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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.'"
First post. damn I feel all strange./joke
Well who knows ... the hype with apple products is the reason why so many people like it. Usually it's not the "best" technology who gets approval but the one who is used by most people see Windows, we all know that it's relatively crappy but so many people use it that finally it doesn't count that much.
But clearly android phones are going to be a refreshing new option for the horrible windows mobile platform or the jail'ed Iphone.
Correction. Woz a genius.
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...
Sure they'll die, but I doubt they'll die just because there's something better on the market.
And as for open alternatives? 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.
GrpA
Enjoy science fiction? "Turing Evolved" - AI, Mecha, Androids and rail-gun battles. What more could you want?
I did read tfa. His prediction on the iPod does not seem to take apple's innovation history.
I do agree with his discomfort with the iPhone. Apple had the chance to revolutionize the cell phone market in the US and flubbed it.
I recently played around with an iPod (classic) and to be honest I really dont get why people tout its great UI ('clickwheel') - at least for me it was completely counter-intuitive and just plain stupid. I mean why no dedicated buttons for volume? The iPod UI in the iPhone works much better for me.
I never liked iTunes and thus also not iPod, and that all because ONE TIME, years ago, iTunes was installed on my PC during the installation of other software without me asking for it (or making the stupid checkbox to turn it off not visible enough) and me since then associating the name iTunes with malware. That association has never left my head, and continues on for iPod and iPhone. If everyone would have been like me, Apple would have had to change the name of their brand because their brand would be dirty in everyone's memory.
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 hate to say it, but I bought an iPod Classic 80 GB about a year ago. Before that I owned an iAudio 30GB XL player, but the screen broke on that one.
This iPod of mine is in use every day. I use it in the car (hooked up to the car stereo via a built in Aux Jack) for my 2.5 hours of commuting, I use it on planes, I hook it up to my home system to randomly meander through the 850 albums I ripped on it (it's too small though, it won't fit my entire collection). I use it at the office with my Altec Lansing travel speakers to provide me with tunes.
The battery still runs ~28 hours if I don't screw around with the screen too much, and the thing operates flawlessly. Plus, the fact that I got six ways of finding the same song (Search, Genre, Artist, Song, Album, Compilation browsing) and all the trimmings of cover information display and whatnot make it a pretty sweet device. Objectively speaking (and I didn't want to even like the iPod because I've never been a Mac fan with their closed platform bollocks), it is still the best player out there even if they're seeing competition from MicroSoft according to critics. But the market has voted with its wallet.
When this one does, I'm hoping I can replace it with the same device, except a ~250 GB Solid State version. So as long as they keep up with the Joneses, I don't see how Wozniak will be right in the foreseeable future. Then again, on a long enough time scale, and product/individual/company/society has a survival rate of zero, right? Doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that axiom out.
Maybe not quite in the discomfort-with-lack-of-openness sense that he meant it, but the iPhone is supposed to be a temperamental item to own, much like a Chihuaha.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
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.
I doubt the iPod will go out of market because of it's limitations.
All they have to do is see they loose market share and address the issues. I know it sounds easier than it is, but the marketing team that kept the ipod where it is for so long cannot be so incompetent as to not get over it.
Perhaps a better framing would have been "iPod as it is now is on it's way out".
That said, I got myself a Sansa e280 instead of iPod, especially due to the iPod's lock-in, so take my comments with a grain of salt.
Tie two birds together: although they have four wings, they cannot fly. (The blind man)
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.
Yeah. But it's not an apple i-pod. And that is essentially what sells an i-pod.
How can something become not popular because there are too many of them? Can someone please explain it to me? Did cars fall from grace because there were too many? Buttons perhaps? Children, are they not popular any longer?
Really? So a new iPod costs less than $40 like the battery replacement kits? They're not that tough to do. Heck, if you're worried, mail it into Blue Raven for $70 and let them do it. They'll replace it with a higher capacity battery and ship it back to you within three days. Still cheaper than a new one.
Well my iPod already died, so he was spot on with that one. The proprietary battery lasted about a year, and it would cost about as much as a new iPod to replace it.
The battery in my old iPod Mini gave me several good years of hard use, but is now defunct. I have now relegated that machine to the car, where it remains permamently plugged into a RoadTrip FM transmitter. Figure if anyone steals it, it won't be worth a cent at any hock shop.
This gave me the "excuse" to go and treat myself to a 160GB iPod Classic, which meets my storage needs better. Say what you will (and I think Woz is wrong about this) the iPod does offer pretty much the best bang for your buck in terms of capacity, at least here in Australia, and while there's a market for portable music players, I see no reason why the iPod should die any time soon.
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.
First evolution gets cancelled and now there's no more iPods? If it wasn't for the fact that I've got a ton of money in the bank I think I'd jump off a bridge.
At the bottom of the
So finally iPod users will have a chance to experience blue? touch-screen of death ...
This was a bad move, not only hurt in terms of sales but damaged the Apple brand image, pushing them towards the sort of resentment that MS manage to generate.
Wozniak must be one of those Apple haters who has never used a Mac in his life. Quick, mod him down! Oh, wait...
Yeah. But it's not an apple i-pod. And that is essentially what sells an i-pod.
Actually, I'm not so sure about that. If anyone other than Apple had come up with such a sleek design and neat interface, it would quite probably have done just as well. I have no quarrel with the SanDisk device mentioned by the GP, but micro-SD cards tend to hold a maximum of only 8GB (last time I looked) and the interface is IMHO only OK if you've never had better.The iPod is just a really well-thought-out product in its own right. It does (pretty much) only one thing and does it well.
Which is why, although I love my iPods, I am not considering buying an iPhone. The latter just doesn't have the storage capacity I (now) find I need, I don't need all those bells and whistles and shiny things, and I do not want any gadget that has to be charged every day, especially if the battery is non-removable.
They're seeing competition from Microsoft according to MS's fans in the press. The market considers the Zune material for comedy. I was joking when I mentioned the possibility of a Zune phone ...
Microsoft's problem is that Apple is clearly much better at evil these days than they are. Microsoft used to have the best and most popular evil; these days they can't even successfully pay people to use their evil. And they've been trying for a while.
To keep on-topic, Android's main function will be to lift the iPhone's game. Existing and not sucking will be a win for Android and Google. Then, as others have noted, someone will come up with a killer Android app that leaves Apple playing catchup as they've pissed off too many developers. Interesting times and a win for credible competition. Which Microsoft just isn't in this space.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
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.
I ride on trains and a subway to work every day. About a quarter to a half of the passengers have headphones stuffed into their ears. Most of the times the headphones are connected to a cell phone, and not an MP3 player.
Granted, where I live even kids in their early teens have cell phones.
If you have a cell phone that offers good quality audio, why bother with an extra gadget?
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Ok, I have mixed feelings of the merits of the iPod. As a caveat, I have to mention I do own an iPod touch 16GB. I also own a Nokia n95, a SonyEricsson k800i, an iPaq, and Motorola bluetooth headphones. I have also used an iPod Shuffle, an iPod Nano, and a creative Labs Muvo.
I would be first to admit, the ipods are not all that hot in terms of features and sound quality. I have read a review earlier this year, where various music players (including phones) were tested for pure sound quality including dynamic range, etc (testing the analogue side of the hardware too). The Ipods generally came on the middle to the bottom of the range, witht he iPhone and iPod touch coming at the bottom of the ipods, and the ipod Shuffle performing best, and above average compared to other devices from other manufacturers.
The best Player Only devices were from Sony, followed very closely by Samsung and Creative. Even the Phones came very highly rated, with the SonyEriccson K800i coming on top, and only "beaten" by some really good player only devices by Sony. My Nokia N95 is also "better" than the iPods. Add to the fact that many other devices also have FM radio.
The N95 allows direct download of podcasts (something the iPhone does not allow, AND apple have banned an app that tried to allow that).
Even the so called "simplicity" of iTunes has been called to task. I now know of many other music managers that do a pretty good job of managing sound libraries. In fact, many (including Windows Media Player) can even sync with ANY standard USB Mass Storage Device. Considering that itunes cannot "monitor" a set of folders to see changes, and update a library on its own (you need to download ITLu to do that), it is poorer in many aspects.
The iPod touch does not support the Bluetooth headphones I have. The iPaq, the K800, and the N95 did. in fact, before I got the ipod touch, I used to connect my Ipaq and my k800 to the headphones simultaneously. the iPaq would feed music wirelessly, and when a phone call came through, the headset would automatically switch to the phone, and send a pause command to the iPaq, resuming automatically when the call was ended. All this happened seamlessly, and wirelessly, despite being made by different manufacturers... it "just worked".
But..... despite all this, I still use the iPod Touch.. why?
a) the iPod's screen is VERY nice, yet portable. I watch a lot of podcasts, and sometimes movies on the train to work. the N95 is not as good as the iPod.
b) ability to sync "Played" statuses between iPods and iTunes, which allows me to manage the podcasts effectively (deleting played ones in itunes). I understand this is not a very strong reason, because if I used the N95, to download (via wireless/3g) I dont even need to involve a computer in the first place.
c) On a day to day basis, I don't like my phone running out of battery. the N95 does not charge from USB, and Although it may be a better music player, I would rather have the battery for other reasons, such as making calls.
d) Maybe because I paid so much for a iPod Touch, I feel more compelled to use it. (maybe despite my better judgment, I am subconsciously attracted to "pretty things", as well as the Jobs Reality Distortion field.)
e) I am just a lazy procrastinator.
But as You can see, a lot of these reasons are flimsy at best, and I will be doing a test where I will replace my ipod with my n95 for one day, and see how that goes on the morning commute.
I am also scoping Android.....
So maybe Woz has a point.
Have a nice day!
I do not want any gadget that has to be charged every day, especially if the battery is non-removable
Does that mean you're going to be selling your brain? I'm dabbling in a bit of aftermarket brain replacement, and am prepared to offer anything up to $50.
which is totally what she said
wow, scary!
see for yourself:
http://skitch.com/slowburn/2fyx/wozniak-death-prediction
A few years ago soon after the iPods came out, they weren't good value for money on hard drive models either. Maybe the casing was a couple of mm thicker, but my iRiver had an FM radio and microphone in addition to a 2GB HD, and was still cheaper than the 20GB iPod of the time..
The only thing to "get" about the market is that the iPod is already the best known, best marketed device, with the greatest number of accessories (you even get cars that have built in docks just for iPods for crying out loud..) so the average consumer wanting a digital media player will just get it without even researching alternatives. Excellent marketing on Apple's part, but I've always found it a little sad that it took an MP3 player to make them popular again. I still like Mac OS, but I've never owned an iPod yet. I admit I've been tempted occasionally like when the first Nanos came out, but I currently have 30GB of music (mostly MP3s ripped at ~192kbps), so I'd need something bigger like the 32GB Touch if I wanted a solid state storage player that held all my music.
which is totally what she said
I just traded up from a Sansa e270 6gb to an iPod Nano 8gb. It is -so- much better.
Granted, I haven't put thirdparty firmware (Rockbox) on my Sansa, but I absolutely hated my Sansa. You -have- to use their proprietary software to put video on it. Guess what happens if you lose your CD? You have to BUY a new one! They won't let you download it. Apple's software (iTunes), while still proprietary, is extremely easy to get another free copy of.
I never DID get playlists to work correctly on my Sansa. Podcasts worked okay when used with iTunes, but not at all otherwise. If you put it in USB stick mode, it reports every time you unplug it.
I've never tried games on my Sansa, but games on iPod Nano 4th gen are great. They are very clear, sound great, and the accelerometer lets me play games like 'Maze' (aka Labyrinth) where you guide the ball around the maze by tilting.
I'm far from a Mac fanboy. I say 'It just works!' in a nasty tone about 3 times a day at work, where we're all on Macs and have as much problems with the Mac Pros and xServe as any Windows machine I ever used. My personal preference there is Linux, too.
But the iPod is done right. It's going to be very hard to improve on it.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Not to be a prick, but I've used a Sansa (previously) and an iPod video (now) regularly, and:
1. iPod has better UI;
2. iPod has better sound quality;
3. iPod has longer battery life;
4. If I want to run Linux or develop my own infinitely configurable embedded system I have access to a dozen laptops, desktops, PDAs, phones, calculators, etc - and I do. But I use my iPod to listen to music and talk ("podcasts") and occasionally watch videos;
5. In particular, I don't use it to "play games";
6. I don't have any reason to care what detailed format the video is stored in on the iPod, since it's on there to watch, not to edit. I can resize for space before transfer if necessary;
7. Database+metadata+synchronisation are more powerful concepts than straight hierarchical filesystems, i.e. iTunes is actually quite lovely once you get used to it;
8. Finally, good luck with carrying around 80GB (per GP post) of MicroSD cards.
An average user treats an electronic device as a tool which must do one or more particular things well. An average geek treats a tool as something which can be made to do as many things as imaginable. An elitist geek treats a tool as something which must do as many things as imaginable. You appear to fit in this third category.
You're welcome to argue that you aren't interested in an iPod's particular benefits, but most people are.
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.
How did this get modded +5 insightful? The only sansa that you can get that's anywhere near 30 dollars is a glorified iPod Shuffle that you somehow managed to buy _without any memory card_. To get feature-parity as far as storage space and screensize, you'll be paying more for a sansa unless you got it stolen somewhere.
oops - obviously that's meant to say 20GB HD for the iRiver, not 2GB
which is totally what she said
iPods won't die as long as Apple keeps pumping out incremental improvements, and as long as the competition doesn't catch on to the accessory effect.
Like, say... iPod Touch with a hard disk, or with >40G of flash.
Or iPod Bluetooth, to get rid of the tether.
Or an iPod Shuffle headset.
Or ...
They've got plenty of room on the upgrade treadmill.
Normal people don't care about things like vendor-lock in and DRM. Geeks do. Based on the huge market share held by iPods, it appears that there are far more normal people in the world than geeks (not a good or bad thing, just is). And why do we keep posting opinion pieces from a guy who hasn't had any impact in the industry in the past 20 years? Maybe silly conclusions like this is the reason Woz hasn't been involved with Apple since the 1980s?
The ipods are nothing like any other mp3 players, but off course why be logical when there is Apple hate.
The iPod is nothing like other MP3 players? Really? I mean, doesn't it play music and video?
I understand what you're trying to say (the design and interface of the iPod is superior to that of other MP3 players), but the way you say it makes it seem like the iPod is an entirely different device. It would be like me saying, "Acuras are nothing like other cars, but of course, why be logical when there is Acura hate."
We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it
Back in the 80s you had many different kinds of PC (IBM and compatible, Apple's Mcintosh, Amiga and several others depending on the country).
Apple's one was the best, no question about it. Neat graphical interface (against MSDOS or Windows 1.x, ugh!) responsive, fast (Motorola RISC processor against Intel 8086) networked from the start (Appletalk was really user friendly compared to the abominations that existed for IBM compatibles).
But the IBM platform was open (in the sense that everybody copied it), unlike Apple's, and this created a boom which we are still enjoying (or suffering, if you consider the poor sods that continue to use Windows).
Fast Forward to today. Apple has the best platform (at least from the point of view of the market share, technically I am not so sure) but they are doing their damn best to lock it (again).
Google is creating an open architecture for mobile devices that all carriers are ready to support. This will increase the synergies (horrible but necessary word) between carriers, phone manufacturers and application developers, creating many new, exciting business possibilities.
Open (Internet, IBM PC, TCP/IP) beats closed (AOL, Mcintosh, Netware). Apple is not paying attention and clearly did not learn the lesson.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
"Users do care about openness, not necessarily because it's openness, but rather for the things that it allows."
Correct, but it would be a false impression to think that "open" doesn't have as much a price as "proprietary". For example all the advantages you listed wouldn't be worth as much if one had to stand on their head, whistling Dixie, while hand-editing files in hexadecimal. As some open source projects are finding out it costs money to gain some of "proprietary"'s advantages. e.g ease of use.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
TFA is just a crude summary of the actual interview in the Daily Telegraph.
I jailbroke mine and have never looked back. an unjailbroken iphone is a hindered iphone. If you use PwnageTool/Winpwn/Quickpwn, it's also 100% reversible if you don't like it. Joey
You know, I find that hilarious.
Darwin is STILL open source, and has always been, except for a short period when the Intel version was unreleased. But the FOSS people keep complaining about OS X being closed. Why? Because they want to run the shiny value-add parts like Aqua too! You've just illustrated the grandparent's point perfectly, and extended it to the techies as well.
They want it to be as easy as possible to use and anything else is a bonus.
Conversely, you would say that /.-ers and FOSS hippies "want it to be as easy as possible to HACK..." They find it supremely important to be able to break into a given gadget as readily as possible, else it's "closed."
Funny thing: ever since the first electrical cord was plugged into the first electrical outlet we've been dealing with NOTHING but "closed systems." Someone else above mentioned the term "appliance" as opposed to "platform."
When I buy a phone/PDA/whatever-you-call-it, I personally WANT an appliance, because I'm an END USER.
There are people, like my stepson, who love to buy junk cars and tinker with them for months and even years, and get them running again, new paint job, new engine, everything.
My wife and I, and just about everyone else, just want to get in, turn the key in the ignition and drive to our destinations.
For years, her son wouldn't even THINK of getting a car built after the mid-70s or so, because of electronic ignition. See, to him, that's a "closed system," because there was no carburetor with which to fiddle. And we're talking a kid who just turned 29 last month.
Hobbies are great, but if you're going to tell me I can't have electronic ignition becuase you love carburetion, please get out of my face.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.