsmen, ``bush-bashers" and drivers of up-market BMWs use GPS units for navigation.
But, as in all things technical, prices are being driven down so that engineers such as Mr Wozniak are now working on connecting them through wireless transceivers to the Internet. Thus information is being linked to location and communication.
``Recent advances in global positioning software systems and antenna technology coupled with the declining cost of (computer) processing power and two-way (wireless) networking make the possibilities for new devices and services really exciting," Wozniak said in announcing his new company.
Wozniak was a cadet technician at Hewlett-Packard in Palo Alto, California, in 1976 when he and college friend Steve Jobs, both members of the famed Home Brew Computer Club, set up Apple and changed the world.
Wozniak left Apple in 1985 after being hurt in a light-plane crash and deciding there were other things in life than battling accountants in board meetings.
He started a company called Cloud 9 to make high-end consumer remote-control devices but closed it in 1988. Since then he has lived very quietly, devoting his time mostly to teaching computing to students in Los Gatos, where he lives.
Wozniak has so far not said what kind of devices he will produce. His first idea came a year ago when a friend spoke to him about ``using GPS in a strange way". He said he was excited by the potential of the idea. ``Sometimes I say that and I am not really serious. But this time I was really serious."
© 2002 The Age