“When my colleague Brian Burgess sent me an email this morning with a link to a Wired article asserting that Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak thought Apple should make an Android phone, it sounded funny to me,” Gina Smith reports for aNewDomain.
“It sounded wrong. So I called Steve Wozniak, with whom I penned his biography iWoz: Computer Geek to Cult Icon: How I Invented the Personal Computer, Co-Founded Apple, and Had Fun Doing It
Woz continued, “‘I did say Apple ‘could’ make an Android phone. But I (said) total business decisions would be in the hands of knowledgeable Apple execs — not me,'” Smith reports. “In addition, says Steve, ‘I questioned how much this would compete with the iPhone business.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As always, we love Woz!
Related article:
Apple co-founder Woz: Apple should make an Android phone – February 6, 2014
Nice back pedal Steve.
Have you ever been interviewed for a news article? I have been interviewed several times, and reporters will misquote you every time. I don’t know if they just don’t understand the material, or they intentionally attempt to make things sound bigger and more dramatic than they actually are in real life. But your only chance of having a reasonably accurate article published is to have the right of pre-publishing review so that you can submit corrections. Even then, some of the errors are going to make it through the process.
I don’t doubt Woz when he claims that he said “could” rather than “should.” And he is right – Apple could build Android phones – not Google Android, but forked Android designed to work with iOS functions like The App Store, Game Center, iCloud, Apple Maps, etc. Apple could subvert Android at its very core. But should Apple do it? Probably not, especially if that would force Apple to pay royalties to Microsoft. But it sure would be a slap in Google’s face. Just thinking about it makes me a little happier.
Exactly!!!
Reporters always have the entire angle for their story thought up in advance. Then they seek to interview people who will corroborate their angle. If they don’t get the exact answers they were looking for, they’ll twist the quote to fit the story.
Practically every single time I was interviewed for print media, something was quoted wrong. About the only time this would NOT happen is when I’m interviewed on camera (can’t quite twist words there, beyond taking snippets out of context).
I’m pretty sure Woz didn’t need to do any back-pedalling; he was just misquoted, as it usually happens with everyone.
Heh! Try running for public office and see his accurate the quotes are.
You are right.
True! My sister refuses to do interviews unless she can read what’s written before it’s printed. She was misquoted and all these people were ticked and it was again one of those twist to fit things. Reporters no longer care about accuracy, they deal in sensationalism.
The issue with Wozniak that he is loose cannon and he has history of saying totally random and outrageous things. So even if he did not really say anything nonsensical this time, the belief that it was possible was fully reasonable.
just because you judgmentally say something in a knee jerk way doesn’t make it true. Woz didn’t back pedal, he was misquoted and he has the right to set the record straight.
Oh, so it was all just a misunderstanding? I get it now. Thanks for clearing that up.
Yeah because it makes so much sense to even broach or get anywhere near the could/should subject of Apple making an Android phone which would signal total defeat, turning over their future to Google and the stock nose diving & crashing. Oh yeah, let’s all go there!
It’s a little thing called sarcasm. No need to get bent out of shape over this.
Yeah I know. I wasn’t directing my comment at you but in support of your obvious sarcasm James. I LOVE sarcasm. Mine was dripping in it too. 🙂
Far too much dripping sarcasm on this forum. It is often difficult to tell the dripping sarcasm from the sincerely demented.
🙂 I guess we need to include that /s every time to make sure.
“even broach or get anywhere near the could/should subject of Apple making an Android phone which would signal total defeat”
Not defeat, but a bizarre, possibly brain-damaged, totally inconsistent business strategy. But then again, Woz was never really a business guy.
He’s an embarrassment, but at least he’s not as bad as Justin Bieber or Lindsey Lohan. Hope he never decides to get into booze and drugs.
I challenge Woz to a Segway sprint going southbound on the 85 starting from De Anza and finishing at the Fremont exit. but I need to borrow a Segway.
You sir must not be from Silicon Valley. We do not call roads “the” in northern CLifornia. That is LA speak.
And fairly recent LA-speak, at that. I never heard the usage while I was growing up in the LA area in the 50s and 60s; it was “take 101 to 405 to …” back then.
I live in Santa Clara. That’s Clara not Clarita
Woz should just shut up and go back to work! He could supervise the secret Apple dungeon number 1 that develops the new warp drive and time travel. Tim gives him 500 million for 5 years and tells Icahnnot to shut up. >:(
Please stop Woz. You still work for Apple and get paid don’t ya?
But I thought Apple started to make Android phones? They just rebranded Android as iOS 7. iOS 7 is just as ugly and glitchy as Android, so ol’ Wozzie Bear might be onto something.
BLN posing as Floyd.
Remember Floyd? The bartender in the movie, The Shining?
Remember BLN? One of three victims, in Ballmer’s decision to become a eunuch?
Hey Left nut roll your ass in here and say something… h’head say something you hairless bast’d
WTF? Do you see govt. conspiracies under every rock? He (Floyd) has his own views regarding iOS 7 and I have mine. It so happens that our views coincide that iOS 7 is really badly executed UI.
So what of it? iOS 7 does suck or else Woz would not have suggested Apple run Android on its iPhones. He (Woz) must have confused the suckiness of Android with iOS 7.
Would you just shut the F up??
No it isn’t. It’s no worse than iOS 6, only the colours make a significant difference, most aspects of the UI, that’s ‘User Interface’, I find few differences in, and the changes I do notice are for the better. The only snivelling I see from the usual little girls is about the bright colours and the font. Well, change the font, and wait for the next upgrade when the colours will darken.
In the meantime stop whining, it’s very, very boring.
I’ll damn well give my opinions you stupid British jerk off.
Yes, yes you will. And have—over and over and over, and I’m sure you’re not over. And I’m sure we’re sick of you the world over.
Another British nut job. I’m glad you like shit because iOS 7 is shit. Britain is the world’s shittiest place anyway.
–We don’t care about your brainless opinions.–
Shut up, go away and buy a PC, then you can whine on the Dull forums to your heart’s content.
Here you’re just a waste of bandwidth, with nothing but BS to say.
You are a piece of shit.
And even more impressive – Woz apparently is able to toss out ideas like this to the press without the aid of a serious drinking problem.
Yes, Woz lives outside the box. “It was just (my) independent idea”.
Yes, the press takes objective observations and turns them into subjective statements.
I’m still a bit shaky about how innocent Woz can be regarding something as sick and twisted as Android. And yet, weeds grow in the garden. Pull that idea.
I found it amusing to go back and read the comments by the MDN readership. Especially, the eloquent comments from MDNs members who actually wrote more than a handful of words!
Ha ha ha Halfwits!
Not everyone is endowed with the literary wit and wisdom as one such as yourself. More’s the pity.
Hit a nerve didn’t I halfwit?
Speak for yourself, nut job.
Screw you idiot.
I wish I had 1/10 of Woz’s technical knowledge – even that amount would make me a wiz, but much as I admire what he’s done and respect him from afar, he should just keep quiet sometimes.
…now that I think about it, that’s probably good advice for all of us – especially me. Just ask my wife. 🙂
Woz hasn’t done anything meaningful since the early 80’s. He helped get Apple started, and then decided to fade off into the background. Since Apple’s rebirth starting in 1997, it became entirely Steve Jobs’ company. It was the iMac, and NeXT technology, not Woz’s technology that brought Apple back. Wozniak was just a bystander to it all.
And what would you do with all of that technical knowledge, join a Segway polo team?
The fact that he runs is mouth about what Apple “could do”, “should do”, etc. is still annoying. Wozniak needs to shut the hell up. He’s irrelevant, and has been since the Macintosh launched 30 years ago. Wozniak was very important in the early days of personal computing, but what has he done since then? What has he contributed? Nothing. It’s really tiring that he finds it necessary to yammer on about things he knows nothing about, and it’s annoying that people still pay attention to what he says. Let him say what he wants, but it’s all just a ploy to get attention. I’ve been an Apple customer since 1986, so I am certainly not a newcomer dissing one of the Apple founders without any knowledge of his contributions. On the contrary… I know what Wozniak contributed early on, and I also know that he has made zero contributions to Apple since the Apple II.
Agreed on all counts. Plus — I always thought it was weird that he named his book “iWoz” when he had absolutely nothing to do with any i-product. A guy who made legitimate early contributions does not need to try to associate himself with things that happened long after his time.
So it turns out that it was Wired that crafted the Appleroid remark out of Woz’s words, creating a sure-fire attention grabber for itself. Slickly done.
Barely altering “could” to “should” moved a bland technical discussion into higher-octane Journo/platform war territory. And Wired had built-in plausible deniability disguised as misunderstanding, should Woz plead misinterpretation.
This I can believe.
Agreed. I dropped my Wired subscription a few months ago. Too many Google articles. Their droids are not welcome here.
Right. And this is why I refuse to read Wired. They have long since forgotten how to be real journalists. That being said… News organizations report what Wozniak says precisely because they know it will stir up Apple fans. Lately, Woz has said some very moronic things that show he hasn’t the slightest bit understanding of how a successful technology company should be ran. Being a hacker who fashioned together a simple computer in the late 70’s that helped launch the personal computing industry does not make him an expert on anything that Apple is currently doing. There is nothing that is built into the Mac, or any iOS device that came from Wozniak.
Once again, Woz gets near a microphone, says something stupid, gets called names on the internet, and then backpedals.
So just so we’re all on the same page, it would be F-ing INSANE for Apple to actually produce a phone that wasn’t running iOS, yes? Right Woz? Right?
It’s a pretty simple question. You’re not actually suggesting Apple make a device that locks users into the Google Play store, right? Of course not.
Pass out the Rolaids. I’ve no need or desire to argue. Next… Expressing one’s opinion on the internet these days is a declaration of war.
‘Tis a pity, the many good insights Woz shared during that interview are left aside whilst a crude trigger word restarts the kerfuffle.
Hey Shakespeare, this is the 21st century; get with the program. 😉
Gadzooks yon knaves, I did’st winkest.
Then, good my lord, teach your cousin to consent winking. — Henry V
Beware; the little faces show in the web yet in the app only scarcely. — Hannah
I didn’t realize that since I don’t use the mobile app: Thanks for the info.
When nine hundred years old you reach, look as good, you will not, hmmm?
You’re just a real Ira Gershwin, aren’t you? 😉
I don’t no whose at guy, does he right the lines for Yoda movies? Coz I thought you’re poast up their sounded alot like Yoda and I like Yoda his reel smart. I like OB1 to, but Yoda is the most best. Maybe if your a women you like Princess Laya better but I like Yoda.
I love Yoda, he is my spiritual hero. Princess Leia may be female but really she is just someone needing to be rescued. So I don’t identify with her that much. Yoda says true things that help anyone to understand.
About the 900 years: Ira Gershwin wrote lyrics to songs, like “It ain’t Necessarily So,” about sayings from the Bible. I went to a play in New York — Showboat, and one of the songs had these words in it
Methus’lah lived nine hundred years,
Methus’lah lived nine hundred years,
But who calls dat livin’
When no gal will give in
To no man what’s nine hundred years ?
Ya but Yoda a famous star and he’s smart so probly saved up some cash over 900 years and theirs women who will be in trusted coz they like the gifts and go to eat in fancy place even if Yoda mite smell bad coz when you get old you smell worst and I bet 900 you smell pretty bad. Not everybody ok but some. Who know there ain’t nobody to smell who even like 200.
Apple using an OS they’ve tried to destroy in the courtroom for the last six years or so certainly doesn’t make any sense to me. If Wozniak denies saying Apple SHOULD build an Android smartphone, I’ll let him slide. I still don’t get it though. Why would Apple deliberately fragment their own ecosystem just to sell a few million more ApplePhones? It would seem to do more damage than good.
Sure, I’m pissed Apple can’t sell more iPhones but in reality the global economy just doesn’t seem to support tens of million more iPhones being sold at their present prices, especially with consumers having less expensive choices of Android and WindowsPhone devices.
Are you high? Wozniak is probably a better choice for CEO than Jony Ives. I bet he would have made a better iOS 7. This looks like Samsung has made an Android phone look EXACTLY like iOS…but more butt-ugly. I liked your posts…but after this, you seem like a frothing anti-Apple hater.
And you would make a better choice for CEO of Microsoft than Satya Nadella, seeing as how we want the most incompetent imbecile in that position. In fact, you’d make Ballmer look like a reincarnated Steve Jobs.
The fandroid muck spreaders will say anything to try and reduce apple sales.
Hypocrites, the lot of you. Some time back, Bottviniks’s Left Nut was criticizing the way I type, saying “I sound too much like Obama”. Yet Hannah gets away with sounding like someone from Bronx Theatre High School’s Shakespeare club! Last night, she said my background had something to do with how annoying my posts are. What is up with that? And someone decided to pretend to be me, and wrote in a style that made me sound like a black thug! This site is beyond right wing: It’s bordering on racist. I thought this site would have a better group of people but I thought wrong…
Do you have 1/10th the intelligence of Hannah? The answer is clearly you don’t. You come off sounding like an empty suit, an Obamatron soundalike.
Everyone: Please, allow me:-
SHUT UP.
*ssholes like you are why I no longer consider myself ‘conservative’.
You’re the empty suit, cretin.
Ms. Jackson, you’re gonna have to grow a thicker skin if you wanna post here, or pretty much anywhere on the internet. First of all, people are rude, clearly either forfeiting any manners their parents taught them or never having been taught any in the first place. Second, anyone who is bright enough to write well, with their own style and perspective, gets lambasted by those who find the daily newspaper too difficult to comprehend (see comments on the vocabulary of New Yorker writers or Andy Ihnatko’s style whenever he’s linked here – not the content, the style). Third, Americans have been raised with the misguided belief that the world is black and white, their beliefs are right and others’ wrong, and regardless of the facts, they are sticking to their convictions.
I read MDN regularly, but have learned to avoid ANY article with a political topic and only to post when I believe I can genuinely contribute to the discussion.
And I try to be polite. To everyone.
I will gladly give Wozniak the benefit of the doubt. If anyone has actually talked to the press knows that it is much like talking to a lawyer at a trial. They will twist your words to say whatever is on their agenda. Woz should know that by now and either keep his mouth shut or be careful to whom he talks.
Plus, as MDN has already pointed out, it’s hard not to love Woz.
This story stinks to High Heaven …
By the way –
John C. Dvorak is co-founder of aNewDomain.net, chief columnist and board member.
Excuse me if I have little sympathy for Woz. He has to know anytime he makes comments about Apple they’re going to find their way all over the internet. And his backpedal was lame. He didn’t say Apple shouldn’t make an android phone, just that it’s not up to him to make that decision (duh!).
Sure — apple could do it, like anything is possible, but should they do it? the answer is no… and i think he was quoted correctly otherwise it’s a statement anyone could make, but to quote woz saying it is what made it a headline.
And that correction will likely go uncorrected in Wired.
They are just permanently pissed off that “Wired” is now an anachronism and so is the fat printed rain forest-poisoning magazine that made them pop culture darlings last century, and they continue to hope that online readers won’t notice them resorting to the same sordid tricks to get page hits that any scrappy 14 year old can do just as well.
The medium got the message but Wired’s gang are still massaging their greying temples, wishing Gibson’s neural implants had arrived in time to give them new life, and relevance.