Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has responded to reports that he doesn't approve of how the Apple Watch has taken the company into the "jewellery market".
Speaking at the Business Rocks conference in Manchester, Wozniak said the "sensationalist press" had "twist[ed] my words". "I've never been critical of the Apple Watch," he continued. "I've only said that I love it, I use it, I like it. I've pointed out a joke that there are 20 versions of this watch from $550, $550, $600 up to $1,100. And the only difference is a band. So you're paying $500, or $1,000 for which band you're getting. It's a joke, and they make it sound like 'oh my gosh, I'm critical of the Apple Watch.'"
Wozniak had previously commented in a Reddit AMA that "the only difference is the band, in all these watches. Twenty watches from $500 to $1,100. The band's the only difference? Well, this isn't the company that Apple was originally."
Apple and taxation
Wozniak also spoke to BBC 5 Live about Apple's tax status, saying that "I don't like the idea that Apple might be unfair – not paying taxes the way I do as a person. I do a lot of work, I do a lot of travel and I pay over 50 per cent of anything I make in taxes and I believe that's part of life and you should do it."
Apple has arranged its European finances so that it pays taxes in the Republic of Ireland, which has a 12 per cent corporate tax rate, compared to the UK's 20 per cent rate. Wozniak, who still holds a token post at Apple, said he believed "every company in the world" should pay tax at a comparable rate to that paid by individuals like him.
Speaking at Business Rocks about his position with Apple, he said that "I get a small paycheque because I always wanted to be that person who has been on the payroll every single week since we started the company" and noted that last time he checked, "it said I was still reporting to Steve Jobs. So I said 'good, I can't be fired.'"
But his token position doesn't mean he's privy to any of Apple's secret projects. "I wouldn't know anything in the company because I don't need to know," he added. "Also, I'm honest and I talk a lot, so they're scared to let me too close to anything in the company, but they won't fire me."
The future
Wozniak said that although he'd previously worried about the negative implications of artificial intelligence "like the things said by Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk about the threat of artificial intelligence replacing the [human] brain" he found his own opinions "too negative – I didn't like it, so I rethought it."
He now believes that the future relationship between humans and AI will be "a partnership: they help us, we help them", that in the future, AIs could "figure out solutions to poverty, hunger, the environment," and that sci-fi fears of robot armies are grounded in humanity's own fear of things that are different – and of its own mortality.
Asimov's first law of robotics – "a robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm" – is wrong, according to Wozniak. Instead, he suggests "Woz's law: No human being can harm a thinking, feeling robot. Once we have a robot that knows it can be killed if a human unplugs it or turns it off, they will think of us as their killers."
Meanwhile, he keeps busy with charitable work; entertainment interests, such as bringing Comic-Con to San Jose and Tokyo; and technology projects.
Having been involved with Fusion-io, which produces solid state storage for data centres and was bought by Sandisk in 2014, he's now working with members of the same team at Primary Data. Once again, they're looking at ways of optimising storage in data centres, and Wozniak is the company's chief scientist.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
