“Steve Wozniak would consider returning to an active role at Apple, the company he co-founded, and believes the consumer electronics giant could afford to be more open than it is, he told Reuters. ‘I’d consider it, yeah,’ the 60-year-old computer engineer said in an interview, when asked whether he would play a more active role if asked,” Georgina Prodhan reports for Reuters.
“He founded Apple Computer in 1976 with Steve Jobs and Ronald Wayne, and built the Apple I and Apple II computers that helped revolutionize personal computing,” Prodhan reports.
“‘There’s just an awful lot I know about Apple products and competing products that has some relevance, some meaning. They’re my own feelings, though,’ said Wozniak, who is currently chief scientist of storage start-up Fusion-io,” Prodhan reports. “Asked his opinion of Apple today, he said: ‘Unbelievable. The products, one after another, quality and hits.'”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Sarah” and “Lynn W.” for the heads up.]
Come Steve Jobs!!! Ask your old pal to come back.
go back to apple? this clown is the pest they cant get rid of!
Why denigrate Woz? Why the hate? Woz was a wiz in his time, and he likely has some value left to contribute to Apple. At the very least, Woz deserves an honorary position for his early contributions to the company. It has long baffled me that Apple has failed to honor its co-founder in a meaningful way. It just doesn’t make sense.
He is still on Apple’s pay rate, so I would think that is honor enough. Woz was a genius that was guided by Jobs into making the original Apple computer, and I’m sure he was integral even after that. But Woz’s awful accident years ago have rendered him much less focused and much less efficient, there is no more room for a more active role from Woz.
The Great and Powerful Woz is an unparalleled genius with hardware.
With the Heath of Steve Jobs still in question, this would prove to be a positive sign for Apple. As you can see by it stock price Apple really does not any more help, but this should shut up some of the analyst as it pertain to the companies direction post Steve Jobs.
What?
NO..too out of touch!!
NO…Too out of touch!!
I love Woz, but I don’t think he’s as focused as Jobs. He’s a great engineer, no doubt, but I don’t know if he would be a visionary for Apple. The obvious inference at this time would be if Jobs couldn’t come back full time.
Woz, Woz, Woz!!!!!!
He wouldn’t really need to be in charge of anything but he’d invaluable at product intros and things like that. Woz=excitement!
Agreed! In Tim Cook, Steve put his trust, more than once and I think Tim is great for Apple on the backend of things and in day to day operations. I think Woz, would make a premiere showman for product announcements. Let Jobs remain for as long as he wants but instead but let him concentrate on his continued recuperation and getting healthy and spend some more time with family and friends and overseeing whatever is going to replace on the lot that housed that Jackling house and instead of MC’ing Keynotes and saying, “There is one more thing…” Let him be the brains of Apple innovation and say to the Apple engineers, “There is one more idea…” and “What if we…”
My sentiments exactly.
He can do the one more things and be the general spokes person/mascot. However I don’t want him running the company. This is not a dis, its just he has his thing and engineering is it. I think Apple has gone way passed what Woz can offer both technically and in being visionary.
Think of it this way. What have you seen with Woz’s name on it, after Apple 2 or the original Mac? Jobs was there too, so I wonder just how much Woz effort were on those projects? (I know Jobs didn’t design the circuit boards etc. But he may have been leading Woz through the development cycle.) When Woz left the company to pursue other activities what has he done, besides education and general speaking engagements? (I am not saying he’s done nothing, but I am saying I don’t know, and I think this significant, because I have been paying attention.)
In comparison, Jobs, has success after success, very consistent, in the development cycle. When he left Apple, he kept on rolling. Now if Apple didn’t buy Next, who knows what would happen there, but still amazing vision. (The Next PC, had postscript raster display, and the laser printer had no brains, simply amazing.)
Wiz didn’t just leave Apple. He had a life threatening injury. Possibly brain damage. Read some history on Apple and you may sound more knowledgeable. Woz didn’t have his name on any engineering miracles, because he could no longer make the impossible happen.
However, for Apple having Woz as the face of the company would make Wall Street stop forecasting doom because if Jobs’ health.
I think he would be valuable to Apple, but not as an “engineer.” Like he said, he knows a lot about Apple’s products and how they relate to competing (and “synergistic”) products. Apple tends to look “inward” for inspiration, and that’s working right now because EVERYONE ELSE is also looking to Apple for inspiration. That won’t aways be the case… I think Woz could help make sure Apple is also looking outward, and very closely, at the rest world.
Seriously. Android overall sucks balls, but Apple needs to get busy stealing a few things from them just as they have stolen from Apple… Swype and voice-entry-into-any-app first and foremost. .
Swype sucks, voice entry is overrated.
Woz has not been relevant to Apple for a long time. Apple is a software company that makes hardware-not the other way around.
If Woz came back, the only role he is suited to is dancing bear.
I played with swype… I have to 100% agree with you.
As for voice entry… I’m 50/50 on it.
Works for some things, would be a pain in others.
I love Swype. Once you get used to it, and do more than just play with it, it’s hard to go back to regular text entry. It’s like going to a full qwerty keyboard from using the number pad on your phone for texting.
Agreed. What has Woz come up with in the past 25+ years? In the beginning, Woz had the brains but it was Jobs’ vision that made the computer personal. Dancing bear would be awesome though.
I don’t want everyone talking to their iPhones and iPads. Could you imagine a work environment with voice commands? It would be torture. Normal cell phone conversations are bad enough as it is.
I’d hire the bear and honor the bear for his contributions. Apple would not exist without him.
Frankly, I don’t see why anyone should put any stock in your opinion regarding Woz. Who are you? Fred Astaire?
“if asked”. lol.
What were the circumstances of his departure and is there any secret animosity between Woz and Jobs?
IDG: Why did you quit Apple?
Wozniak: Being the sort of designer I was, I was designing things all on my own, working alone, and now the company grew to a point that it had organized engineering departments. I could still hang around and do any project I felt like, but I wanted to do real things with people in order to change the world and bring new products. So I didn’t leave Apple. I just went to start other companies, and I stayed in Apple as an employee. I never left being employed at Apple. Up to this day I still get a small paycheck to settle royalties.
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/PCWorld/story?id=3396207
Maybe he may be good for the version of Apple for geeks, not for the Apple for normal people.
Geeks wants open, normal people just wants the best devices that will work the way they wanted.
He can be the CH. Chief Historian. Let him travel the world and stand in front of each and every Apple Museum, aka the Apple Store, regaling the unwashed masses about how he came up with the Apple I.
But the man cannot dance.
No offense to the Woz, but Apple seems to be doing amazingly great without him.
Sure, Woz can present on his own way ! If Jobs is not able to do so, ask Woz ! He is so kind.
“Asked his opinion of Apple today, he said: ‘Unbelievable. The products, one after another, quality and hits.’”
I think Woz’s own words to be a sign to himself that Apple is doing just fine without him and doesn’t need “to be more open than it is”…
What could he really hope to contribute to Apple’s current culture? It seems to be that they’ve developed a pretty efficient system of R&D and product vetting over the last 14 years… don’t need to “upset the Apple cart”, so to speak.
And what if Woz thought his ideas were genius but no one else did? Would he get upset? Leave? Go on another dancing show?
No disrespect to the man, but the last shipping product he had any direct involvement in was the Apple II, 34 years ago!
In his prime, he was a genius – and his vision and creativity was the primary catalyst for Apple and the consumer computer revolution. But there’s no role for him there now. Well, at least not an active product development role.
I agree 100% !
Where were you when Apple was in dire straits ??????
Now you can stay home Woz ! Apple has been doing fine without you Since Steve Jobs came back
I’ve never really understood the Apple world’s fascination with Mr Wozniak. My guess is that most posters here were not even born when he was assembling Apple I’s by hand in that garage!
Look, he seems like a nice guy and all that. But nice doesn’t cut it in today’s corporate world.
You have answered your own “never understood”. Perhaps there is a deep seated desire that success in the world not be dominated by a@@-holes.
And todays corporate world is not special. Corporate history is a series of over-reaching and being reined back in by the people cycles. The next reining in will be a doozy.
I think he might be too free-spirited to willingly and seamlessly fit into the Apple culture. Meaning no disrespect, but I think he has a tendency to speak too freely.
Woz is underrated!
A great Edison who has not lived in his lab for a long time.
And Apple is too secret with the right people and too open with the wrong people.
We are kept in the dark while Apple is open with Samsung Inltel and the Chinese who all steal like hell.
Woz will probably have a future role at Apple someday, a small but important one, based on his moral authority as a co-founder of the company.