Apple will celebrate its 50th anniversary on April 1st. Over the past half-century, we’ve developed the Apple I 8-bit personal computer, the Macintosh, the iPhone, the Apple Watch, and AirPods, and put that technology into the pockets of nearly 1.5 billion people.
Co-founder Steve Wozniak, who has made his mark on this new age of technology, believes he would rather just touch grass.
“I’ve distanced myself from technology quite a bit,” Wozniak said in a recent CNN interview. “And I believe that nature is far more important than what humans do.”
Wozniak was an innovator at Apple, working for the company until 1985 and developing its first two computer models and the first Macintosh, which popularized graphical user interfaces.
This breakthrough made PCs more accessible to non-technical users, opening them up to a wider audience. Although Woz helped popularize the device, he doesn’t think the current big trends in technology have the same value.
“I don’t use AI very much,” he said. “I often read books. [AI produces]and they sound too dry and too perfect, and I want something from humans, and I’m so disappointed. ”
Apple has largely stayed out of the AI arms race that dominates much of the tech space. The company spent just $12.7 billion in capital expenditures in fiscal 2025, which pales in comparison to the $300 billion spent by AI hyperscalers Microsoft, Amazon, and Alphabet.
And instead of developing its own AI, Apple is using technology from other companies, powering Google’s Gemini into its virtual assistant Siri.
Tech industry celebrities advocate analog living
Woz’s skepticism about AI is shared by many leaders. A survey of more than 6,000 senior executives in the US, UK, Germany, and Australia, led by Nicholas Bloom, a future of work guru at Stanford University, found that nearly 70% of CEOs, CFOs, and other executives use AI at work for less than an hour per week, and 28% do not use AI at all. Approximately 7% of respondents reported using AI for five or more hours during a typical work week.
Still, the use of AI among executives in the workplace is on the rise, with a January Gallup poll finding that 69% of leaders were using AI in the fourth quarter of 2025, up from less than 40% in mid-2023.
But even as AI gains momentum, executives at tech entrepreneurs are setting boundaries around their home screens, even those responsible for the increased use of AI tools and devices.
“I think TikTok is entertainment, but it’s pure entertainment,” Chen said. “It’s all about the moment. Short-form content alone shortens attention spans.”
Tech billionaire Peter Thiel said he will only allow his two children an hour and a half of screen time a week in 2024. Bill Gates, Snap Inc.’s Evan Spiegel, and Tesla Inc.’s Elon Musk have similarly restricted their children’s use of technology.
Their alarm was confirmed this week when a jury found YouTube and Meta liable for designing platforms with addictive features that harmed young users.
These concerns were shared by Apple executives. When the iPad was released in 2010, then-CEO Steve Jobs, who co-founded the company with Wozniak, said his children had never used the device.
“We limit the amount of technology our children use at home,” he said. new york times.
Apple’s current CEO Tim Cook said earlier this month that he is concerned about how much people are using AI. He cautioned that it is neither positive nor negative, and that it is in the hands of inventors and users to determine its value.
“I don’t want people to overuse it,” he said in an interview. good morning america. “You don’t want to be staring at your phone any more than you want to look into someone’s eyes. If you’re just scrolling endlessly, that’s not how you want to spend your day. Get outside and spend time in nature.”
