Woz: iPod to Die Soon

In an surprisingly frank and fresh exclusive interview with the Daily Telegraph, Steve Wozniak has left us some new gems of wisdom regarding the past, present, and future of Apple. Among his thoughts on Apple’s fanboyism, stock overvaluation, upcoming products, and the iPhone limitations, the most surprising is his prediction that the iPod success will die soon, just like the Walkman and transistor radio did:

The iPod has sort of lived a long life at number one. Things like, that if you look back to transistor radios and Walkmans, they kind of die out after a while. It’s kind of like everyone has got one or two or three. You get to a point when they are on display everywhere, they get real cheap and they are not selling as much.

I have to agree with him that eventually, these wonderproducts die, although looking at the numbers, it seems that it still has a lot of life inside because the consumer electronics market that saw the Walkman and the transistors radio are not the same as today’s. But obviously, Apple sees the same thing and the iPhone and iPod touch are efforts to keep the momentum going.

He also had some words for the fanboys out there who never question Apple’s decision and defend its failures no matter what:

[Steve Jobs and I] don’t like the fact that it’s a bit of a religion. I would like to have the users influence the next generation. With a religion you’re not allowed to challenge anything. I want our customers to challenge us.

Amen. But maybe some customers are challenging Apple already in products like the iPhone which, without an SDK, saw a flourishing industry of not-official third-party applications that are still coming out to solve the mobile phone development’s limitations. Woz compares the iPhone SDK limitations to Google’s Android in the interview:

Consumers aren’t getting all they want when companies are very proprietary and lock their products down. I would like to write some more powerful apps than what you’re allowed.

Indeed, Señor Woz, indeed. Head to the Telegraph to check out the rest of this thoughts. [Daily Telegraph]