Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak reflects on the tech giant’s $500 billion market cap.
Woz, still an honorary Apple Inc. employee, also tells CNBC’s Brian Sullivan the stock will hit $1,000.
Even though he describes himself as an engineer and does’t want to keep track of money, he’s proud that the company he started has the largest market cap in the world.
Apple “is actually a lot of companies in one” and every one is “huge” and “so excellent.” Woz says, “Apple has a large room for growth.”
Woz uses “his best guess as an engineer” and says that talking across the room to the TV is a technical challange that won’t be solved within the next couple of years, but that he does believe that we’ll be talking into “something closer” (holding hand up to mouth as if talking into an iPhone) in order to control the TV.
I really don’t care what Woz says anymore.
iDisagree. Woz is the source.
Jobs built on Woz innovation.
There are people at Apple now who’ve done far more in engineering terms than Woz has done in terms of Apple’s current success.
But Woz did it first, the rest follow in his footsteps.
+∞
No Woz, no Apple
That’s history. Deal with it.
True but Woz started Apple’s trend of innovation.
So his opinion matters… at least to me 🙂
Jobs, many of us believe, was a force that couldn’t be kept out nor down (Pixar, NeXT, Apple Inc. 3.0 etc.). Woz, OTOH, was a fortunate junior HP engineer who got an early shot at inspiration courtesy of a tour de force genuine quality genius.
Without knocking Woz’s contribution with Apple I and Apple ][ or Disk II, much of computing even PCs existed prior to Woz’s work. Rather than inventing the wheels, he probably is better credited as innovator of alternate (and cheaper for the PC version of computing that was about to take off) method and reverse engineering.
The other Steve, OTOH, is recognised in multitude industries and disciplines as a genuine paradigm shifter. You’d be lucky to get even one of those in each generation.
“You’d be lucky to get even one of those in each generation.”
More like, 1 every 100 years…
Woz is a true genius.
Woz is like an ex-POTUS. Doesn’t matter what Woz is doing now. You show him respect for his past accomplishments and position in history. There is one undeniable truth: No Woz, no Apple.
At last a person who gets it…
+∞
Here Here!!!!
Woz said, he wished Android never happened.
He knows very well, and in that little statement, tells us Android is stolen tech.
However regardless of it’s existence, he likes it for what it is and thinks there’s room for growth.
SIRI may be part of it, but I believe the input method/interface concept that Steve Jobs claims to have “cracked” is more of a motion controlled interface ( think Wii or Kinect) than a voice activated interface.
Waving your hands in the front of TV is tiresome. Just gimicky thing that would never get to be mainstream way to control TV.
it wouldn’t be “waving your hands” like in minority report, it just be slight hand movements with a remote.
If they will be able to surely detect quite small movements, then yes. However, it might be too hard for now.
I’m not an engineer, but I’m sure that with all of the technology and sensors used in Apple’s iOS devices, they could somehow implement a way to detect small hand movements or wrist flicks while holding a remote. Possibly using touch gestures as well for scrolling as on a Magic Mouse.
not gimmicky at all. The Wii caught on in a mainstream way and the Kinect has been a huge seller for Microsoft. I think It’s completely plausible that Apple could take this technology and create an easy to use interface that required small hand gestures that the masses could adapt to. Much more natural and intuitive than tiny little buttons and scrolling through complex menus.
As SJ said: “People watch TV to turn their brains off.”
The Wii and MS Kinect require people to get off the sofa and *move*. The Wii remote and MS Kinect are specifically designed to be physically interactive with games.
‘3D’ is a gimmick.
It wouldn’t be if directors were to use it to provide greater ‘depth of field’ for their scenes, but they don’t. They use it to try and make things poke out of the screen. To borrow a phrase: ‘Eye candy’.
Yes, but Wii and Kinect use the technology for gaming, I’m not talking about gaming, I’m talking about holding a remote with a flick of the wrist up or down or left or right. Using the technology tailored for an intuitive navigation experience.
With current technology and TV interfaces, people have to *Think* about what they are doing to accomplish the simplest tasks with complex remotes and scrolling through menus. A simple hand motion is much more intuitive and requires much less thought.
As you quoted an astute and on the mark Jobs’ quote on this issue, I believe the most “personal” viewing of TV is in the iPad. Mirror that on the TVs (HD mostly) or overhead screens and you get a joining of the two aspects of your brain for a more engaging viewing pleasure.
The wiimote would work great for TV input. I find it very easy to navigate Netflix on my wii. I prefer my wii for Netflix over all my other devices including my ATV2.
Why has everyone forgotten the Magic Wand patent? It’s only been 3 years or so.
http://www.macrumors.com/2009/12/31/apple-magic-wand-remote-system-patent-for-apple-tv-resurfaces/
I think what Steve “cracked” is how to give customers exactly what they have right now, while significantly upgrading the user experience in using what they have right now. That does NOT mean trying to replace existing cable service with a new service that Apple controls. It means enhancing the users’ experience in using their existing TV service.
The current Apple TV min-box adds Apple services as “Input 2” to existing TV experience. Apple still calls it a “hobby.” For a complete “iTV,” that’s not good enough.
Consider… The first iMac was marketed as a way to give the Internet a better (and easier) user experience. Apple did not create a new Internet for iMac. The first iPhone gave customers a much better user interface to access existing mobile networks and services. Apple did not create a new wireless communications infrastructure, just for iPhone. Once Apple achieved mass adoption by giving users what they had already, but with an enhanced user experience, Apple THEN added unique service that Apple controls to the user experience, to better differentiate Apple’s products. For example, iTunes, the App Store, iCloud, Siri, etc.
I think Apple will repeat this strategy for the “iTV.” Apple will NOT try to replicate existing TV services. Apple will take what customers already have now, and enhance the user experience significantly. After mass adoption is achieved, Apple will add unique services that they control directly, which is the continued development of the current Apple TV.
As I always wrote, there is no much sense in voice-controlling for TV other than making quite complex searches or commands.
The idea of talking to TV just for every simplest thing is total nonsense. Too tiresome. Same stupid thing as with the old scientific fiction films where people turn on and off lights in the room by saying this wish out loud.
Most commands on a TV involve a single button press, two or three at most. How is talking or waving your arms around any easier than that?
The problems with TV are all to do with content and input source, not control. I can envision Siri or motion control being part of the solution, but it’s certainly not what Steve “cracked.” What he solved must be more along the lines of iTunes and the music industry — in other words, a radical business model that the content networks are willing to get behind.
I love Woz and respect him greatly, but…
He’s an engineer, not a visionary.
Plus, he dated Kathy Griffin. Really? How messed up do you have to be to chase that tail?? It obviously must’ve been due to lingering effects of the plane crash.
Just sayin’. I mean, damn…
Where’s the “like” button?
I love how everyone claims it’s dumb or stupid to do any of the things suggested in the article and comment section, yet the moment it actually happens and something is rolled out that does a variation, these same folks are drooling on themselves and falling all over each other trying to be the first ones to buy the product.
Probably the same group that said touchscreen keyboards would never take off because it’s dumb to not have physical feedback.
SIRI andy I had a fight and now she’s not speaking to me.
Where are the posts rearding $1K stock? If this damn economy would pick up even the slightest, I’d be clicking buy orders all day…
“I kind of wish that Android had never happened”… the fact that the host likely had a set of questions that they were going to power through regardless of the answers is really annoying. What a great opportunity for a follow-up.
Woz and Jobs were different(that’s why it worked), but Woz
has been around long enough to see and think like Jobs did.
Go home and truly look at your TV remote, regardless of your provider. It is about the stupidest thing in our day and age…nothing less than 30-50 buttons. TV software menu’s are the second most stupidest thing out there next to the remote itself. Jobs said he finally changed that…Woz seems to agree, so, in anticipation, I believe it until there is reason to not believe it. The TV won’t change the world, but the way we communicate and navigate with TV content will change the world thru Apple.
For personal reasons (!) I dont have too high an opinion of journalists and this interview gives me no cause change my mind.