The other day, our Google-loving friends over at Cult of Android breathlessly hopped on a story suggesting that Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak wanted Apple to make an Android smartphone.
It was always a bizarre story — what could Apple possibly have to gain from that, when it is already has the best-selling smartphone in the world — but it certainly made for a good headline. The only problem? Woz says he never meant it.
According to the co-writer of Wozniak’s biography, Gina Smith, Steve says that Wired got the story wrong.
“They got it quite wrong for their own reasons … I’m used to things like this, (where the media turns) ‘could’ into ‘should.’ But the idea caught a lot of attention. It was just (my) independent idea … I’m sure others have said it before but I get more attention …”
“I was asked some general question as to Blackberry,” Steve said, adding, “I said, as I have before, that I felt Blackberry’s best (plan) two years ago would have been to make an Android phone.”
“I went into how the world seems to be Apple lovers and Apple non-lovers,” Steve said in the email to me, explaining that “I did say Apple ‘could’ make an Android phone. But I (said) total business decisions would be in the hands of knowledgeable Apple execs — not me.”
In addition, says Steve, “I questioned how much this would compete with the iPhone business.”
“My answer was brief and more thrown out like art, to mention a rare and dramatic idea to get people to (start thinking).” His comment, according to Steve, was more intended as “a form of comedy. I felt it was an interesting thing to say.”
In other words, it sounds like Woz made a joke, and the joke then became the story, instead of what he actually though. Seems like Woz was right about one thing, though: saying Apple should make an Android phone did turn out to be an “interesting thing to say,” at the very least.
Source: A New Domain
