Wozniak not sold on the top end Apple Watch, it’s entry level products for him

24 Mar 2015

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak doesn’t see the appeal in paying thousands of dollars extra for a special band on the Apple Watch. “For an engineer like me I don’t live in that world, that’s not my world.”

Wozniak, who is still an ‘honorary’ employee at Apple, claims the real appeal is the technology, so he’ll probably plump for the Apple Watch Sport.

Speaking to the Australian Financial Review, Wozniak said: “I’m just not going to buy it for jewellery’s sake until I know it’s something I’m going to want around me and on me and use every single day continually as a permanent part of my life,” he said. “Then maybe I’d consider looking into getting the nicer jewellery version.”

Apparently he had tried smartwatches before, buying the Samsung Galaxy Gear before getting bored after the novelty wore off.

He does seem excited about the Apple Watch launch, though, seeing great potential in app use, stating Apple Pay on his iPhone is great and could well be improved by having it on your wrist.

What really appeals to Wozniak, by the looks of it, is where car technology is going. In raving about his Tesla Model S P85D, calling it one of the “finest pieces of technology he has ever owned”, he feels Apple are well placed to enter the market.

“I don’t know if Apple’s doing that, or if they’re just working on their CarPlay apps for the dashboard of your car, but it seems like they might be hiring a lot of people who could really build a vehicle,” he said.

Indeed the ‘smartcar’ space is fascinating at the moment. The CarPlay apps, which Wozniak references, relate to the competitive ‘dashboard’ space that has cropped up – with Apple, Google and Alibaba all targeting the customised dashboard realm in the short term.

Creating entire smart cars from scratch, which both Google and Apple appear ot be working on, seems a bit more long term, but still something Wozniak feels should be explored.

“There are an awful lot of companies right now who are playing with electric cars and there’s a lot more playing with self-driving cars, this is the future and it might be huge. There are so many openings here and it is perfect territory for a company like Apple.”

Steve Wozniak image, via Shutterstock

Gordon Hunt was a journalist with Silicon Republic

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