There’s little to fear that Apple’s cool quotient could ever rise so high as to tip the company over the precipice to become uncool, or so Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak believes. The Woz made the comments during a PR tour of Australia in response to questions from a local journalist who wanted to know if Apple could become a victim of its own success.
Steve Wozniak
Many people have suggested this as a possibility, especially in the wake of Apple’s explosive growth with the iPhone and iPad. The company’s rivals have even based advertising campaigns around this theme. For instance, Samsung had its Apple Fanboy commercials and a new campaign suggesting iPhone users are sheep, while Motorola had a commercial targeting Apple drones (ironically borrowing Apple’s 1984 themes to do so).
The idea is that so many people have bought (or might buy) into Apple as a “cool” alternative that the company becomes “uncool” by definition. This is what Samsung, Motorola, and others are hoping to both foment and capitalize on, while others wonder if it will happen (or has happened).
“Apple a victim of its own success? You could have asked that at any point along the way,” the Woz said after a speaking event in Perth, according to News.com.au. “Of course there’s always a chance - and there’s also a chance that it will become twice as successful because of its success.”
He added, “I’ve never seen the Apple brand tarnished in all the time, even when the company was doing poorly. That’s what’s holding it up - it’s like a savings account. So I don’t think that question can ever say, ‘Oh yeah, we’re just going to get so used to it because everybody has Apple’. No, because it’s so good.”
Mr. Wozniak is precisely correct. We’ve heard for years from any number of sources—most of them fans of competing technologies, platforms, and companies—who have suggested that variations on the theme that Apple will become too successful for its own image, but it hasn’t happened yet.
The Woz was also asked about Windows, and said, “I’m sorry, but the Windows PCs were not that good. I used them.
I did not like their operating system on computers at all.”
According to another story, multi-millionaire and tech icon Steve Wozniak also confessed to not having broadband at his Los Gatos, CA home. According to him, a confluence of events centered around the reality that broadband is a township-granted monopoly in Los Gatos, and he’s simply unable to get broadband physically to his house.
The News.com.au coverage of these comments included a local Down Under political issue involving the building of a nation-wide wireless network. If you’re interested in the subject, check out the full story.