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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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.