Steve Wozniak gives jailbreaking the thumbs up, wishes iTunes supported Android

http://thenextweb.com/apple/2012/10/02/apple-co-founder-steve-wozniak-supports-jailbreak-community-wishes-itunes-worked-android/

by mariusc • 14 years ago

92 61 14 years ago

thenextweb.com

lucian1900• 14 years ago

He loves iTunes? Odd.

reinout• 14 years ago

He probably loves itunes for what it accomplished. Remember the music industry before itunes? The way in which it made a lot of things possible and easier?

And the whole app store mechanism? Whether it is itunes or android's or whatever's?

That's what he loves it for. (And I'm assuming you're wondering why he loves a product that is so ugly/slow/complicated/whatever; I suspect that's not Steve Wozniak's point).

mariusc7• 14 years ago

wozniak is open to new perspectives( http://gizmodo.com/5926598/the-amazing-contents-of-steve-woz... ),but always will support Apple

GoldiKam• 14 years ago

Wish Jobs was there to comment on the article.

mariusc7• 14 years ago

we all know his point of view about this and it's clearly that he never ever will agree with it

fredley2• 14 years ago

iTunes supporting Android would be great for Apple. Unfortunately, it would also be good for Google, so it's never going to happen.

mariusc7• 14 years ago

iTunes supporting Android would be great for all Android users. iTunes is a great market with excellent apps which are not ported for Android.Unfortunately,like you said,Google will never allow this.

fredley2• 14 years ago

I was thinking more for a music point of view. How many users could Apple win over into the ecosystem just by letting you sync your iTunes library with your Android phone? I'm thinking a lot.

ZoFreX2• 14 years ago

It would be great partially because the existing sync solutions for Android are all a little bit wonky. I don't think it would necessarily be great for Apple, though - I'm considering purchasing an iPod to listen to music on to get that better integration, and releasing iTunes for Android would commoditize the listening device - exactly what a shiny hardware manufacturer does not want.

coopdog• 14 years ago

Funny, one of the biggest reasons I moved to android was precisely to escape itunes

CrazedGeek• 14 years ago

"It would be great partially because the existing sync solutions for Android are all a little bit wonky."

Eh? Winamp, DoubleTwist, Spotify, and even Windows Media Player all sync flawlessly, and Google Play Music and Android Cloud Player work great, too.

cageface• 14 years ago

With Rdio and Spotify both working well on Android I don't see much need for iTunes.

adambyrtek• 14 years ago

Google Music is also pretty good, at least when it comes the storing existing music library (I'm outside of the US so I cannot buy music there).

gadders4• 14 years ago

Does anyone really care what Woz says these days? Really?

I know he accomplished some cool stuff 30-odd years ago, but why is his opinion still relevant? What technology is he actually working on now?

He just seems to be a reliable semi-controversial rent-a-quote for busy journalists. He's not even that insightful.

I realise this will cost me karma, but whatevs.

mariusc7• 14 years ago

First time when I submitted this article the title was :"Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak gives jailbreaking...",like the original link title.I rewrite it because somehow I agree with you.But Wozniak will always remain the Apple's cofounder and his oppinon will metter for some people.

lutusp• 14 years ago

> Does anyone really care what Woz says these days? Really?

It's not so much that Woz is a source of wisdom and insight, it's more that there are few gurus and "experts" in computer science (generally a good thing) willing to offer opinions.

Woz is in the position of being able to take philosophical positions that people won't be likely to argue with, because of his long incumbency in the field of computer technology.

But that's an explanation, not an excuse. In fields that depend on scientific reasoning, there's no justification for accepting the opinions of experts based solely on their position. As Richard Feynman famously said, "Science is the organized skepticism in the reliability of expert opinion."

gadders4• 14 years ago

You know what? If he wrote a 3 page blog post saying "why it would be good business for Apple if iTunes supported Android" (or whatever) I'd be more interested. But all we get are soundbites.

notum• 14 years ago

You have a valid point.

But with that said, I think Woz is a very cool individual that's fun to listen. Does the radical / polar position toward the Apple cult make him that? Perhaps. However his work, albeit 30 years old, is still an inspiration, and his public persona isn't entirely focused on bashing the modern Apple methodology.

I don't know what he's working on now, if anything in concrete, but he's obviously not sitting on his hands :)

gadders4• 14 years ago

I did read this (slightly harsh) article about his work as "Chief Scientist" for Fusion IO:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/09/25/what_does_steve_wozn...

WayneDB2• 14 years ago

Why the vitriol? Why should we care what you think? (Seriously...why?)

Roughly half the items that appear on this feed are not news, you know.

(There's an interview with Brian Kernighan on the front page right now. Are you going to complain about that one too? Should we post complaints about every single story that we don't like, that receive a little bit of attention?)

gadders4• 14 years ago

I am a giant asshole.

j45• 14 years ago

it's just me, but when someone accomplished way more than most by todays standards, when there was barely a market, he likely knows a few things, as well as recognizing patterns and cycles that time had afforded him.

seldo• 14 years ago

BREAKING: hacker nerd who has had nothing to do with Apple for 3 decades takes positions markedly different from Apple orthodoxy.

Woz always takes very predictably pro-hacker positions; I'm not clear why we regard it as news when he does.

mariusc7• 14 years ago

The headline is not all about Wozniak,it's also a nice direction for iTunes from an Android user perspective.I'd like to listen my music from iTunes account without buying again from Google Music.

37prime2• 14 years ago

Since music tracks from iTunes are DRM free, they can be played in any Android devices.

killahpriest• 14 years ago

The first two words in the headline are "Steve Wozniak."

joesb• 14 years ago

> it's also a nice direction for iTunes from an Android user perspective.

What direction? He has no influence on Apple's decision.

Tyrannosaurs• 14 years ago

For now iTunes and the distribution deals Apple have are a competitive advantage that Apple wouldn't be willing to give up by integrating tightly with Android.

But in a few years time when Google have similar deals in place and any advantage is marginal (if that), it might happen. While Apple aren't really in the business of selling music (obviously they do but it's a relatively small part of their revenue mix next to hardware sales) there is an opportunity there.

That said over time as these deals become more common, the music business is going to be commoditised which will squeeze profit margins. It may be that those lower margins mean that even with access to a significantly larger potential market Apple aren't interested - they've never really been a high volume, low margin business.

WayneDB2• 14 years ago

"I'm not clear why we regard it as news when he does."

Go read the front page right now. Do it. Half the items on there are just stuff that people want to talk about. Notch's new office (oooooohhh!). Yet another Apple/Samsung article (woah!). The 256th python tutorial (wheee!)... Maybe just get over it, hmmm?

nicholassmith• 14 years ago

I'll be honest, I'm so, so glad iTunes doesn't support anything but the iPod/iOS lines as it's already a headache of overdone and unneeded functionality.

Quote! "It’s better to think constructively about what can be done with our mobile platforms to improve our lives more, rather than trying to throw darts and insults". And this is why Woz is still relevant. He understands that it's not about the iPhone or the Galaxy S3 or which ever device you have, but about what it does for you. They've all been drastically transformative in day to day life for a huge amount of the population of the Western world. Tech blogs and geek circles spend that much time sniping at each other that we seem to forget how quickly things have progressed. They're all great devices.

moystard3• 14 years ago

It is nice to read that Steve Wosniak supports the idea of iTunes on Android but to be honest, it does not make any sense for Apple.

The battle of mobiles is not about the hardware and the OS, at least, not only, but about the ecosystem around it. Google would not like its Play ecosystem to be on Apple's device, it is important for them that people buy their platform to get access to it (however, nobody would like to do that nowadays as the Play ecosystem is quite small). Now if you think about iTunes...

RyanMcGreal• 14 years ago

> It is nice to read that Steve Wosniak supports the idea of iTunes on Android but to be honest, it does not make any sense for Apple.

As Apple's smartphone market share continues to erode, it will make more and more sense for Apple to try and capture some of the media purchase revenue from Android users by providing an iTunes app.

moystard3• 14 years ago

Agree but for now that is not the case, they still have a strong market out there and the recent iPhone 5 release is a good confirmation.

gordeh• 14 years ago

Market share is irrelevant to apple. Market share can be bought if you throw enough money at it (See Microsoft's and Nokia's attempts).

As the only people making money from mobile is Samsung and Apple I doubt apple care about market share stats.

The iTunes eco system is there to sell hardware not to make apple tons of money.

netcan3• 14 years ago

The itunes thing is actually pretty interesting. There may be the same case as there was before for an exception.

I have a work mac, work pc, home mac, kobo, ipod & android. Sounds like a lot when I list it out. I'm not really a gadget person and some of those are pretty old. I use them all though and every one or two years I expect to add or replace a "device". Apple will be considered and sometimes chosen.

That's not unusual. Most Apple customers are not monogamous. Realistically, Apple have never been the company with so many options you never need to go anywhere else. They have been the company that's reluctantly good at bringing devices together and connecting them with a marketplace.

They don't like harmonizing elements they don't control. They would prefer the world divided nicely into Apple people and non Apple people. That's not realistic.

To improve Apple users' experience they need to support foreign devices. Mac users use android and many avoid itunes altogether (they need to think in terms of 'files' anyway). Ipod users use android and their ipod never has the podcasts they've been listening to. iPad users can't read the book they are halfway through on sony reader.

They wanted ipod users to just plug them into a mac, but that wasn't realistic so they released itunes for windows. I think its time for another compromise.

ja27• 14 years ago

It's interesting that Microsoft has multiple apps on Android (11) and iOS (23), Google has 22 apps on iOS and even 1 app on Windows Phone, while Apple has 0 on any platform except iOS.

netcan3• 14 years ago

It's typical. Windows always seemed to have a pragmatic, simple decision making process. They're strategic too, but not dogmatic. They never tried to win with windows, for example, by not making office for mac. If the office team wants to make software for mac or android or whatnot, I don't think they'd be stopped.

Google has the thousand flowers mentality.

Apple doesn't like to develop anything that admits the existence of intelligent life outside of Apple. In fairness, they are a "do few things well" company. They don't actually make that much software. They also don't like to do things that don't directly make money. There isn't a whole lot of money to be made selling apps on Android or windows mobile.

But yeah, itunes/ipod for android would be a no brainer for any other company. Just like kindle, for ipad. At Apple it requires divine revelation.

czr80• 14 years ago

That's not really surprising - Microsoft sells software, Google sells internet services and Apple sells hardware. Obviously the first two benefit from being on competing platforms, Apple doesn't.

enraged_camel2• 14 years ago

Woz might have been influential back in the day, but let's face it: he also had zero business sense. If it was up to Woz, they would have given away the computer he had built for free, and he would still be a lowly and unknown engineer working for HP. Jobs was the one who figured out how to monetize Woz's hard work. That's why Apple was founded and led by Jobs.

I'm actually saddened that after 30 years of working for Apple, Woz still hasn't learned that coddling your competitors and giving up your competitive advantages are bad for business.

edit: gotta love the ninja downvotes. Must have touched a nerve. :)

mnl• 14 years ago

Yeah, despite the fact that without Woz, Jobs would have never taken the home computer business by storm, and probably would have ended his great entrepreneurial vision with at most yet another unremarkable 70's DIY kit, after struggling aimlessly at Atari... This is becoming snobnews.

enraged_camel2• 14 years ago

I don't think my post downplayed Woz's contributions. No one has any doubt that Woz is a very bright individual. What I'm saying is that being smart about engineering does not necessarily translate over to being smart about business. And that's certainly true about Woz. Like most geeks, he's an idealist: he talks about what he wishes the world to be like without thinking about or understanding what that would mean for the company that employs him.

ubernostrum• 14 years ago

The parent comment didn't downplay any of that.

But honestly, Woz quotes at this point are basically "Preacher Delivers Sermon to Choir, Film at 11". The only people who bother to listen to him are people who already agree with with he's going to say, so whose understanding is being broadened by this? And how are these kinds of stories going to accomplish anything in the wider world beyond HN?

nirvana2• 14 years ago

Woz hasn't worked for Apple since the early 1980s. He got in a minor plane crash, got freaked out because he could have died and was "wasting his life in business" or something like that. Stopped working for Apple and started putting on the "US Festival!" which was not a financial success. So he stopped. He's been pursuing essentially charitable causes, for the most part, since.

He did invent the universal remote (but it got copied by everybody right away.)

He's a nice and well meaning guy and was a consumate engineer. But he was never the product guy.

On the Apple II he liked to try and get as much functionality out of as few parts as a challenge-- a technical challenge. It was Jobs who knew this would let them have a competitive advantage (or cared about it, anyway.)

He was critical to the early years of Apple. Jobs was not nearly as good of an engineer (but unlike what many people seem to think, Jobs was an engineer.)

but it was Jobs who understood how to make products really great, and why you needed to, and who made Apple the company it is today.

It was Jobs who cared about design as much as engineering.

nachteilig• 14 years ago

I can't thank you enough for this post. It really bothers me that Woz always manages to get so much attention for his seemingly anti-Apple opinions for this very reason. He's a great guy, but he hasn't been involved at Cupertino for a majority of Apple's existence now.

actf• 14 years ago

This is entirely anecdotal, but I think a lot of people underestimate how important iTunes is to the success of the ipod/iphone/ipad.

Speaking for myself, one of the main reasons I chose an iphone+ipad over android is because I love watching indie films, and iTunes is great for this. Their content library includes so much stuff that just isn't available anywhere else. Being able to instantly start watching a high quality version of a relatively obscure indie film can currently only be done on an apple platform (please correct me if I'm wrong here).

I would love it if iTunes was available on other platforms, but I can't see it happening. I don't understand why no one else has been able to secure these content deals that Apple seems to exclusively hold.

dserodio• 14 years ago

I think Apple was able to secure these content deals because of their massive userbase.

Steve Wozniak gives jailbreaking the thumbs up, wishes iTunes supported Android

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