Steve Wozniak, who co-founded Apple with Steve Jobs, made some surprising remarks in an interview. Wozniak says that Apple should spin-off its iPod business to a separate division because it distracts Apple from its core business-- computers. While acknowledging that the switch to Intel was a necessary evil, Wozniak says: "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. 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." Update: Wozniak now denies having made the claims. Just like politics, boys and girls!
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Member since:2006-01-03
"As for the x86 Macs: nobody know whether they are going to be succesful. For all we know, they might end up sinking Apple. The jury is totally out on that one, so don't dismiss Woz just as yet"
We do know. They will be successful beyond anyone's imagining. How do we know this? Because the first models out show a SIGNIFICANT speed increase with bump in cost; without being really buggy or anything. Vista is going to look like molasses in january when Microsoft foists it on the market in 6 months, or whenever the current release date is.
Member since:2005-07-06
But you know that technical ualities alone don't necessarily guarantee success of a product. It is debatable whether PPC-based Macs are technically superior to PCs. Yet, Mac-heads would always buy a Mac, no matter what. Part of the reason is the existing apps, another part is OS X, but there is a big part that is mystique and a bit of elitism (and I don't mind the latter, personally). Who knows whether the Intel-based Macs will have the same, untangeable, quality/dimension.
Just for the record, I didn't mod you down, I think your post was reasonable and civilized. Unfortunately, I can't mod you up, either, I have no mod points left (in fact, I have the impression they somehow vanished since last night).
Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:
2005-07-06
Just recently has been released a study stating that there is coming a period of chronic lack of engineering and scientific skills in the industry, and that there is an inflation of MBAs, middle and top management.
Now this info ties in with the dispute that has been going on in this thread, about engineer vs. businessman: There are way more business-movers than there are engineers, but the role of engineers and researchers has been put down/deprecated in western societies, expecially american, because success is measured almost exclusively in terms of money. Yet, people forget that many researchers and egnineers do what they do because they like it more than being suits, they enjoy it more - and not because they can't. The truth is, most suvvesful managers are both lucky and have nothing better to do.
And by lucky I mean that the ratio of success vs. failure has been a bit more favourable. In those terms, Jobs would count as a mildly succesful CEO, as most of his enterprises failed. The ones that succeeded (not necessarily because of him) have been succesful enough to tip the scale onto the positive side. But, if you want to look at it objectively, even Apple is an unsuccess, as it's marketshare is tiny, compared to Interl-based computers.
As for the x86 Macs: nobody know whether they are going to be succesful. For all we know, they might end up sinking Apple. The jury is totally out on that one, so don't dismiss Woz just as yet.