Whether it was rocket launches, the reveal of the flashiest phones you’ve ever seen, or the debut of a smart refrigerator with fingerprint scanning, Dreame Next was full of surprises, but the most exciting for me was easily the appearance of Steve Wozniak. Turns out, you’re among the few people who love the iPhone Air.
Starting off with his thoughts on Apple’s latest phones, Wozniak mentioned that he also loved his iPhone 17 Pro Max, although he calls the orange model the Trump phone, given that it shares the build of the US president, but for him, as he waved the iPhone Air he pulled out of his jacket pocket towards the crowd, the incredibly thin device wins.
Because it “invokes an emotion” with its unique aesthetic that feels infused with human passion.
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For Wozniak, this human element is what matters most: “Human beings are more important than technology.”
And the only way for a company to focus on this human element above all else, in Wozniak’s opinion, is if engineers—the people who possess the knowledge and passion to create designs that people want to use and love—are leading the charge at the highest levels.
While he didn’t directly mention Apple’s current situation beyond the support of the iPhone Air, I couldn’t help but feel that his constant references to the importance of engineers in leadership positions were an endorsement of incoming Apple CEO John Ternus.
Ternus, a key figure in Apple hardware for the past two decades, including heading its hardware engineering division, could bring the engineer’s ability to “lead design with heart” that Wozniak praised.
“He has no heart”
Unsurprisingly, the Apple co-founder was less than enthusiastic about AI, calling his relationship with the technology “complicated.”
“Any time computing technology increases, it allows the human user to do more than before,” he said. “He can give me some good ideas, but I don’t like the mistakes he makes because it’s too easy to believe false things.”
AI speaks so confidently that sometimes its mistakes are easy to ignore, and it also lacks the human talent that only a truly emotional person can offer: “AI can do valuable things, but it has no heart.”
Wozniak admitted that AGI (artificial general intelligence that is as smart as a human) could theoretically have that heart and emotion, but as he said, “I don’t think we’ll reach AGI.”
He explained that when he returned to college to finally earn a degree after dropping out a decade earlier, we majored in psychology. He worked with people trying to model the human brain and saw how they struggled to understand even small sections of it. “Engineers discovered that the only way to build a human brain takes nine months,” a phrase that the presenters didn’t immediately register was a joke.
In case he’s wrong about AGI and technology overthrows us as the dominant force on the planet and turns us into pets, Wozniak also joked that he started feeding his dogs steaks: “That’s how I’d like to be treated,” he said.
The death of PCs? Not likely
Looking ahead, if it’s not AGI, Steve Wozniak admitted it’s impossible to be sure, but he hopes the next decade will have more of the same, but better.
That means better phones, better computers, better technology, but not one product cannibalizing another, dismissing the Dreame Next host’s musings that smartphones will eventually replace PCs, saying: “I really don’t think so.”
“Look at cars, once we reach a good level, it can stay the same for a long time,” he said. Wozniak added that phones and PCs have become stagnant in their respective niches, and he doesn’t expect one to start cannibalizing the other, especially since phones are improving, and so are PCs at an equal rate.
However, that doesn’t mean we should become complacent. “You have to believe that you can improve today’s technology,” that’s how Apple started and continues to grow, “Look at what you have today. How can you improve it? Improve it, improve it, keep taking steps towards the future great future.”
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