How might Apple be different if the other Steve still worked there? The Woz says if he were calling the shots, he’d look past the often silly competition between tech giants and opt for greater cooperation. Namely, if Steve Wozniak made the decision, Apple and Google would once again be partners.
Imagining such a situation isn’t hard. Google was heavily featured in early iterations of the iPhone with the company’s services baked directly into Apple’s handset. Then came Android and Steve Jobs’ claims of “thermonuclear” war on Google. Woz wishes it wasn’t so.
The problem simply stems from ease of usability. While Apple has quickly rolled out their own services to replace those once covered by Google — take Maps, for instance — they haven’t always lived up to the hype. Siri does her best to avoid using Google, but ultimately most queries are best answered by simply asking the voice-activated assistant to search the website that has become synonymous with looking up information online.
The issue goes much deeper than the relationship between Apple and Google, however. Wozniak would like to see greater collaboration across the board. Summing it up poignantly, he says, “I wish everybody just did a lot of cross-licensing and sharing the good technology, all our products would be better, we’d go further.”
[via BBC]
