10 Steve Wozniak Quotes That Criticize Apple

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If you’ve ever met Steve Wozniak, the man who originally co-founded Apple Computer with Steve Jobs, then you know he is pretty vocal about his opinions on technology… even if it doesn’t fall in Apple‘s current business plan. Even though Wozniak, himself, is a major Apple stockholder, he has made plenty of statements that criticize Apple. And it seems that the recent legal issues between Apple and Samsung, have really hit a nerve with the Woz.

Let’s take a look at some quotes from Steve Wozniak that criticize Apple’s products, their patent war with Samsung and Apple’s stance on Open Source technology.

01) No More Patents

I wish everybody would just agree to exchange all the patents and everybody can build the best forms they want to use everybody’s technologies.

This was part of a Bloomberg interview. Wozniak was talking about the Samsung Galaxy S III, which Apple is in patent lawsuits totaling over 1 billion. The issue is that Samsung is Apple’s biggest supplier of components. Therefore, Samsung is privy to what Apple is doing next. Wozniak believes that the patents involved were small items and it’s questionable if they should even receive legal protection.

02) iTunes for Android

Look at iTunes. Apple became a huge company when it shared iTunes with the world – not with just the 5% Macintosh market share. So we shared it with Windows and then everyone in the world could buy an iPod and it doubled the size of our company. We now have a huge start in music. Why don’t we have iTunes on Android? We should sell our music platform anywhere we can – it should still be optional – we are not forcing iTunes on anyone. It would be optional so that people who like iTunes for music would have it on any platform.

Wozniak said this in an interview with Duncan McLeod of TalkCentral. This was on the need for iTunes in an Android platform. It makes sense, too. You spend years building up a library on iTunes. Why should you only get access to your music if you own an iPhone?

Woz wants Apple to simply make an Android version of iTunes that can give you access to your music, movies and TV shows (that you paid for). It also works in Apple’s advantage as people would continue to purchase media through Apple, rather than Google or Amazon.

03) Apple Maps

 I don’t know yet about Maps — I’m a little worried about the navigation, but I’ve still got it covered with a bunch of other navigation apps.

Steve Wozniak became vocal with a crowd in Sydney, Australia about the new Apple Maps app in iOS6. He tried to navigate and couldn’t get to the destination by voice. He then touted how the Google Android phone performs much better.

One thing to remember, Google had their growing pains when they launched their mapping services. In 2-3 years, we could see an Apple Maps platform that surpasses Google. It’s happened before. Don’t forget, MapQuest used to be the #1 mapping app on the Internet.

One good thing about Apple Maps, is that you can download a lot of great map add-ons including the TomTom travel app. You can also still use Google Maps by going to the webpage and navigating to maps.google.com.

04) Apple’s “Arrogance” with the iPhone’s Screen Size

Part of me wishes Apple had not been so… arrogant and feeling that we’re the only one with the right clue. I wished they had made a wider version – small and large version of iPhone would have been great for me. Keep the aspect ratio the same but grow it the other way… I think Apple tricked itself by saying: Oh, you can reach everything with one thumb. I don’t see anybody having trouble using the larger screen. But Apple said that as a defensive move because everyone else had larger screens.

The conversation with Duncan McLeod on TalkCentral had several controversial topics, including the iPhone’s screen size. Woz made a lot of headlines with this comment.

05) Is the iPhone Not As Good As Android?

My primary phone is the iPhone. I love the beauty of it. But I wish it did all the things my Android does, I really do.

In an interview with The Daily Beast, Woz told Dan Lyons that he thinks the Android beats the iPhone when it comes to a variety of features including battery life, voice commands, and GPS integration.

06) iPad Screen Size

The iPad always had a great price for the size of the screen. Why would you want to buy these smaller screen devices? They looked a lot more like copies than the phones did. There are some tablets out there that just look like an iPad. You have to flip back to look for a manufacturer name.

This was on the size of the screen once again. Woz likes the size of the iPad but wants a bigger iPhone screen. We wonder how he’ll feel about the rumored iPad Mini.

07) iPhone, Android and the Evolution of Smartphones

iPhones are not inferior to other smartphones, and the cost is similar. iOS 6 is not inferior to Android. We could all get by with either of them.

Steve did a Slashdot Messageboard Interview where hundreds of people asked questions. One question was on the evolutionary nature of smartphones. Wozniak goes on to talk about how the Apple app store and the innovations that Apple implemented changed the landscape. But now that the competition has caught up, are all smartphones equal?

08) Can Apple Survive without Steve Jobs?

Back [in the early days of Apple] we knew how to make good new versions of our computers to satisfy the needs of our Macintosh market. But we didn’t do radically different things until the iMac. We should keep a watch for Apple returning to just milking its existing markets and not astounding us with new categories of products, or totally astounding ones. There is always a danger. And my personal opinion is that if it goes sour, it might have gone sour with Jobs there, so conclusions should not be drawn. That is not constructive for Apple.

Another question from the Slashdot interview, was if Apple, without Steve Jobs, can thrive? After Steve Jobs left Apple in 1985, the company fell apart. Now that Jobs is gone, “What is different now?”

It’s a decent question, however, Apple is 300 times more profitable than it was back in 1985. But there is always a chance Apple stock could plummet back to $2.95/share, what it traded for 27 years ago, without sound leadership.

09) The Tyranny of Monopolies

This was 1972 and it was illegal in the U.S. to use your own telephone. It was illegal in the U.S. to use your own answering machine. Hence it also virtually impossible to buy or own such devices. We had a monopoly phone system in our country then. The major expense for a young engineer is the rent of an apartment. The only answering machine I could legally use, by leasing (not purchasing) it from our phone company, the Codaphone 700, was designed for businesses like [movie] theaters. It was out of the price range of creative individuals wanting to try something new like dial-a-joke. This machine leased for more than a typical car payment each month. Despite my great passion and success with Dial-a-Joke, I could not afford it and eventually had to stop after a couple of years. By then, a San Francisco radio station had also started such a service. I believe that my Dial-a-Joke was the most called single line (no extensions) number in the country at that time due to the shortness of my jokes and the high popularity of the service.

This is a great Woz quote from a letter to the FCC on Net Neutrality. If the old tech and telecom monopolies had never been broken up, companies like Apple, Google, Facebook, or Skype, might not exist today. Woz is right. Monopolies can hold affordable technology back from creative individuals, like himself, and small startups, like his Dial-a-Joke service. But has Apple become a dreaded monopoly? Many of Apple’s competitors seem to think so, and recent articles in both Forbes and Business Insider criticize Apple’s recent monopolistic behavior.

10) Microsoft’s New Wave of Innovation

Steve Jobs was reincarnated at Microsoft… I’m glad that Microsoft is starting to show that maybe they’re a different company than before. I don’t remember this sort of thing happening in a long, long time from Microsoft.

While speaking at the Entel technology conference in Chile, Wozniak commended Microsoft for its new innovative product designs and their new commitment to the “convergence of art and technology” with the Surface tablet, Xbox Kinect, and Windows Phone operating system.

Steve Wozniak Is Just Being Steve Wozniak

I applaud Steve Wozniak for being as vocal as he is. He keeps people to task and doesn’t back down. We know he is a supporter of his company he founded but also a supporter of open source initiatives.