Not only could Woz not start Apple without Jobs, he would NOT have started it at all if his friends didn't convince him to join Jobs as a co-founder. He didn't want to leave his job at HP (although he may have left partly because HP refused to develop his ideas), or being anything more than an engineer at Apple even though he co-founded it.
Don't get me wrong -- Woz was certainly an engineering genius, but he didn't have any of the vision that Jobs had for building something great. To Woz it was just something interesting to do. Jobs saw the potential of what Woz was able to create. Those two as a pair were the perfect storm that ushered in a personal computing revolution.
I don't know the details about the hacked iPhone bricking, but it's not so far fetched that whatever Apple does to update the (hacked) firmware simply happens to brick the device. I don't see why they wouldn't simply revert the device back to the pre-hacked state if they could do it.
And by the way, you CAN upgrade the RAM and even the hard drive in a MacBook without voiding your warranty. I upgraded both in mine. They can be accessed by taking out the battery.
Old habits may die hard but they will also be detrimental to you. When cars were invented, there must've been people who said "I think I'll stick to horses until they work out the kinks in those car things". Those people probably didn't go on to found IBM or RCA. :-)
I generally strive to embrace new things and new ways of doing things. As long as I believe they're practical. For instance, full OS upgrade over the internet -- brilliant. Ubuntu is the first to offer this to my knowledge. On the other hand, web apps.. I don't see that as being very practical any time soon.
There will certainly be bugs and there's a certain amount of risk in doing an internet upgrade, but this is not major risk. Yet embracing the way of the future early will get you a head start, and I think it's an important mindset to have.
Don't get me wrong -- Woz was certainly an engineering genius, but he didn't have any of the vision that Jobs had for building something great. To Woz it was just something interesting to do. Jobs saw the potential of what Woz was able to create. Those two as a pair were the perfect storm that ushered in a personal computing revolution.