You can sort of see why Woz is an employee designing electronics and not a businessman.
Enter an already crowded market and produce a product with no USP with an OS controlled by a rival.
Coming next, Microsoft Linux.
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has infuriated fanbois everywhere after suggesting the fruity firm should start building Android iPhones. The corpulent Cupertinian said said he owned all three colours of the iPhone 5S, but would rather the fruity firm jettisoned iOS in favour of the other operating system. Fanbois lambasted …
Actually, I could see the market. As much as I hate to say it (I hate Apple stuff) they do seem to make nicer feeling stuff than Samsung. I hold a Samsung phone in my hand and it feels like I'm holding a lump of plastic, not a premium device. The reason I wouldn't have an iPhone is I don't like the walled garden it locks you into. If I could get an Android powered one that didn't need iTunes, I'd be very tempted.
"So don't buy a Sammy. If you're after premium feel phone running Android, why not the HTC One?"
Unfortuately HTC one failed to include microsd, which lost a sale from me, shame as its a nice phone...
Sony lost out because the screen was terrible when I tried it...
Samsung was the only fast phone that had micro sd, a clear screen and a replaceable battery...
"If you're after premium feel phone running Android, why not the HTC One?"
Because HTC is stupid. Their whole "frontside speaker" ad campaign showed they really have no idea what they're doing. The speaker goes on the back lower corner of the phone, because your hand is there holding the phone. The cupped shape of your hand amplifies the acoustics and directs it toward your face.
At some point Samsung will probably make a metal/glass phone, but they're more concerned with durability right now. Their phones don't shatter when dropped like an iPhone and metal shows oil and scratches more.
OK, let's say there are a lot of people like you who would buy an Apple phone for the hardware/design, if you could run Android on it instead of iOS. Are there people who are your opposite - those who make that choice now, and only buy Apple for the hardware, but wish they could be running Android?
If there are, iOS will lose sales due to this new product. If the new product has lower margins, they'll also lose profit. There need to be more of you than there are your opposite, and you have to be willing to pay a fairly hefty price (i.e. it isn't going to be sold at Moto X prices, Apple has never competed on price)
Seems rather risky to me, the upside is limited unless there are millions of people like you, and it risks making iOS developers a bit nervous about the future of iOS - they'd be worried "what if half of all iPhone customers switched to the Android iPhone?"
Contra to popular opinion, there is already a version of Andriod that works on the Iphone. Although it is still in early stages of development, you can put Android on your Iphone. When this Android version is cleaned up a bit, it will be very competitive operating system alternative for the Iphone
I can't imagine there are more than a handful of people who really want to run Android on an iPhone. Maybe it would be sort of useful on a 3gs that is no longer getting updates, but who is going to buy a 5S and want to run Android on it - in 32 bit and probably giving up access to the fingerprint scanner since Android won't have drivers for the specific hardware that the 5S includes.
There are probably more Android owners who wish they could run iOS - I'm thinking of those who want a bigger phone but can't get it from Apple so they switched to Android for that reason, but who may go back to iOS if Apple actually does release a bigger iPhone someday...
" Woz championed putting iTunes on Windows "
Windows Itues was released in 2003. Woz stopped working for Apple in 1987. Woz might have publicly suggested this, but he was no position to champion it per se.
The real reason was more likely that Apple realised that without a Windows Itunes, the ipod and the itunes store would never amount to anything.
I get your feelings, and agree. But I have said this before:
Think about it. Say MS decided to start a GNU/Linux distro, which meant that they would also contribute to the coding base; they do have some talented coders...
They would have enough of the desktop clout that would start hardware manufacturers to create drivers that were Linux compatible, resulting in less faffing on installs.
Businesses that are stuck on the Windows bandwagon would start looking at Linux as a viable alternative (It currently is anyway, just that that iTrolls of the world tend to do what they do best...) increasing the footprint.
There would be a knock on effect of increasing the amount of commercial software on Linux - not saying this is a good or bad thing, just saying that this *would* affect take up.
Now, I appreciate that dark side of all this regarding MS history on trying to railroad markets, but it would open a market to them similar to how Redhat works, and it would start to reduce the pain of the (effectively) closed garden that Windows really is. It would also push MS to produce decent code, as they have to compete on the OS side with others creating a distro, they would also have to ensure people choose theirs for quality reasons. Well, that and the support they could offer their client base.
As much as I would hate, HATE, *H*A*T*E* to even consider that Office would appear on Linux, I can see sound reasons, from an objective viewpoint, that states this should be on the table for them at least.
Fortunately, the people at the MS helm are fscking (or should that be chkdsking?) idiots so this is very unlikely. However, at the current rate, MS are carrying on in a tech ecosystem that will just continue to make them more and more irrelevant.
"Say MS decided to start a GNU/Linux distro"
Now why would they want to do that? Where's the money? Why would they want to be forced to compete when they have a market leading product that has no competition?
I know it is nice to fanticise about what might be in a "suppose we all got paid but didn't have to work" sort of way, but the reality is that currently there is absolutely nothing appealing about this idea from a MS perspective.
In the future things might change. Perhaps it gets to the position where the desktop OS revenue falls away and we get MS Office underr Linux, or as a MS distro. But given MS's current market share that's still a long way off.
Is the point going completely over your head. The ecosystem is what keeps people buying Apple kit, it's not just about selling phones now it's about continuing to sell them in the future.
There's an old adage: people don't buy hardware, they buy software. The hardware is just something to run it on. This is why Apple's attempts at licensing MacOS were a disaster, they were competing on price for something that users don't really care about ("this one runs the same software, but is cheaper? I'll have that then").
"There's an old adage: people don't buy hardware, they buy software. The hardware is just something to run it on."
Uh, what?
The average Apple user couldn't tell you what "iOS" was. If you ask them what they run on their iPhone, they get confused. Just like how Motorola users don't know what the difference is between DROID and Android.
But they do know about apps, they have lots of those, and they know they won't work on Android (and may not have equivalents).
What iPhone users want and understand is to be able to access the combination of apps, music, services etc that iOS gives them. That's the meaning of an ecosystem, the whole infrastructure that has grown up about the system. Windows wasn't a good operating system, but the software that users wanted was available on it so people bought Windows machines, and the cycle repeated. It's also the reason that Microsoft take (or took) such pains to ensure that old software still runs on newer versions of Windows (lest users ask themselves what other alternatives exist since they have to replace their software anyway).
Woz reveals the truth of the emperor's new clothes. He has a point - Apple is a brand, a fashion item. It matters not a jot to most iPhone owners what OS it uses.
Skin it to look like iOS and make it compatible with iTunes and 99% of owners wouldn't notice the difference.
Macs can run Windows these days and the sky didn't fall when that happened.
This is akin to BMW going front wheel drive for some models. Shocking for the purists but makes sense economically as the buyers of those models don't give a toss.
Think you would find it's actually the other way around. iPhone uses 'use' their devices (as had been shown many times by the web usage and other metrics) - most Android phones are just full (touch)screen 'phones' (i.e. phone + SMS). So it's most Android users that would not notice the difference.
Your example is a bit like sticking a BMW badge on a [insert low end car make] and expecting BMW makers not to notice the difference.
I don't think he does have a point: Apple has almost no expertise in being just one of many suppliers of anything. Everything Apple knows — and knows how to sell — is about tight vertical integration, with Apple being behind every part of the widget. Macs ship with OS X. iPhones ship with iOS. iPods link only to iTunes. Etc.
So while Apple would have some advantages in trying to sell an Android phone over Samsung, HTC, etc (for emphasis: _some_ benefits, i.e. they'd likely capture _some_ of the market) it'd be a riskier proposition that continuing as they are now, with no obvious benefit even if they prevail.
I therefore don't think it's correct for Apple to start selling Android mobiles. It'd be great for us, the market, but that's neither here nor there.
This post has been deleted by its author
iOS is the jewel in the crown - the hardware is looks good but often has flaws and quickly looks awful after a few knocks. iOS, iCloud, iTunes and the app store aren't great but they usually do the job. Android has the similar but they are a lot better and cheaper. Running Android would make the phone like a high end HTC - well built but essentially the same.
FTFY
"iOS, iCloud, iTunes and the app store aren't great but they usually do the job."
They are the reason I don't buy an iPhone, not the reason to buy...
If iTunes was optional, great but its not..
With Android I have a choice of app stores, I can choose many ways to buy apps, and many ways to use my phone... in fact I would like less google integration on my phone...
You can dash out and buy an iPhone then... If you had bothered to look rather than just posting with prejudice you'd know that you can run an iPhone or iPad as a stand alone device, put your apps on, back up to the cloud etc etc with no need for a computer running iTunes...
There you are, fixed it for you :-)
When asked, my iPhone-using friends only ever mention two "features" - build quality, and the ecosystem (i.e. the fact that apps work together seamlessly), and it's the second that really matters to them. Neither of those need to be any issue at all - assuming Apple wanted to come over to the light side.
The OS "experience" is obviously weak compared to equivalent Android and Windows devices.
The appstore has a larger selection than the Play Store, but that won't last, and in any case Google's store is already large enough to support anything you're likely to need.
iOS is the jewel in the crown - the hardware is great but iOS, iCloud, iTunes and the app store are what makes it better than Android.
Errr
I think you'll find iTunes is why so many people wouldn't touch Apple with a barge pole. iTunes has to be one of the worse bits of SW ever to disgrace the world.
...of his previous musings... specifically, on the subject of The Ultimate Device for The Consumer. Basically, there may be aspects of iPhones and iOS he likes, and aspects of Android and of Android handsets he likes - and he knows that he will never see all these aspects rolled together into his ideal handset, because companies jealously guard what they believe to be competitive advantages.
When/what device was the last time you used Android?
What you're describing sounds like the first Android device I had, a Galaxy S2 running Gingerbread - compared with an equivalent iPhone at the time the UI definitely felt slightly sluggish.
The Nexus 4, 5 and 10 that I've had since then on the other hand are every bit as quick and smooth as any iPhone I've used.
January. Admittedly it was better than the last time I held one about a year earlier.. the experience going from me tapping 2-3 times (and then makin things worse) because it was long enough for me to presume a failure to register to taking just enough time to make me wonder if it had registered my touch, but still seemed very slugish when compared to iOS.
"Ive never been a fan of android. maybe its the devices that I've had in my hand, but when I've had them in my hand I've always found the interface to be frustratingly slow to open things and otherwise respond to me."
If that is true, then a supposedly superior Apple hardware build running Android would change your mind.
But since Apple devices have basically always been Samsung hardware with an Apple case on it, your perceived difference is really just that, your perception.
@cs94njw
Well.. they could follow Microsoft mentality.Embrace and extend. Take Android, fork it, add usability, and slowly make it incompatible with other Android devices...
It seems that was what Samsung was doing. Maybe they will fall back into line after Google got rid of Motorola: digital trends.com, but It would be foolish of them to drop plan B: kdramastars.com
We really need a Google icon, unless this one will do for now? >>-------->
I can see his point. Apple's hardware isn't bad, but I loath iOS with a passion. I wouldn't buy an Apple Android even if they did exist. Nor would any other fandroid. Nor would any fanboi. It would get relegated to the technically ignorant crowd who'd see it as simply "That new iPhone with more buttons"
@Mark Southcombe: "And Mac's should run Linux!"
I assume they still do. Years ago I grabbed an unused G5 from under a co-worker's desk and installed RedHat on it. My intent was to play with PowerPC's LPARs (Intel didn't have HW virtualization support yet). I quickly learned that Apple had made IBM disable the virtualization features in PPC970, which otherwise would be a perfectly good POWER4. Kinda obvious once you learn which side of Apple's sliced bread is buttered, but on that occasion the possibility that a HW company would deliberately cripple its own CPU didn't occur to me in time. I made the G5 a (Linux) development server instead. Servicing it, compared to IBM/Lenovo PCs, was a pain, as I recall.
Back on topic: how crippled would Android be on iPhone HW? NB: no criticism actually intended - iPhones may have been specced with iOS design in mind, which I would assume may be very different compared to an Android phone designed to run a (more) open OS. Hence some stuff common on Android may be degraded on or difficult to port to an iPhone. Does anyone know?
We (the consumers) need to have some kind of competition in the phone operating systems. If Apple did the unthinkable and adopted Android, it would remove competition from the market and leave competition essentially between Google & MS with Blackberry a distant 3rd.
For reference, I prefer Android and use that, but I wouldn't want it to become too dominant in the market for the reasons above.
"We (the consumers) need to have some kind of competition in the phone operating systems. If Apple did the unthinkable and adopted Android, it would remove competition from the market"
If Apple offered an Android phone, it wouldn't remove iOS from existence. This would be a supplemental product for Apple, not their flagship. This was clearly stated in both the Woz quotes and the Reg article. I suggest English lessons.
"They'd lock out all the great options you get in a heartbeat."
What great options? Once you have played with a phone for 30mins after getting it out the box you only end up using the base OS for navigating to the apps that you actually want to run (and texting and phoning of course) So once you have got over yourself and stopped showing your mates the new shiney it really is just about the apps that are available. Both platforms have tons of apps...the iPhone ones tend to look nicer in general though, where as the Android ones tend to be cheaper.
Steve Wozniak's dementia has progressively worsened. He already forgot that Apple created the iPhone, He forgot that Google copied the iPhone to create Android. Woz is confused and did not realize that Apple making an Android phone would be the same as making a copy of a copy of the original iPhone. Uh why? are the right words.
Ok I was trying to avoid this but...
Give me a walled garden over an open sewer, any day.
Yes iOS is far from perfect but until Kitkat is on both the landfill roids and the high end, there's still too much fragmentation in design function and crapware.
Hopefully when 5.0 comes, Android will have matured enough to be worthy of iPhone hardware.
(Taking cover behind wall, leave out the face with that bat)
Within my circles of friends, I don't have trouble finding someone who prefers the design of the iPhone (even with the small screen and second rate hardware specs) - but most of these people still use an android phone and/or complain bitterly about the limitations of iOS.
There are people who like the hardware design decisions, but not the software ones. All apple would need to do is make it possible for someone to install a non-standard OS on an iPhone, and some genius on XDA would figure out how to make android run...
@Azzy
I was going to stay out of the "My Android phone is better than the rubbish iPhondle thing that fanbois use" debate (I use a 14 year old Nokia), but your comment:
Within my circles of friends, I don't have trouble finding someone who prefers the design of the iPhone (even with the small screen and second rate hardware specs)...- Could be seen as ironic, uninformed, or taking the piss.
There aren't many 64-bit Android phones now, but they will obviously be superior to the current second-rate 64-bit iPhones really soon: phonearena.com.
"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a world where their phones will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their SD cards."
Cross platform operabilty... Now if only there were some way of coding once and then letting the operating system (whatever it may be) interpret that code and run it on whatever architecture it happened to be running on...
Um... Hang on... Didn't someone already have this idea? WHO F*@#£D IT UP THEN??? And how do we fix this?
Android on an Apple phone? well hell did freeze over (itunes for pc) once why not again. Here is the problem Android appears to have one major or minor issue and that is stability.
The Apple quality is what Apple do in all their products for example you can now buy 1st Gen Ipads on ebay for £150 or more, they still work great but they have been left behind with technology thus new programs wont work on them.
As for Android phones I have spent the last 2 years with both a Android (Samsung s3) and Apple (iphone 4s) and what i found was little issues like loosing my wifi connection, unable to make conference calls unless i call my android phone first (dont ask about that issue) or locking up when multi tasking.
The Apple just works without a fuss. I hate that, as Ive seen some real nice Android phones out there and I love the control I have with the Android but I need the stability plus full integration with my computer, if only Android phone manufacturers would produce software which will fully integrate with my Mac computer I would be happy. Before the iphone I was stuck and now I have a phone I cant change it without going back to square 1. So why will hell freeze over, just look at Microsoft Windows and the pc market, windows was designed to run on any pc but as everybody did their own thing it was a monster to keep up with the changes, Apple chose their hardware to match their software thus stability. Android is the new windows, Apple is apple, think about it.
"'Thankfully he's not in charge' opines thoughtful fanboi"
The guy who who, you know, actually INVENTED the Apple, the real engineer, not the over-hyped, ego maniacal salesman who people think invented the Apple, but the real man himself, doesn't know what he's talking about?
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaa *gasp* hahahahahahahahahahahahaha
Frankly, iOS 7 is rubbish.
It's UI looked like something I designed in Primary 2 on a machine equipped with CGA graphics. Like M$ forced the stupid little metro UI down Apple's throat and Apple obliged.
It also has problems forgetting things when I ask it to. For example, I did a mass exodus of my music on my iPad two days ago after it ran out of space and I needed to load some newer tunes into it. It stubbornly wouldn't erase and let me erase Electric Light Orchestra's Mr. Blue Sky from it's memory, from within iTunes or directly, until I followed the Apple forum's convoluted method of forcing the song to reload from the cloud then delete, a few times. Completely wasted a good part of my day just to get rid of a song I no longer want but the iPad for some reason insist on keeping.
you may be paying for your device but you know nothing and we know better so we do not let you do what you want to do.
I have a MotoG (personal) and an iPhone5 (work) and of the 2 the Moto gets all my usage. The iPhone is confusing in it's layouts, the so called "intuitive" interface isn't even remotely intuitive to me, it won't let me run a Wifi Analyser, it is locked into iTunes, so given the choice I would quite happily give it back today in exchange for even a 2 year old Android phone.
Do I care about "style" or "design" or "fashion" or "fitting in"? No!
Are Android phones better than an iPhone,... for me Yes! YMMV.