Ronald Wayne

Ronald G. Wayne was born on May 17, 1934, in Cleveland, Ohio, United States. He trained as a technical draftsman at New York’s School of Industrial Arts and moved west to California in 1956.⁠[1][2]

After arriving in California, Wayne’s first business venture was a company selling slot machines, but it soon failed. He recalled that the experience showed him he was better suited to engineering than to running a business; although the company was a corporation that gave him bankruptcy protection, he bought back everyone’s shares at exactly what they had paid and repaid creditors in full over about a year.⁠[2][2][2][2][2][3]

In the 1970s, Wayne worked at the video game company Atari, where he became friends with Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. He recalled that when he joined, Atari was about three and a half years old, and he rebuilt its numbering system for drawings and documents so that every document could be traced; Jobs was impressed by this documentation system.⁠[2][4][3][3][3]

Wayne recalled that before founding Apple, Jobs asked him whether he wanted to get back into the slot machine business together, and he replied that it was the quickest way on earth to lose $50,000. When Apple was just starting, Jobs told him he was having second thoughts and had other things he wanted to do; Wayne encouraged Jobs to make the money first, while reminding him not to forget what he had wanted the money for.⁠[2][5][5][5]

On April 1, 1976, Wayne co-founded Apple Computer Company with Jobs and Wozniak, and all three signed the founding document. Jobs asked him to help draft the documents and mediate a dispute between Jobs and Wozniak: at his flat in Mountain View, Wayne talked with the two for about 45 minutes and won Wozniak over, after which Jobs decided on the spot to form the company, and Wayne typed up the partnership agreement on an IBM typewriter. Jobs and Wozniak each took 45% and Wayne 10%, with a remit to act as mediator in any disputes between the two.⁠[4][4][5][5][5][5]

Under the partnership agreement, Wozniak was in charge of electrical engineering, Jobs was responsible for electrical engineering and marketing, and Wayne oversaw mechanical engineering and documentation. Wayne also drew the company’s first logo: in the style of a Victorian woodcut, it showed Isaac Newton sitting beneath a tree with an apple dangling over his head, with a border quoting William Wordsworth’s The Prelude; he had originally signed the image, but Jobs told him to take the signature out. Less than a year later, the company switched to a logo designed by Rob Janoff. He also drafted the company’s first product operating manual.⁠[2][2][2][5][2][4]

Less than two weeks after the company was founded, Wayne removed himself from the partnership agreement. He explained that it was a partnership rather than a corporation, so the partners were personally liable for its debts: Jobs had just won an order for 50 machines from the computer chain Byte Shop, Apple had to borrow $15,000 to fill it, and Wayne had heard that Byte Shop had a poor reputation for paying its bills. Jobs and Wozniak had no money, while he had a house, a car, and a bank account, so if the business failed, he was the only one creditors could reach. He also said that he was 40 at the time while his two partners were in their twenties, and he did not want to spend 20 years shuffling papers in Apple’s back-office documentation department; had he stayed, he said, he would probably have wound up “the richest man in the cemetery.”⁠[5][4][3][5][5][5][3][2][2]

Wayne ultimately settled his 10% stake for $800; months later he received a letter, signed away any potential claim on the company, and received another $1,500. Wozniak later said that he and Jobs were surprised by his departure and never said anything negative about him.⁠[4][5][5][2][2][2]

When Jobs and Wozniak took Apple public in December 1980, Wayne was working at a small engineering company called LDF Semiconductors. He recalled that after Apple took off, Jobs invited him back to work at the company, but he declined each time, explaining that he liked to own a project from start to finish and wear many hats, which he could not do at Apple. He recalled that later, while he was working for a company that held patents on touch chips, Jobs wanted him to persuade his boss to sell the company to Apple; he agreed only to discuss an exclusive license and did not urge his boss to sell.⁠[2][6][6][3][3]

In 2000, Jobs invited Wayne to attend a presentation of new Macs in San Francisco, arranging first-class plane tickets, a chauffeur to meet him at the airport, and a stay at the Mark Hopkins Hotel; after the event, Jobs, Wozniak, and Wayne had lunch at Apple’s cafeteria and reminisced about old times.⁠[2][2][2]

In June 2010, Wayne was interviewed by NPR and CNN. Then 76, he lived in a modest home in Pahrump, Nevada, and said he lived mainly on his Social Security check and a small trade in stamps and coins. He said he did not let himself dwell on “what if” and did not own any Apple products, adding: “I’ve never been rich. But I’ve never been hungry, either.”⁠[4][6][4][6][6][6]

Wayne had sold his copy of Apple’s founding contract to an autograph collector for $500; in 2011, the contract sold at auction for about $1.6 million. He said it was the one thing in the whole Apple experience that he truly regretted.⁠[2][5][3]

In December 2014, Wayne consigned his Apple archive to Christie’s for auction, including original proofs of the Apple-1 manual he had created and unused designs for an Apple II case, among other documents, with an estimate of $30,000 to $50,000 and the sale scheduled for December 11. Then 80, he lived on Social Security and income from selling rare coins and stamps online, and said the auction would really help him.⁠[2][2][2][2][2]

On Apple’s 40th anniversary, Wayne, then 81, said in an interview that he still did not regret leaving: had he stayed, he would only have ended up running a large documentation department at the back of the company. He credited Jobs as the person who made Apple what it is, saying that in many ways Jobs was not a nice guy, “but that doesn’t matter”; he believed Jobs later became so involved in running Apple that he forgot what he had wanted the money for.⁠[5][5][5][5][5]

On July 30, 2026, the Vintage Computer Federation announced its VCF West schedule: on August 1, Wayne would speak at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, about his time at Atari and Apple, including drafting the Apple partnership agreement, designing Apple’s first logo, and working on the Apple-1, followed by an autograph signing and a Q&A session; on August 2, he would join Paul Terrell, Liza Loop, and Daniel Kottke in presenting Liza Loop with a replica Apple 1 and discussing Apple’s early days. On August 2, the organization posted a livestream of the panel, which included Wozniak.⁠[7][7][7][7][8][8][9]

Wayne has said he holds nearly a dozen U.S. patents, has designed and built slot machines and other gaming products, and wrote the book Insolence of Office, which discusses the nature of currency.⁠[1][1][1]

He is a lifelong stamp collector whose interest dates back to his childhood in Cleveland, collecting mainly U.S. and airmail stamps; in 2016 he was estimated to own more than one million stamps. He once ran a stamp store in Tucson, Arizona, and later worked as a discount dealer in stamps and coins in Pahrump.⁠[10][10][10][10][3][10]

Apple: Official website: https://www.apple.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[4]