Chapter 9 Section Two Two Steves

Jobs and Woz are both named Steve, but they are two young men with completely opposite personalities.Before Jobs met Woz, he was a hippie who went his own way. Long hair, beards, vagabonds, drugs, cars, pop music, and even meditation. These young people have everything they need to show their personality.Woz is just the opposite. He is an introverted, shy, sullen, eccentric super nerd who only wants to tinker with electrical components.The difference in appearance is also very obvious. Jobs is chic, suave, and personable, while Woz is stocky, strong, simple and cute. In the history of IT, the combination of two heroes is not uncommon.For example, the founders of HP, William Hewlett (William Hewlett) and David Packard (David Packard), the founders of Google, Larry Page (Larry Page) and Sergey Brin (Sergey Brin). Brin).But of all the duos in Silicon Valley, few have co-founders as contrasting as Jobs and Woz.This contrast can be seen even from their childhood.

Jobs was born on February 24, 1955, under the sign of Pisces.Those who like the "genius reincarnation theory" can easily find that 1955 was the year of Einstein's death, but Jobs was born without showing any keen intuition in fundamental physics or cosmology.As soon as he was born, he was given up for adoption by the Paul Jobs family in San Francisco by his biological parents, who were studying for a graduate degree and could not afford to marry and raise a child.Within a few years, Paul Jobs moved his family to Mountain View, the core area of ​​Silicon Valley. At Monta Loma Elementary School in Mountain View, Jobs was not a good kid despite his academic performance, and he was good at playing pranks.In his eyes, doing homework is a waste of time, and listening to the teacher is completely boring lectures from adults.He was repeatedly expelled from school because of mischief.He was also a crying boy who was out of gregarious. After being teased by his classmates, he would quietly hide in a corner and weep.In order to motivate him, a teacher actually bribed him with money, giving him $5 as long as he did his homework.

Jobs spent his first year of high school at Crittenden Middle School in Mountain View.Compared to Montaloma Elementary, this school is hell.Punks swarm, rogue students cause trouble, and the police often visit the campus because of student fights.Although Jobs is stubborn and withdrawn, he is by no means a rogue, and he does not have the ability of Zhou Xingxing in "Play Back To School".When he couldn't bear it anymore, Jobs, who was only 11 years old, resolutely found his father Paul Jobs and told him: "It's a terrible school. I'm going to go to prison if I go on."

"But we live here, according to the nearest school district, this school is the most convenient." "I don't care," the young Jobs has shown his stubbornness and persistence, "I would rather not go to school, and I don't want to study in a place where rascals gather." In desperation, in order to be close to a good school district and let Jobs study in a good school, Paul Jobs had to choose to move.The family moved to 11161 Crist Drive in Los Altos.Apple fans should remember this street and this house number. Almost eight or nine years after the Jobs family moved here, Apple was born in a bedroom of this house.Later, around 1983, the house number of this house was changed to 2066 - if you go to worship today, remember not to look for the wrong place.

After moving to a new home, Jobs got his wish and entered a better school.He studied in two middle schools in Cupertino - Cupertino Middle School and Homestead High School.In middle school, Jobs participated in an electronics interest class, came into contact with a lot of electronics knowledge, and did many circuit experiments with the teacher. Jobs' neighbor Larry Lang (Larry Lang) is an engineer at Hewlett-Packard. He often takes Jobs and a group of children to Hewlett-Packard to explain circuit principles to the children and teach them how to use computers. 12-year-old Jobs first saw a computer at Hewlett-Packard.He thinks that the computer is really a magical thing.

Once, Jobs wanted to assemble an electronic device, but the components were missing.At a young age, he actually remembered that since HP is the best manufacturer of electronic products, the boss of HP must have a way to help him solve the problem.Jobs found the phone number of Hewlett-Packard founder William Hewlett (the H in the two letters of HP) from the public phone book, picked up the phone and called Hewlett directly. Unexpectedly, Hewlett actually answered the phone.When Hewlett knew that the other end of the phone was not only a young man seeking help, but also a small electronics enthusiast, he couldn't laugh or cry.But the kind-hearted Hewlett patiently chatted with Jobs for more than 20 minutes. In the end, Hewlett not only provided Jobs with components, but also arranged for him a summer internship at HP.This made Jobs overjoyed.

"I learned a lot at HP that summer," Jobs later recalled. Oddly enough, when Jobs entered Homestead, another Steve—Steve Watts—had just graduated from the same high school.The two Steves, who are also alumni of Homestead High School, just passed by. Steve Woz was five years older than Jobs, a Leo, and lived in Sunnyvale, next to Cupertino.Woz has a mysterious father, whom Woz has known for as long as he can remember, is an engineer who works for Lockheed on a top-secret military project.When Woz was a child, relying on his own cleverness, he accidentally discovered that the project his father was engaged in was related to the famous "Polaris" submarine-launched ballistic missile.Military fans must know that the status of "Polaris" in the history of submarine-launched ballistic missile development is almost equivalent to that of Apple I in the history of personal computers.With such a great father, Woz has benefited a lot since he was a child.He learned at least two things from his father: one is the values ​​of extreme loyalty and trustworthiness; the other is the love of engineering technology.

It is not easy to keep a secret from your family all your life.Woz's dad did it.He told Woz: "I'm a man of my word." He also told Woz: "Lying is worse than doing something wrong, almost like murder." These words have taken root in Woz's heart since he was a child.Woz later recalled in his autobiography: "To this day, I have never told a lie, not at all. Except, of course, in a well-intentioned prank. A joke made for entertainment is not a lie." Indeed, Woz was open-minded throughout his life, neither cheated nor held grudges for being cheated by others (including Jobs).But as he himself said, well-intentioned pranks are excluded-this is because Woz, though shy and introverted since he was a child, is a master of pranks like Jobs.

When Woz was a student at Homestead High School, he made a homemade cylinder that looked like an explosive device out of used batteries and put it in a classmate's locker.The cylinder not only carried a few colorful wires, but also ticked and rattled.As a result of the prank, the then principal of Homestead High School risked "life and death" holding Woz's masterpiece, threw it in the middle of the open playground, and called the police to identify the real "bomb". fake. Even after going to college, Woz's nature did not change.When he was a freshman at the University of Colorado Boulder, the teacher used CCTV to teach in the classroom. Woz made a remote control that could directly interfere with the CCTV and hid it in the desk.As a result, when the teacher was teaching, the closed-circuit TV image was always unclear. The teacher thought it was a problem with the TV signal, so he went to debug the TV.Unexpectedly, as long as the teacher raised one arm or one leg, the signal returned to normal.Woz's little trick deceived a naive and dedicated teacher. In order to ensure the quality of teaching, he stood on the podium with one leg in the air and insisted on continuing the lecture.

Playing around is playing around, because of his father's precepts and deeds, Woz's interest and talent in electronics since he was a child is not covered.When he was seven or eight years old, he learned the basics of current, resistance, and voltage, and under the guidance of his father, he understood the physical principles of why light bulbs glow.According to Woz himself, he took an IQ test when he was in the sixth grade, and the result was an astonishing 200+! When Woz was very young, when he saw his father working in front of a bunch of electronic equipment, trying to make the oscilloscope display a certain waveform, he thought very seriously: "Oh, what a magical world my father lives in. Lie! In this world, people who know how to put these little components together and make them work together to achieve a certain function-these must be the smartest people in the world.”

Woz himself is one of the brightest of the bunch. In fourth grade, Woz received a Christmas present from his parents—a hobby electronics kit with tools and electronic components.With these wires, transistors and switches, Woz not only learned more electronic knowledge, but also had the first grand engineering plan in his life-to help himself and his neighbors develop a house-to-house "remote" communication device.Together with his friends, he gathered all the necessary equipment and tools, designed circuits, bonded wires, and debugged signals by himself.On the day the project was completed, Woz and his friends were so excited that they couldn't sleep all night.They picked up the microphone at midnight, dialed each other, and said into the microphone: "Hey, this thing is cool! Can you hear me?" "Hey, press your call button over there, let's see if that button works." "Try my buzzer and call me once!" "..." A group of eleven or twelve-year-old children, led by Woz, experienced for the first time the satisfaction of an engineer completing a project.Soon, they converted the communication system into a tool for playing hide-and-seek with parents.Woz replaced the buzzer with a blinking light bulb.At midnight, the friends use this silent communication device to send codes to each other, climb out of the window and sneak out of the house together to go outside to ride bicycles, chat or play pranks.