Steve Wozniak

Many of them, the ones who'd joined just a bit later, weren't celebrating.

They hadn't gotten stock options.

Steve Jobs and the board had decided they didn't qualify.

This bothered Woz a lot.

So he did something corporate executives still struggle to explain.

He took his own shares and sold them at a deeply discounted price to 40 colleagues who'd been left out after the IPO.

He was giving away shares to people he felt deserved them.

He called it the Woz plan.

For many, it was life-changing.

And then buying their first house, achieving financial security, the company had denied them.

One recipient was Dan Cottle, Steve Jobs' oldest friend, who'd been there from the beginning but whom Jobs had refused to give stock to.

Years later, someone asked Wozniak why he did it.

His answer was simple.

It was the right thing to do.

Well, Wall Street celebrated the Apple III was dying on people's desks.

Launched seven months before the IPO, it was supposed to be Apple's future, the serious business computer that would make the Apple II look like a toy.

Management was so confident, they canceled all Apple II development, betting everything on the new machine.

But the Apple III was overheating, badly.

Steve Jobs had mandated no cooling fans and no visible air vents.

They were noisy and inelegant.