Wozniak Takes Leave at Apple to Start Firm
Stephen Wozniak, who as co-founder of Apple Computer Inc. built a fortune on a microchip and helped launched the age of personal computers, is leaving his day-to-day duties at the company to start a home-video business that he says “will have nothing to do with computers.”
Apple confirmed Wednesday that Wozniak, 33, will give up his role as a principal engineer in the Cupertino, Calif., company but will remain on its payroll as a consultant. He will take with him another key Apple engineer, Joe Ennis, Apple said. Wozniak’s departure, his second since 1981, was announced to Apple employees Tuesday in a company newsletter. The engineering genius, whose entrepreneurial philosophy of high technology and togetherness helped create Silicon Valley’s iconoclastic corporate culture, declined to give details about his newest project except to say that it will be based around the use of video in the living room and that it will not replace anything that exists. He said he plans to finance the project himself and to have a product for sale next fall.
Wozniak has made an estimated $100 million as co-parent of the company that gave birth to the desk-top computer industry and is International Business Machines Corp.’s biggest competitor in that market.
With Apple Chairman Steven Jobs, 29, Wozniak founded the company in a Los Altos, Calif., garage in 1976. The company’s sales grew to $387 million by 1981, when Wozniak, who is credited with developing Apple’s first major success, the Apple II computer, left the company to bankroll another brainchild--two rock ‘n’ roll concerts called US Festivals that eventually ran several million dollars in the red. He also got a degree in computer science from the University of California at Berkeley.
By the time Wozniak returned to the company in 1983, Jobs and Apple President John Sculley had expanded sales to $1 billion.
An Apple spokesman said Wednesday that, throughout the company’s history, Wozniak has been more interested in engineering problems and Jobs has been more concerned with marketing and sales.
“(Wozniak) told me he’s been thinking of leaving for over a year,” the spokesman said. His departure will not affect the company, she said. “We feel we have our strategies and technologies in place,” she said. “Our concentration now is on sales and marketing.”
LOS ANGELES COUNTY
Michael P. O’Neil was named president and chief operating officer of U.S. Medical Enterprises Inc., Santa Monica.
Robert L. Hanson was named chief executive at United Mercantile Bank & Trust Co., Pasadena.
V. J. (Vel) Varner has been named vice presi dent-marketing at Hughes Helicopters Inc., Culver City.
David F. Saks was named senior vice president of Los Angeles-based Morgan, Olmstead, Kennedy & Gardner Inc. and will direct pharmaceutical and medical technology research. Previously, Saks was senior vice president and managing director at A.G. Becker Paribas Inc., New York.
John V. Newman, a Ventura County citrus grower, was reelected chairman of Sunkist Growers Inc., Van Nuys, for a one-year term.
William Josey has been named vice president-acquisitions for Lorimar Distribution Group, Culver City.
V. Anthony Carbonar has been named a vice president of International Lease Finance Corp., Beverly Hills.
Los Angeles-based First Interstate Bancorp has named the following senior vice presidents: Webb C. Edwards, operating services group, First Interstate Bank of California; Bryce R. Lensing, international credit, world banking group, First Interstate Bank Ltd., and Jerry L. Jordan, research and planning division, First Interstate Bancorp.
Search International, a Los Angeles-based executive search firm, has appointed Judi Hochman executive vice president-financial division and James Yurich vice president-marketing director.
Robert M. Hodies, senior vice president and manager of the major loan department of Independence Savings & Loan Assn., Santa Fe Springs, has been appointed head of statewide lending operations.
Ben Slayton was named president of the Canoga Park operation of Johnstown Mortgage Co. West, a unit of Johnstown Mortgage Co., Atlanta.
David R. Carpenter, chairman and chief executive of Transamerica Occidental Life Insurance Co., has been named a director of the Merchants & Manufacturers Assn., a Los Angeles-based employer organization, for a two-year term.
CALIFORNIA
Anthony M. Solomon, recently retired president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, has been named a director of Syntex Corp., Palo Alto.
