Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has shown his support for the growing movement concerned with the preservation of the right to repair. His support comes amid ongoing battles between tech giants and consumers concerning what they can and can’t do with their purchases.
Wozniak said in a recent Cameo video that he is “always totally supportive” and thinks that the people behind the movement are doing the right thing.
He added that we would not have had Apple if he had not grown up in a very open technology world. The modern world has changed that open concept.
The Woz’s take
Alluding to his experience as a young engineer, The Woz says that open-source tech was very instrumental in helping him understand how engineering worked in detail. The aspect of self-repair, he says, is also the “motivation and joy’ of technical people.
Through tinkering, they can know how to make the right kind of software and how to develop it properly. It is also an opportunity for them to prove to themselves that they have “a little special skill in the world” which they can share with others.
Innovation benefits
The Woz called the right-to-repair a motivation for creative minds, adding that that is how he grew up. He highlighted that the ability to self-repair enables him to manipulate the input on a TV and subsequently show the world what future computers would look like, complete with “a keyboard and a TV.”
Wozniak continued to say that when the Apple II finally hit the market, it was shipped with full schematics designs, code listings, source listings, and software.
It was, therefore, modifiable and extendable to the maximum, which meant people could tinker with it more. That led to its position as the only source of profit for Apple in its first ten years of operation.
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