Steve Wozniak criticizes Apple for iPod, Intel Steve Wozniak criticizes Apple for iPod, Intel:



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What the other Steve is saying about Apple's striking resurgence

PETER NOWAK

From Thursday's Globe and Mail

Auckland — After being all but written off by the tech industry in the mid ‘90s, Apple Computer Inc. has made a startling resurgence. But that doesn't mean its latest strategies sit well with Woz.

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak — also known as “The Wizard of Woz,” or even “the other Steve” — made his fortune as the inventor of the Apple II computer more than 25 years ago.

Being super rich often results in the acquisition of some strange hobbies, and Mr. Wozniak was in New Zealand recently for a four-on-four polo tournament played on two-wheeled, self-balancing Segway gyroscopic scooters.

In an interview after the match, which ended in a draw, the normally media-shy Mr. Wozniak reviewed his team's performance. “We're analyzing it every which way we can and we're absolutely convinced we had the slight win, but we were up against equal competition. They're tough, we learned a lot and we're going to go back and work on strategies.”

He might well have been commenting on Apple itself.

First and foremost, Mr. Wozniak is an engineer and has been since a very young age. At 11, he built his own ham radio station. At 13, he began designing computers. By university, he had met Steve Jobs and the two were building infamous “blue boxes,” which allowed users to manipulate phone networks.

The duo formed Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple in 1976 and set about revolutionizing the computer industry by selling inexpensive, fully assembled machines. By 1980, the company had gone public and the two Steves had struck it rich. But Mr. Jobs and Mr. Wozniak left Apple in 1985 after an internal power struggle. Mr. Jobs returned to the company as chief executive officer in 1997 and has since led the company to new heights, but Mr. Wozniak has stayed away. His dealings with Apple are minor, he said, although he's still on the payroll “just out of loyalty.”

Still, it's hard for Mr. Wozniak not to pay attention to Apple. With the runaway success of its iPod music players and its recent shift to Intel processors, Apple is heading in some drastically new directions. Apple's recent embrace of Intel processors, for one, is something Mr. Wozniak says he never imagined.

“It's like consorting with the enemy. We've had this long history of saying the enemy is the big black-hatted guys, and they kind of represent evil. We are different, and by being different we're better,” he says. “All of a sudden we're the same in this hardware regard, so it's a little hard to swallow your words from the past.”

Still, the switch to Intel is a necessary one from an engineering standpoint, he said, because Apple needed a way to improve performance per watt. Mr. Wozniak would have liked Apple to continue using Motorola processors, but “Intel just did a very good logic design.”

Engineering related considerations aside, he still seems reluctant about joining the Intel camp. “If it wasn't needed, I would say we shouldn't do it. And I still have some questions as to how much it's needed.”

Mr. Wozniak has mixed feelings about the iPod as well. The success of the devices has been fantastic for Apple, diversifying a company previously dependent on one product. But iPods are also distracting Apple from its focus on computing, he said, and the company might be better served by spinning off the business. Since iPods have their own operating systems, software and processor, “there's a different group working on it anyway,” he said.

“We're a computer company, and we really think computers. Spinning off a separate division makes a whole lot of sense.”

Mr. Wozniak didn't suggest specifically how the business could be spun out, but did say that when Apple had two successful computers in the eighties – the Apple II and the Macintosh – the two units were in separate buildings and didn't interact much.

Of course, the iPod's success has competitors drooling over the prospect of taking away some of Apple's market share. Microsoft Corp. chairman Bill Gates recently vowed to introduce a rival MP3 player, but Mr. Wozniak doesn't appear concerned. “If they do it, they better do it excellent, excellent, excellent because the iPod sure is. Doing something weaker and somehow trying to use your size and market power . . . that's just not good [enough] if you don't turn out something superior.”

Like Apple, Microsoft is also changing by moving more toward on-line delivery of services, and Mr. Wozniak couldn't resist taking a shot at his long-time nemesis.

“Microsoft wants to get out of the whole image of the big, black Darth Vader evil guy,” he said. “Innovation is probably going on within the company, because any time you put smart engineers in places eventually they wind up talking and innovating no matter how much you try to hold them back.

“I hope Microsoft improves and becomes more like Apple.”


"  ¶ Saturday, February 25, 2006