Wozniak: I Would Consider Returning To Apple

Google85 writes "Steve Wozniak told Reuters he would consider returning to an active role at Apple, the company he co-founded, and believes the consumer electronics giant could afford to be more open than it is."

Comments

Re:Why tell the world?

[WrongSizeGlass]

FTFA:

"I'd consider it, yeah," the 60-year-old computer engineer said in an interview, when asked whether he would play a more active role if asked.

Someone asked him the question so he answered it.

Re:Has he done anything after that?

[Anonymous Coward]

From tfa:

"There's just an awful lot I know about Apple products and competing products that has some relevance, some meaning. They're my own feelings, though," said Wozniak, who is currently chief scientist of storage start-up Fusion-io.

Post Apple Career.

Stop being obtuse.

Re:Right on Woz!

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

No.

Woz is an engineer, not a manager.

Besides, the closed off mentality only came about during iOS. OSX is still very much open. Hell, the kernel is open sourced!

Re:Why tell the world?

[517714]

Many consumers like Apple products because they make it easy to buy and consume content without glitches, but the closed system that makes this possible locks customers and media and software providers into Apple's proprietary iTunes online store and iOS operating system. Some critics compare it to Microsoft in that regard.

Nobody asked the question, the reporter just made it up.

Re:Why tell the world?

[macs4all]

And not Apple?

1. Who says he hasn't?

2. Knowing Woz since 1978, I can tell you that he is one of the most OPEN persons on the planet. If you ask him a question, he will answer, unless the answer requires divulging a secret R&D project, and then he can hardly contain himself! I remember having some phone conversations back around 1979 regarding some work on what was to eventually become the Lisa (yes, the article was dead wrong. He worked on the Lisa project, as well as the pretty much only designer of the Apple 1 and ][, as well as the principal naysayer regarding the reliability-killing overcomplexity of the Apple /// design!). And, everyone forgets that he is the principal designer of the Apple ][ gs; a machine that was sadly just a little too late to the party, but a DAMNED fine update!

And knowing Woz for as long as I have, I can also tell you that his answer was NOT "off-the-cuff". He puts thought into every question in every situation. That's just the the "engineer" in him.

FROM WOZ, WITH PERMISSION TO REPOST

[macs4all]

First, some background from me (macs4all) :

I just emailed Woz with an email I entitled "Storm a-brewin' over at Slashdot."

His instantaneous reply follows. When I asked him if I could Re-post it here, his reply was "PLEASE do that for me!"

So, here it is, straight from the Woz's Mouth, so to speak:

When I first saw the headlines it was just another totally wrong one. I did an interview in Brighton the other day with this female Reuters journalist. The entire interview was about Fusion-io, at the SQLbits European conference, with myself and David Flynn, our CEO. At the end she asked about whether I'd return to Apple and I thought and said "no" and told her some reasons it was impossible. So she sits there and asks "with all the exciting things going on at Apple, would you consider going back?"...I said "yes" but explained that it could not happen. What you read is based on the one "yes". So I didn't read a single article about it. I was on planes and am writing a speech now for a humanist award I'm receiving tonight in Boston and don't have time to get into this one. Too bad.

This reporter took notes by hand but I think the Fusion-io publicist Shannon might have recorded it.

Re:Economy of scale?

[Registered Coward v2]

What economy of scale? Your dim little mind is aware that Apple is currently one of the largest if not the largest PC maker in the world right? They have even beaten Dell once (haven't checked if Dell or HP has taken the lead again).

So what economy of scale? Someone going to sell Mac clones so successfully they outperform the largest makers by such a magnitude they can demand even sharper prices then Apple already can?

Actually, in your haste to comeback with a witty put down (I'll grant you managed to be half way there) you failed to consider the PC market is much vaster than Apple alone. That's where the economies of scale come to play. Adding the ability to run OSX as well as Windows merely increases the number of units to amortize the HW development costs and increases the buy quantity.

While Apple is certainly large enough to command good prices, there are plenty of PC OEMS who build enough machines to get good prices as well; and they can spread engineering and developmental costs over a number of units beyond just those for one manufacturer. If Apple were to license their OS they'd have to make it work on generic MBs or provide the tools needed to adapt them to OSX (much as independent hackers did to create the Hackintosh). Imagine if Dell could load OSX on a $500 Insperion - the $900 Macbook looks real expensive; especially since Apple really sells the OS experience. If you can get that on a cheaper clone, even with a lower build quality, it becomes harder to justify buying Apple hardware. Once OSX is running on may cheap laptops and desktops Apple will come under significant pricing pressure (and have fewer units to amortize their costs as clones cut into their sales); as well as support issues as hardware combinations proliferate. Neither is in Apple's best interest; especially since they have managed to maintain premium pricing by avoiding becoming a commodity like PCs.