"I have to ask you something," Ron Wayne begins, as we stand to leave his office, signaling the close of our day-long conversation. He takes a slightly histrionic pause, adding, "compared to other people, is my life really that interesting?" This isn't modesty; it's earnestness. Wayne is very curious about what makes his 77 years on earth so fascinating to have warranted my door-to-door road warrior across the country in order to spend a few days in his presence. I answer, honestly, that it's his time with Apple that has made him such a figure of interest. "Oh," he responds. "So it's my brushes with famous people. I'm a footnote in someone else's story."



Thirty-five years ago, Ronald G. Wayne helped co-found the Apple headwork machine* Company with two men 20 years his junior, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak -- names that have since become synonymous with the cull microcomputer revolution of the early 80s. For Wayne, however, it was a gig that lasted all of a dozen days, abruptly ending when he marched down to the Santa Clara County Registry Office to have himself stricken from the clause he'd authored. His is a name that pops up every few years or so, shrouded in mystery, the "forgotten" or "unknown" founder of one of the world's most successful companies - and perhaps more infamously, the man who once owned 10 percent of its stock, only to walk away from it all a mere $2,300 richer.

Continue reading Two days in the desert with Apple's lost founder, Ron Wayne

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