By In an interview with South African website TechCentral Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has referred to the company he founded with Steve Jobs as being “arrogant” in the promotion of its latest phone’s larger screen. All earlier iPhone models featured a 3.5 inch screen, but the iPhone 5, which was launched last month, features a taller 4 inch screen.
Rather than extending the height and width of the screen, Apple made the iPhone screen taller and maintained the same width as earlier iPhones. In its current “Thumb” TV advert, Apple claims that this new screen size has been chosen to provide extra screen space while still allowing users to reach all of the content on the screen with one thumb.
Wozniak stated, “I think Apple tricked itself by saying: ‘Oh, you can reach everything with one thumb’. I don’t see anybody having trouble using the larger screen. But Apple said that as a defensive move because everyone else had larger screens.”
The Woz then went on to say that Apple was being arrogant in claiming that this was the motivation behind the screen size increase, rather than it being a response to competition from the likes of HTC and Samsung.
“Part of me wishes Apple has not been so arrogant and feeling like “We’re the only one with the right clue.” I wish they had made a wider version [of the iPhone 5].”
During the past few years, Steve Wozniak has famously been quite critical of the company he helped to create. Recently, he stated that the new Apple Maps app was “disappointing”. Earlier this summer he dismissed Apple’s voice recognition service, saying “A lot of people say Siri, I say poo-poo.” He also stated that he “hated” the recent Apple patent victory against Samsung in California:
“I don’t agree with it — very small things I don’t really call that innovative. I wish everybody would just agree to exchange all the patents and everybody can build the best forms they want to use everybody’s technologies.”
Steve Wozniak has a relatively positive view of Google Android, something which his former friend and colleague Steve Jobs detested. As well as owning an iPhone, Wozniak owns several Android devices and has appeared at Android product launches.
The iPhone 5 went on sale at the end of September and notched up more than 5 million sales during its launch weekend, a million more than the previous year’s iPhone 4S. Despite this, there have been numerous complaints regarding the new Maps app, LCD screen issues and problems with the anodized aluminium material used to construct the phone.
Apple replaced the stainless steel used on the iPhone 4 and 4S with the new anodized aluminium material. While this is much lighter it is also much more prone to damage, with many handsets being scratched and dented before they have even been purchased. Apple has no plans to change the production material in the near future, although there are some hints that the next iPhone may be made from carbon fibre. One alternative to the damage-prone aluminium would obviously be to buy an iPhone 5 coated in gold, which is a much more durable metal than aluminium – and more visually appealing too! The Gold iPhone 5 will be launching at Goldgenie very soon.
Simon writes for Best Mobile Contracts
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