Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak pitches new data startup

Global Business

Steve Wozniak, the co-founder of Apple Inc., is hitting the startup scene once again. CCTV America’s Mark Niu reported from a conference in San Jose, California, where “the Woz” is heading back to his start-up roots.

Wozniak, the designer of the Apple One and Apple Two, is now the chief scientist of a startup named Primary Data, which virtualizes information to give companies the ability to intelligently access data across private and public cloud storage.

The Silicon Valley legend was pitching his startup at the tech conference known as DEMO where companies vie potential investors.

Wozniak stayed relatively quiet during the pitch session but didn’t escape the stage without being asked for his insights on the startup world. In response to a question about what sector would create the most value in the next five years he said that it all about making good products.

“Applying your art is the more important thing to me. Coming up with clever ideas, putting them into products, making something good. And it doesn’t matter whether it’s for enterprise or not, a lot of people don’t see the fact that we’re in the post-PC era,” Wozniak said. “PC’s used to calculate spreadsheets and everything, well they are out there in the data centers, they are out there in enterprises doing the work.”

He reiterated his views were just a guess, Wozniak suggested that drones, auto driving cars, voice recognition, and even vision recognition technologies could dominate the near future.

On the topic of wearables, Wozniak said finds Google Glass cool but that he hasn’t been impressed with any of the smart watches on the market. He’s still waiting to try the Apple Watch, but in the meantime, he said he will wear his beloved watch with decades-old nixie tube technology, which he describes as so waterproof that you can wear it in the bath tub at least once.