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Steve Wozniak Predicts Death of the IPod
Slatterz writes "Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, better known in the industry as 'Woz,' believes that the iPod is on its way out and has revealed his discomfort with some aspects of the iPhone. Wozniak said that the iPod has had a long time as the world's most popular media player, and that it will fall from grace due to oversupply. Wozniak also commented on the iPhone's proprietary nature and locked service provider, and compared it to Google's open Android platform. 'Consumers are not getting all they want when companies are very proprietary and lock their products down,' he said. 'I would like to write some more powerful apps than what you're allowed.'"
I would like to write some more powerful apps than what you're allowed.
Clearly Woz is not in Apple's demographic. It's been said time and again: Apple succeeds at delivering coherent, easy-to-use products that admirably perform tasks that typical non-techy users require. As long as Apple continues to design the products with that mentality, they will do well. If the iPod/iPhone stops selling briskly, it will be because everybody who wants one already has one, not because an Android phone lets you ssh into your home slackware server.
I can't understand the appear of iXXXX's either. Locked proprietary technology with limited scope for a geek to truly enjoy.
What I've noticed though is that the people who buy them don't seem to care...
You answered yourself with the second sentence; iPods and iPhones aren't targetted at geeks.
I'm no (current) Apple fan and don't own any Apple products. However, from a consumer POV, Apple got an awful lot of things 'right first time' with the iPod and iPhone. They're intuitive and stylish and give you the right functionality as simply as possible. It's like Nokia did when cellphones became popular a few years ago - deliver a 'must have' consumer product that feels right.
Woz is a remarkable guy, a bit of a hero to me. But he's no consumer product guru.
Squirrel!
Woz is looking at the iPhone with engineering eyes, not consumers eyes. It's a strange culture shock to geeks when they find out the universe of non-geeks doesn't work like them. Yes, the API is locked down, yes, it is locked to a single service provider but the average user really REALLY doesn't care. Even if they do know better, they really don't care. It's why McDonald's sales are high. They know a better burger, but they don't care. I'm not sure if this is a problem or not, to be quite frank. But when a geek tells me is a better solution, they're not realizing that "better" is incredibly subjective. Yes, OpenMoko is open, but is that better to me? I don't want to edit config files unless i'm being paid for it.
Is the iPod going to die out? Sure. Not before moving much much more product in the mean time.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Not to be a prick, but my Sandisk Sansa does almost all of that, lets me change "collections" and use Micro SD cards, runs rockbox, plays games, and even lets me watch video in just about whatever format I find best (using rockbox). It also cost me a whopping $30. Still cant see what all the iFuss is about, with the exception of much nicer aftermarket accessories due to market domination.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order- Ed Howdershelt Via Tass
IMO, all stand-alone music players are on their way out. Convergence is the future.
Apple is in the business, especially for consumer devices, of promoting solutions. This is a big differentiator from the competitors who usually focus on feature checklists and component integration.
However, someone like Woz is a hacker in the purest sense of the word - he wants to get tools and pieces that he can use to make his own solutions. An iPod he cannot change things on is not something he's interested in.
But for most people, the fascination with Apple comes simply from Apple 'getting it' - most consumers want to pay for problems to be solved for them, not to be given tools to learn to solve the problems themselves.
What I've noticed though is that the people who buy them don't seem to care...
The only reason they don't care is because they haven't seen that the grass is greener on the open side of the fence.
It is hard to miss what you don't know. But should Android or even a WinCE system get a few cool toys that apple explicitly forbids, that green light of envy will start to burn bright.
I've had a Symbian phone for years. Lots of free apps and developer tools, built in GPS and great touch screen, been around for years... That didn't stop the iPhone coming out either.
Because the iphone had a cool new interface that no other phone had. But its going to be a tough battle for Apple to keep ahead of the other platforms when they are deliberately excluding software that people want.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Yeah. But it's not an apple i-pod. And that is essentially what sells an i-pod.
Steve Wozniak is a smart guy but he is, to put it mildly, an extreme "power user". He left Apple to develop a programmable IR remote control (http://www.ktronicslc.com/core.html) with 256 functions split over 16 code pages.
It had programmable macros, scheduled timers, and absolutely no way to label what a button *does*. If the batteries ever ran down it had to be re-flashed via a serial link. It's technically sweet, it filled a niche that Woz perceived in his daily life, and it remains completely unusable for 99.9% of the world's population. (I'm sure it generated some fantastic patents, though!)
I would trust Steve Wozniak to design firmware for a battery powered car, or to build a lifesaving medical device, or to write a graphical Tetris clone that fit entirely in the unused bytes of a LILO boot sector. But I don't think his opinions on the marketability of consumer electronics are worth a damn.
But clearly android phones are going to be a refreshing new option for the horrible windows mobile platform or the jail'ed Iphone.
That's assuming the android phones become more trendy that the iPhone, which is no small task.
Does anyone know of any advertising push google is attempting for the android?
End users don't care about specs, but they do care about functionality.
Features like downloading and syncing over the air, updating podcasts, shopping at multiple music stores, place shifting, better E-mail clients, and laptop Internet access matter even to non-geeks, and Apple is preventing a lot of that from happening.
I think the reason that hasn't mattered for initial iPhone sales is because most US consumers are so inexperienced with smart phones that even the iPhone seems like a big step forward and because the only other smart phones US carriers are pushing are the Blackberry and Windows Mobile shit, often with carrier restrictions. But Android and Symbian are going to change that. We'll have to see whether Apple can reverse course quickly enough, because it won't be long before regular users do care about all this.
What's an "android"? Does that answer your question? ;-) I think the Ipod will be like the Walkman Cassette Player... it will be hugely popular with teens and young adults, then slowly lose market share as other "clones" compete with it, and finally die-out as a new technology comes along to replace it.
I'm not sure what could technology could replace the convenience of a portable dedicated computer that plays MP3 and MPEGs, but maybe in the year 2020 such devices will be obsolete. Perhaps the data will be directly downloadable to your brain. (shrug)
Anyway, I don't see MP3 or MPEG players dying anytime soon. The Ipod is safe.
The government is not your daddy. Its purpose is not to raid middle-class neighbors' wallets and give it to you.
Wow, your preferences obviously are infallible, so whatever you determine to be the "best" technology really must be the best! How stupid all of us who bought technology that matched our needs were, oh Monkey-some, show us the way!
The measure of how "good" a technology is cannot be expressed in a vector. Just because something has a lot of bells and whistles doesn't make it "good", and just because something lacks said bells and whistles doesn't necessarily make it bad. Guess what, a lot of people liked the iPod BECAUSE they thought it was good technology. Maybe it didn't meet your needs, but just because it didn't doesn't mean that the thing is merely "hype". Get over yourself.
Monstar L
The platform is not advertised. But the phones that run it are. Right now, T-Mobile and HTC are pushing their version of the Android phone here.
Granted, it isn't pushed as hard as the iPhone was, but then I didn't really see much Apple-branded advertising here in the Netherlands either. Usually the networks advertises the phones, so right now it shows that T-Mobile has more faith in the iPhone on the short term. But things can change.
The thing Android has against it is that it now runs on old-school, bulky, ugly smartphones with no real new features. That shows us that T-Mobile is targeting the youth with the iPhone and the business world with Android. But that too might change.
And don't forget the power of geeks. They usually have some money to spare for gadgets, and they won't stop talking about how great some new tech product is. Some of my friends and colleagues are waiting to see how good OpenMoko turns out, for example. And when "normal" folk hear the word Google in connection with something gadgety and flashy, they will be interested.
Free beer is never free as in speech. Free speech is always free as in beer.
If it's a killer app that threatens the iPhone - Apple will make sure it comes to the iPhone.
They're not idiots - and have been known in the past to purchase applications or provide alternatives if they believe it is needed on their platforms.
Mike
You're right, and loathe though I am to admit it, Apple are capable of taking someone else's cool idea and frobbing the usability right up to eleven.
The ipod will be obsoleted by the humble cell phone. Like it or not people want convergence. Particularly in Asia. Phone, Camera, multimedia, they (we) want it all in one smallish chunk of electronics - it also needs to be shiny and have flashing lights. And yup, the cameras these days are 'good enough' for social networking.
Okay well, I got a FREE insignia player that holds 1 gigabyte... perfect for listening to an entire Teaching Company course. And it was free.
But these little anecdotes don't change the statistics - Ipod still dominates in sales. Many people say "Ipod" in the same way they say "Kleenex" or "Xeroxing" or "Hoovering". The brand name has become the thing itself. Ipod will be safe and profitable at least until 2015 (imho).
The government is not your daddy. Its purpose is not to raid middle-class neighbors' wallets and give it to you.
How is the parent labelled insightful? Oh I understand, its the usual FOSS love in. Android will be open and succeed in the same way that Linux has replaced every other OS on the planet. Oh, it hasn't? That would be my point then.
This sort of post is typical of slashdot in that it shows that there is a basic lack of understanding of the wider world. Non-geeks don't care what XXX is running. They just want it to be able to do what they want. They want it to be as easy as possible to use and anything else is a bonus. Apple get this. In general Slashdot users and FOSS advocates don't.
Put it another way. There are many digital music players on the market with more features than the iPod. Why does the iPod continue to dominate? Its easy to use. On the Gadget Show on UK TV this last Monday they did a comparative test between three portable video players. One was a the iRiver Clix 2, one the Archos 5, the final the iPod Touch. They had a BBC Radio 1 DJ help choose between them. He went for the iPod Touch despite it not having the best sound because it was the easiest to use and looked good.
You may think me a tired, old, cynic. I'd have to disagree about the tired bit.
This exemplifies your fundamental mistake. If a normal person finds themself having to use terms like "operating system", "firmware" and "crash" in relation to a telephone or a digital music player, then that is a fail. People want to make telephone calls or listen to music. They do not care about the operating system or the firmware or the ideology of the developers until the phone stops working and then they'll just start cursing it.
People might be getting more sophisticated and knowing what operating system is running on all of their personal devices, but it's not because they want to, it's because the products are crap and don't shield the consumers from their underlying workings properly.
Actually, this example demonstrates preciseley the opposite of the point you were trying to make. The phone operator is still there, it's a computer instead of a person, but the interface between the users and the operator has been simplified to the point where most of us have only the vaguest idea that it's there, how it works or what it does. We just type in the number of the person we want and we are connected. The operator is completely invisible.
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
Two days ago I would have said that you were wrong. Yesterday I had a discussion with my 9 year old daughter. She wanted an iPod. I told her she already had an mp3-player. She looked at me like the conversation had been:
Daughter: "I want a bike!"
Wise father: "But you already have a desk"
Look on daughter's face suggesting her father had completely lost it.
I tried to ask her what the difference was between an mp3-player and an iPod. Of course she couldn't tell me. That didn't make her change her mind in the least. She ended the discussion by adding "iPod" to our grocery list and leaving the kitchen.
It's people like your daughter that convinced me to buy some Apple stock when it took a dive with the rest of the market this week. Kids young and old aren't going to care that your 401k lost 25% this year and that your new house is now worth less than what you owe on it... they just want their damn iPod's and MacBooks for Christmas!
If they whine loudly enough, I think that most of them will get what they want.
"Many people say "Ipod" in the same way they say "Kleenex" or "Xeroxing" or "Hoovering". "
And you will notice that while they may be using those terms, the actual product they are using is not a Kleenex brand tissue, a Xerox brand copy machine, or a Hoover brand vacuum. Just because people call the next generations of non-Apple branded MP3 players an "iPod" doesn't mean Apple will always be king, or outselling everyone else indefinitely.
"But this one goes to 11!"