It seems Steve Wozniak is not just a big fan of Apple, but a big fan of Google, too. He has mentioned in the past that he likes that Android allows him to do more with his phone, and recently he said Google Now tends to be more accurate for him when asking it for directions, especially:
“Sometimes I say ‘Go to Joe’s Diner’ and [Siri] doesn’t know where Joe’s Diner is. And very often usually I find out that Android does.”
Wozniak believes that working together, instead of against each other, both companies could create better products, and a partnership between the two would benefit both: “I wish to God that Apple and Google were partners in the future.”
Wozniak thinks the partnership could especially benefit both when it comes to smartwatches and smart glasses, or other type of wearables, however he doesn’t seem very excited about the smartwatch form factor:
“For about three or four years I’ve been talking about organic LED displays that could be theoretically printed on plastic, wrapped and folded. It could be on the inside of your arm and then when you flip your arm up it could actually flip open into your own hand. I want a full smartphone-like capability on my wrist. The trouble is the more I think about it, I don’t want the small size.”
He also has some good things to say about Samsung, who says they could also cross-license technologies with Apple:
“I believe you should have a world where you’ve got to license something at a fair price. There are good things I see on Samsung phones that I wish were in my iPhone. I wish Apple would use them and could use them, and I don’t know if Samsung would stop us.”
“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. I do wish they were more compatible.”
Steve Wozniak doesn’t seem to be a fan of all the patent lawsuits in the tech industry either. As a technologist, he just wants the technologies in his phones to work well together, but because of all the fighting between tech companies, they all tend to close off from each other these days, and they aren’t very thrilled about working together anymore.
It used to be that even Google kept a lot of its important apps on Android only, but I think they realized that they would rather have their services and apps on all the main platforms, instead of keeping them as some sort of competitive advantage on the Android platform, which is growing anyway. As for Apple, I doubt we’ll see them push their services to other platforms, other than the web. So that future Wozniak is talking about, is probably not going to arrive anytime soon.