Apple co-founder Woz: Apple should make an Android phone

“At the Apps World North America conference in San Francisco, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak gave WIRED a wide-ranging interview, touching on everything from his preferred iPhone 5s color (he has all three) to the fictional operating system in the movie Her,” Mat Honan reports for Wired. “But his most interesting comment by far was a heretical recommendation for his former company: Apple, he thinks, should release an Android handset.”

Honan reports, ““There’s nothing that would keep Apple out of the Android market as a secondary phone market,” said Wozniak–who, it should be noted, is no longer involved in the day-to-day workings of the company.”

MacDailyNews Take: Hmm, wonder why?

Wozniak continued, “‘We could compete very well. People like the precious looks of stylings and manufacturing that we do in our product compared to the other Android offerings. We could play in two arenas at the same time,'” Honan reports. “Despite how that suggestion might sound, Wozniak was generally bullish on his former company, rejecting the notion that innovation at Apple has stalled out.”

Steve Wozniak“When asked about Apple’s much-remarked-on failure last year to introduce a new category–such as a smartwatch or TV, both long rumored to be in the works–Woz countered that he believes Apple is waiting for the right time to release the right product,” Honan reports. “‘The great products really come from secret development,’ he said. ‘You put small teams of great people on them and they aren’t bothered by other people commenting on what they’re doing while they’re doing it. A whole new category of products doesn’t happen very often. It might happen once a decade. Sometimes you have to wait for one of those to come about.'”

“He also endorsed Apple’s decision not to pour new features into the iPhone, arguing that feature creep is not the same as innovation. ‘If you have something really good, don’t change it; don’t screw it up,’ he said,” Honan reports. “‘People don’t really choose their smartphones based on features,’ he added. ‘I think Apple is superior at being able to say no.'”

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: As always, we love Woz!

Related article:
Apple co-founder Woz announced as opening keynote speaker at Apps World in San Francisco – January 27, 2014

65 Comments

  1. He is out of his fscking gourd. That Woz can’t see basic business sense, well, please keep him away from Apple. It’s easy to see who was the real brains behind Apple and who was the just the soulless tech guy. Woz is just another fickle tech geek where loyalty need not apply and everything is up for grabs.

  2. I’m rather with cousar here, there’s a perverse sort of logic going on,mthe idea that an iPhone running Android would remove most Fandroid’s arguments against Apple, especially if it’s around a 5″ screen.
    What he also says about Apple not overdoing the features, and keeping the creative teams separate, and only showing a new product when the time is right is dead-on, too.
    I wonder if there was a twinkle in Woz’s eye when he made the Android comment…

  3. Apple should build an Android phone.

    BMW should build Hyundais.

    The Wall Street Journal should publish The National Enquirer.

    Samsung should make toilet paper (actually fairly appropriate).

    Whatever. See, the First Amendment lives!

  4. Woz has not been relevant to Apple for a long time.
    He was not a major contributor to anything Apple was working on for a couple of years towards the end of his active career with Apple.
    His opinion and views mean nothing.

    His only value to news agencies or tech sites is comic relief.

  5. Woz is like a big, lovable golden retreiver. He always seems well intentioned and you gotta love him. But sometimes he craps on your carpet unexpectedly and you wonder why you even keep him around.

  6. I have long thought that Apple should allow Android to run on iOS devices much as they allow Windows to run on Macs. Not make an Android device but allow Android under a bootcamp type arrangement. Wouldn’t that increase sales?

  7. Woz seems to vacillate between thoughtful and thoughtless, smart and stupid, insightful and dumbstruck. It’s not manic or bipolar. I suppose you’d have to call that behavior ‘human.’ Hmm.

    And we pretend we can create AI. Sure we can. 😛

  8. Woz seems to vacillate between thoughtful and thoughtless, smart and stupid, insightful and dumbstruck. It’s not manic or bipolar. I suppose you’d have to call that behavior ‘human.’ Hmm.

    And we pretend we can create AI. Sure we can. 😛

  9. The best part of his interview is “WE”, sounds like “We, the Tsar of all Russia…….” This guy lives in a imaginary world. This mental state is called pathological mendacity – when someone lies and forgets his own lies and cannot tell the truth from his lies.

  10. On second thought, this is so staggeringly stupid it would somehow work… do a dual boot iPhone with an Android swiss cheese mode… just add a trapdoor in front of the genius bar and open on Android mode.

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