Wozniak: I Would Consider Returning To Apple 249
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."
Has he done anything after that? (Score:4, Interesting)
Sorry to be obtuse, but has he done anything of note recently? I only know him from his achievements in the distant past...
Re:Has he done anything after that? (Score:0, Interesting)
His engineering skills are clearly obsolete by several decades, but he can be an advisor, as he uses other tech, unlike the current leader of the cult. He is a man that can mend bridges. Apple's bubble won't last forever, and like Sony, they're building an army of haters and pissed off consumers that are fed up with the lock-in on their toys/phones.
Re:Apple is a marketing company (Score:3, Interesting)
Woz is a technical guy and is no longer needed there.
Your statement makes it sound like all he can do is design circuitry and code.
Although he is a brilliant designer/developer, his return would also breathe new life into the company's other engineers, and would, quite frankly, make the stock market a little less jittery about "what will happen to Apple" in Jobs' absence.
I think he should return in his prior role as "Apple Fellow", and do what he does best at this point: Spread good will, and provide a "You can't fire me!" foil to some of Jobs' more "form over function" product design decisions. For example, there is NO WAY the iOS devices would have escaped from the R&D lab without an SD slot and mini USB connector, and without stereo Bluetooth headset support. I'm speculating about the USB and SD slot stuff; but Woz has even personally bitched about the BT lack-of-stereo support thing to me a couple of years ago in an email.
I have only about 6 months' less experience with Apple products than the Steves do, and I'm quite sure that Apple would benefit greatly from his engineering expertise, creative insight, and especially his attitude and ambassadorship.
Re:Apple is a marketing company (Score:4, Interesting)
That is why Apple dominates now, but it's not why it dominated then. I remember watching a documentary about the early Apples and Woz was a genius at reducing hardware cost to bring them down to budgets people could afford. He took what would normally cost thousands and cut chips and optimized software to make it cost hundreds. He was by far more essential to Apple then than Jobs' ideas of the user experience.
Today, that's simply not one of Apple's strengths - it probably hasn't been one since sometime in the 80s. There's plenty companies that can match Apple on producing an equivalent hardware platform. In fact, many have been technologically superior to Apple, they just haven't been nice to use. It's not the CPU or GPU or touchscreen or whatever that makes the iPhone/iPad a success and the Macs have gone native with the same Intel processors as most PCs. There's nothing on the technical side that will make or break Apple. I'm sure Woz could do a good job there at something, but he'd never be a very important man.
Woz has nothing to offer Apple 2011 (Score:2, Interesting)
Back in the day Woz's crucial role in creating Apple was as a creative and accomplished electronics designer. Creating things like the Apple ][ color display or floppy controller with minimal chip counts, and thereby making the product more functional/compitetive than most of the competition.
However, the market niche that Apple has nowadays carved for itself isn't based on low cost or unique functionality (even if a wizard designer could nowadays make much difference), but rather based on design and user experience - coming from Job's design sensibility, obsessive attention to detail, and desire to sell "appliances", It's very much Jobs company, and presumably will flounder when he's no longer there.
What does Woz have to offer Apple nowadays? I'm sure there are other Apple executives that understand Apple's market niche way better than Woz does, and he's certainly no Jobs replacement as a marketeer - there doesn't appear to be a drop of slickness or aesthetic sensibility in his blood.