Apple co-founder opens OCE Discovery 2010 event

“One Eureka moment was when I looked at the data sheet for a microprocessor and realized that the chips were just like the computers I used to design back in high school,” he said. “I realized then that I new the whole formula for building an affordable computer.”

Curiously, Wozniak said that he was unaware of how the iconographic company got its name until last year when a photographer told him that his brother had worked with Steve Jobs on an apple orchard and had suggested the name.

“I was so shy a person back in those days that I never asked Steve personal questions,” Wozniak said. “I just thought the name sounded cool so I left it at that.”

While Wozniak steered away from making predictions as to what technology would constitute the “next big thing” he said that there needed to be a renaissance in product development.

“There is an idea of what is more important: the human or the technology,” he said. “When the human is more important, products are designed around how users do things in their human world. When the technology is more important, it forces the human to change and the person has to figure where the menus are, what do I click to get that done, why doesn’t this make sense. At that point, the technology is more important and the user is a slave to it.”

In addition to purely technology subjects, Wozniak—married four times—revealed a bit about his personal life and offered romantic advice for fellow geeks. When asked why he felt his marriage to present wife and long-time friend, Janet Hill, was “The One,” Wozniak answered that she is the most similar to himself.

“I didn’t think I would ever find a woman who was as ‘weird’ as myself, who gets into every new technology gadget out there, but I found her,” Wozniak said. “I’m still the same geeky guy, but before I just didn’t know how to find the geek girl.”

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