Steve Wozniak

The Woz: Apple has fallen ‘somewhat behind with features in the smartphone business’

One needs not ask Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak twice to comment on Apple's moves. For better or worse, he always makes headlines, sometimes by dissing Siri or the iPhone 4S battery life and other times by firing pot shots at Apple for not building a phablet of its own. Speaking at the Business Week Best Brand Awards yesterday, the Apple employee #1 discussed the iPhone, Samsung and competition.

Though an Apple loyalists, Woz isn't gullible and certainly doesn't shy away from confessing that competition has caught up with Apple. Other vendors did pass the iPhone in certain features and Samsung, he says, is a big competitor now.

In fact, he openly says that the South Korean conglomerate currently makes "great products". But worry not: the top geek loves the company he co-founded and "if Apple made lousy products, I would not be in line". Jump past the fold for other noteworthy quotes and a nice video...

Wacky 8-bit platformer starring the Woz now available for download

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0OoYKjoWfA

A violent iOS game with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak starring as a character has hit the App Store. Vengeance: Woz With A Coz is now available for your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad for just 99 cents a pop. The addictive 8-bit platformer puts you in the shoes of Steve Wozniak or Danny Trejo. The Woz himself wrote the back story which involves his wife, J-Woz, being kidnapped during their evening together.

You're tasked with saving her, which involves defeating various bosses, collecting bonuses and blasting your way through Fusion City using a bunch of different weapons. A tie-in to Trejo's upcoming movie, "Vengeance", coming in early 2013, the game features Baby Bash, Rashad Evans and other celebrities. Go past the break for more info and screenies...

Woz worries Microsoft is now more innovative than Apple

When he's not co-starring in video games, Steve Wozniak is known for being an outspoken gadget-lover. Of course, one of his favorite subjects is Apple. And despite his affiliation with the company, he never seems to hold back his criticisms.

This proved true once again during a recent interview with the Woz at a TED event in Belgium. The Apple co-founder told TechCrunch that he's worried that Microsoft has surpassed the fruit company in innovation over the past few years...

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak set to star in upcoming iOS game

Believe it or not, Steve Wozniak is set to appear as a playable character in an upcoming iOS game alongside actor Danny Trejo. In fact, the Apple co-founder is headlining the title with the Machete/Con Air actor entitled, "Danny Trejo's Vengeance: Woz with a Coz." More details after the break...

The Woz calls for Gorilla-sized iPhones

For five years Apple's iPhones have had the same 3.5-inch screen when competition moved up to bigger canvases, measuring all the way up to five inches and beyond. With this year's iPhone, Apple increased the screen to four inches. The company even defends the move with ergonomics being the primary concern for making the screen taller but not wider. Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak reflects on Apple's stubborn insistence on one-size-fits-all approach and wishes the iPhone came in at least two sizes...

The Woz spells trouble for the cloud

If it were any other company, an executive going on the record with an unfavorable comment regarding the cloud when his or her company was a major player in that space would have been met with swift punishment. But this is Apple and the executive in question is Steve Wozniak, the outspoken tech activist and everyone's favorite geek who doesn't shy away from criticizing anything and anyone, even the company he co-founded.

Following a special performance of Mike Daisey’s monologue "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs", the Woz took the stage for a Q&A session with the audience. His take on the cloud (and consequentially Apple's iCloud)?

It's a ticking privacy bomb waiting to explode and nuke our digital selves from orbit. We cannot even begin to wrap our heads around such a security nightmare because most of us haven't been through a mass-scale cloud disruption (yet). Those BlackBerry email server outages and T-Mobile's Danger incident? Just timely warning signs of things to come.

TIMELY: Conveniently, AT&T just suffered what one blog described as a "massive outage".

The Woz speaks up on Microsoft’s Surface tablet

The outspoken Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak usually has an opinion on many things, be it Siri and her reliance on a network connection, Facebook IPO (he said he'd invest regardless of opening price), patent war fallout, the iPhone 4S battery life and Android march and what not.

His latest comment from a a press conference at Entel Summit in Chile last week concerns Microsoft's Surface tablet, unveiled with much fanfare on June 18...

Woz: “A lot of people say Siri. I say poo-poo”

The other Steve never shied away from criticizing the company he co-founded with Steve Jobs in his parents' garage back in 1976. The Times Union chatted briefly with everyone's favorite geek during his visit to a New York farm of rescued horses and of course the inevitable question of Siri criticism came up. Here's what came out of him...

Steve Wozniak tapped as technical advisor for Jobs biopic

During a recent news conference for his upcoming HBO series, Aaron Sorkin fielded a number of questions regarding the Steve Jobs biopic he was recently chosen to adapt for Sony Pictures.

The Academy Award-winning writer told reporters that while he still doesn't know what he's going to write just yet, he's sure that the film won't be a "straight ahead biography."

Delusional Hearst CEO claims dull print replicas beat interactive e-magazines

Duncan Edwards, the CEO of Hearst Magazines International, was speaking at The World e-Reading Congress in London today. Offering his take on a number of subjects concerning digital magazines and newspapers, Edwards shared candid words for the iPad and Apple’s contributions to mainstreaming e-publications on smartphones and tablets.

Surprisingly, Edwards doesn’t think interactive content is the way to go. Instead, consumers are better served with boring digital replicas of static print content, he said.

I’m not sure I agree. Being a print die-hard, Edwards was probably trying to make the case for a single common denominator concerning digital publishing. After all, creating interactive content tailored for the iPad requires focus on excellence and admittedly costs more compared to simply converting print files using Adobe's Digital Publishing Suite, which also received an update at today's event...

Woz would invest in Facebook regardless of the opening price

Such is the confidence Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has in the leadership abilities of Facebook’s boss Mark Zuckerberg that he would buy shares of the social networking giant when it goes public on May 17 no matter the opening price.

The famous engineer who created the Apple I computer and co-created the Apple II system in the mid-1970s also sees the 28-year-old Facebook CEO closer to the combination of himself and Steve Jobs.

Specifically, Wozniak called Zuck a "real acute" businessman who mixes technical ability with the vision and corporate acumen of Steve Jobs...

Another anti-IBM footage unearthed, featuring Jobs cameo in ‘Ghostbusters’ spoof

Remember Apple's '1994' corporate video with Jobs impersonating Franklin Delano Roosevelt we told you about last week? Apparently, not everyone liked it so here's a different one from the depths of the web archives, also sporting brief Jobs cameo appearance.

Just like the '1994' clip, it's aimed squarely at Apple's arch-enemy in the early days, the almighty IBM. Dubbed 'Blue Busters' and dating back to 1984, this four-minute footage was shown at the same worldwide sales staff meeting in Hawaii in October 1984 like the '1994' clip...