Steve Wozniak says today’s tech industry is moving control away from users and into the hands of companies, and he believes people no longer truly own the tools they rely on. He points to a clear shift from personal ownership to subscription-driven access, where software and services change over time without user control.
In a recent interview, he explained how things worked differently in the early days of personal computing, when users had full control over their devices and how they functioned.
From a Fox Business interview, Steve Wozniak said:
“For the first two decades of personal computers, you bought a product, you owned it, you set it up your way, and it always ran that way, and it solved your problems… It was yours.”
Wozniak says modern tech companies now rely on subscriptions, which puts users in a position where they depend on ongoing payments and company decisions. As a result, features change, interfaces shift, and even access to personal data can disappear.
From the same interview, he added:
“Now you have to subscribe to services and pay something per month… They’ll take things away, features that you were using… They’ll even take your data away sometimes…”
“You are owned,” Wozniak says
Wozniak makes his position clear and does not support the current direction of the industry, especially when users lose control over their own data and tools.
“No, I don’t like the business models of today where you don’t own it. You are owned. Whoever the suppliers are, you have to go through them on the cloud, up to the internet, and they own it. So the internet came, and things were beautiful, beautiful looking at first, and they came in all the business models. So I’m not a super fan of when I don’t feel like I own something.”
I avoid subscription products and services. I want to own things I use. If you have upgrades, let me decide whether to buy them or not. Subscription software is driving me to open source solutions whenever possible. Buy once, pay once is my motto.