Edible Apple

One of the things you gotta love about Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, aside from his boyish goofiness and adoration for a good prank, is that he has no qualms about telling it like it is and trashing Apple when he thinks they’ve gone askew.

Recently, in an interview with TechCentral, Woz went so far as to call Apple arrogant with respect to its iPhone 5 design.

“Now why is Woz hating on the iPhone 5?”, you might be wondering. Could it be that he’s having a tough time navigating around with Apple’s homegrown Mapping application?

Not quite.

Apparently Woz is peeved that Apple chose to make the iPhone 5 screen longer and not wider. Even more infuriating to Woz is Apple’s assertion that this is an astute design choice, as evidenced by Apple’s iPhone 5 commercial dubbed “Thumbs” which touts how Apple’s take on the smartphone was sized to fit the average sweeping area of the human thumb.

Part of me wishes Apple had 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]…

…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…

…Not all people want the same thing. A lot of people really like big screens.

It’s a fair criticism. After all, some people do like larger screens. And though I love my iPhone, the overall larger display of various Samsung devices does look rather appealing at times. But calling Apple arrogant I think is a bit misguided. There’s nothing wrong with Apple effectively reaching a conclusion vis a vis the user experience and putting out the best product they see fit. Why would Apple release a device with a wider screen if they think it results in a subpar user experience?

Yes, a lot of people like really big screens but Apple has never been one to cater to the minority. What’s more, it’s absurd to blindly declare that bigger screens are innately bigger. Truth be told, and in spite of my Samsung screen envy, I’ve tried using larger-screened Android devices with one hand and the result is often comical. Taking a one handed picture with a wide-set 4.3 inch phone can potentially be a recipe for disaster.

So while yes, not all people want the same thing when it comes to smartphones, the overall success of the iPhone makes it hard to believe that Apple has made a wrong design choice and that it’s arrogant. Indeed, for a company that often doesn’t like to change things up, the larger iPhone 5 coupled with the impending release of the iPad Mini sort of shows that Apple is anything but arrogant.

Methodical. Careful. Sometimes slow to adapt. Sure, you can paint Apple with all of those brushes, but their ultimate goal is to create a product that users love and find easy to use.

A super-wide iPhone in that regard just doesn’t fit the bill.

You might also be interested in:

When Steve Wozniak put together a US Music Festival

Steve Wozniak, the Tetris Champion

via TechCentral