Wozniak sides with Tim Cook vs. FBI, but not so much on Apple Watch - CNET

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Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak talked about Apple's iPhone fight with the FBI, his favorite fast food chains and more in a wide-ranging "Ask Me Anything" session on Reddit on Wednesday.

Wozniak's wife, Janet, once told me that Steve gets stressed out by birthdays in the social media age because he feels the need to respond to every well-wishing he receives. Woz was true to form and his nicest-guy-in-Silicon-Valley reputation during this AMA session, providing thorough and thoughtful answers to a number of questions.

On the hot topic of Apple's showdown with the govement over accessing the iPhone used by one of the San Beardino, Califoia, shooters, he offered a personal and philosophical defense of Tim Cook's position:

"You know what, I have things in my head, some very special people in my life that I don't talk about, that mean so much to me from the past. Those little things that I keep in my head are my little secrets. It's a part of my important world, my whole essence of my being. I also believe in honesty. If you tell somebody, 'I am not snooping on you,' or, 'I am giving you some level of privacy; I will not look in your drawers,' then you should keep your word and be honest. And I always try to avoid being a snoop myself, and it's rare in time that we can look back and say, 'How should humans be treated?' Not, 'How can the police run everything?'...

So, I come from the side of personal liberties. But there are also other problems. Twice in my life I wrote things that could have been viruses. I threw away every bit of source code. I just got a chill inside. These are dangerous, dangerous things, and if some code gets written in an Apple product that lets people in, bad people are going to find their way to it, very likely."