Slashdot Mirror
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."
Sorry to be obtuse, but has he done anything of note recently? I only know him from his achievements in the distant past...
Every experiment which ends in a big bang is a good experiment.
"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.
Woz is a technical guy and is no longer needed there. Jobs only ever cared about the user experience and that's why Apple dominates.
I hate being bipolar; it's awesome!
The burden of demonstrating that the failure was due to the modification is on the car maker, however.
just post the damn url, i'm not going to click on a tinyurl link and get goatse'd or something...
You do realize that if they hadn't chosen an inept business model in the first place that we'd likely be complaining about Apple's monopoly over the desktop market, right? There were a lot of inept decisions which led to the near demise of Apple, but being too open wasn't really one of them. (Depending upon how you count allowing other manufacturers to make hardware that could run their OS
One of the reasons that Apple lost out was the lack of openness to the platform, there were other problems, but that wasn't helping them any.
apple needs to be open to more hardware choice.
There is an ongoing debate about the paradox of choice. Apple has chosen less choice. It simplifies their product line for them. Remember Apple is selling to consumers in general and not specifically to geeks like you.
What is so bad about makeing it easier to swap the HDD in the imac / mini?
What is so bad about desktop a system with imac power levels without a build in screen?
The problem is you are only seeing from you, you, you. From Apple's perspective they have to compete in a very competitive market with Lenovo, Dell, HP, and others. They have distinguished themselves by picking which products and subsets of the market that will ensure they have customers. It's probably the reason they stopped making Xserves; they just wasn't enough market for them. Remember they have to employ engineers, support engineers, etc for every product. As a business they make product lines where they can have success and not ones where a small percentage like slashdot geeks care about.
If apple does not want mini towers then lower the price of the base mac pro to $1500-$2000 or have a bigger mini system with a 7200RPM HDD at least (320GB-500GB) or SDD. Better video then on board video / intel video. AMD new on board video system in the cpu may be ok and desktop ram with 4gb at the base. Also have at least a desktop i5. NO i3 or i3 on board video.
A Mac Pro is not a mini-tower desktop. It is a professional workstation. There's quite a difference between the two. A Mac Pro is designed for professionals to author photos, video, sound, graphics, etc. While you can write book reports in Word on them, that's not their intent. It's like asking why a heavy duty truck isn't good for transporting 6 people around. Different purposes, different designs.
But if apple where to have a mini tower have it with desktop i5 or i7, 2-4 HDD slots / bays, 4-6 ram slots (based on what chip set is used), pci-e X16 video slot + pci-e X16 slot (X4 speed) or TB port. Maybe have a higher system with room for dual video cards or just X16 + X16 (does not need to full X16 speed) + TB port. and 1-2 ODD bays.
Basically you've described a system that every computer manufacturer makes. Why should Apple compete in a crowded market where the margins are pretty thin just to make you happy.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
And not Apple?
1. Who says he hasn't?
/// 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!
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
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.
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.
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.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.