Wozniak To Apple: Consider Building an Android Phone

snydeq writes "Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has some advice for Apple CEO Tim Cook: consider offering a phone based on the rival Google Android platform. Speaking at the Apps World conference in San Francisco, Wozniak made the suggestion of an Apple Android device when responding to a question about the fate of the faltering BlackBerry platform, saying that BlackBerry should have built an Android phone, and that Apple could do so, too. 'BlackBerry's very sad for me,' Wozniak lamented. 'I think it's probably too late now' for an Android-based BlackBerry phone. Apple, Woz said, has had some lucky victories in the marketplace in the past decade, and BlackBerry's demise may provide a cautionary tale: 'There's nothing to keep Apple out of the Android market as a secondary phone market.'"

Comments

Alleged Apple patents on Android

[tepples]

There's nothing to keep Apple out of the Android market as a secondary phone market.

Of course there is. Apple isn't allowed to distribute copies of Android to the public except under license from Linus Torvalds, Google, and other contributors to Android. If Apple accepts the license of Android (mostly Apache v2 and GPLv2), it has to give the public an implicit or explicit license to patents that Apple holds that Android allegedly infringes. So unless Apple wants to end up dropping lawsuits against Samsung, it has to refrain from making an iDroid.

Re:Alleged Apple patents on Android

[Anonymous Coward]

This is funny, of course they'll use Android. They don't make anything themselves. Haven't you noticed how Mac OSX is a blatant rip off of Red Star OS? Glorious Leader spent several hours creating an operating system from scratch only to have it stolen by these capitalist lapdogs.

 

Re:first

[s.petry]

I have a hopefully coherent thread written here which could be a point of discussion assuming enough people want it on the front page as a stand alone article.

Damn, this could have been an interesting topic

[excelsior_gr]

I was very interesting in reading what the slashdot crowd would have to say on this topic and on the opinion of Woz. However:
1. The slashdot crowd is too pissed of with Beta, so all they do is keep complaining about it, and,
2. If they didn't complain and Beta was rolled out in silence then I would still not be able to read what the slashdot crowd had to say on the comment of Woz, because the discussion section of Beta sucks.

So, pretty please, with sugar on top, take back the fucking Beta.

That's why it's good that Woz isn't CEO of Apple.

[Qbertino]

That's why it's good (for Apple) that Woz isn't and never was CEO of Apple. He obviously has absolutely not the faintest idea what he is talking about marketing and business-wise. I use Android for my phone and tablet, just recently backed off of buying an iPad Mini for development because it was to expensive ... and even *I* get the value-add that the sophisticated iOS devices bring along.

Apple should stick right where they are, perhaps move in closer with the opinion leaders a little again. Like XCode for free and without registration, direct access to iOS devices and filesystem, direct deployment of apps to iOS devices and some other stuff that's pissing of the top 0.2 % expertlayer of computer users, i.e. us, with Apple. That would be about all the changes I would make if I were in charge.

The rest is going absolutely perfect for Apple, a fashion mindshare Google, Samsung, MS and others would kill for and bizar gros margins of 30%+ on post-PC devices included. Thinking of bringing Android into that picture makes me cringe - and I'm not even an Apple Fanboy.

My 2 cents.