Wozniak attacks iPhone and MacBook Air

 

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By Matthew Sparkes

Posted on 3 Mar 2008 at 12:44

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak admits that his comments occasionally land him in trouble with Steve Jobs - but that didn't stop him from launching an attack on two of the company's flagship products at a press conference.

"To tell you the truth, I was really disappointed when the iPhone was introduced," said Wozniak, who remains an Apple employee despite not playing a role in day-to-day operations at the company.

"I had 3G phones and non-3G phones and I knew the difference, so I was shocked because Apple was bringing full internet with full web pages, and I was surprised that it would not be 3G, and I knew that that would be a speed detriment."

Wozniak claims that he was also initially sceptical of the MacBook Air, because of the lack of swappable battery, optical drive and ethernet port, but that the user experience had almost won him over.

"I watch movies on airplanes. I need one that will go an entire flight and switch batteries, when there's sometimes no power on the plane.

"I don't think it's a benefit if you have to carry around a DVD player with you, a couple of extra dongles to connect to ethernet and things, and maybe an extra hard disk to carry your music on but still, it's the appearance. I really like it," he said.

Somewhat on a roll by this point, Wozniak also took the opportunity to attack the way that Apple places strict controls on how users can view content on Apple TV.

"I don't like to be given control of something by remote control, then have restrictions put up against me about how I can use it. That interferes with my feeling of humanness," he said.

Despite the criticisms, Wozniak remained loyal to the company, claiming that its practice of controlling product design from top-to-bottom achieved impressive results.

"Apple has total freedom in its decisions - and it usually results in a good solution." What went wrong, then, with the iPhone, Apple TV and MacBook Air is anyone's guess.