Bad apples – is any publicity good publicity?

I was always told to never burn your bridges when it comes to career moves. Always leave your previous employer with as much of a feel good factor as you can, as you never know when you will cross paths with those people again.

With this in mind, the latest outburst by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak on the iPhone and MacBook Air (www.techpartner.news/?105090) got me wondering what connection “Woz” still has with the vendor.

First of all, it’s worth looking at his latest comments. “I was really disappointed when the iPhone was introduced,” said Wozniak. “Half the phones in the AT&T store at the time were 3G phones. I was shocked because Apple is bringing the full Internet [to mobiles] – full web pages with pictures and everything – and it’s not 3G and I knew that would be a speed detriment.”
He even added that he prefers the Motorola Razr for calls and Internet access. Wozniak then went on to criticise the MacBook Air, which he felt had made too many hardware tradeoffs to achieve a thin form factor.

“I don’t think it’s going to be a hit. I’m trying to figure out a way to make the Air a part of my life because I’m a one-laptop-only person,” he said.

“I don’t feel it’s a benefit if you have to carry the Air plus a DVD player plus a couple of extra dongles to connect to Ethernet things and also maybe an extra hard disk to carry your music.”

This isn’t the first time Wozniak laid into his former employees, after previously stating he was unhappy when the firm moved to Intel processors. But he said that Apple chief executive Steve Jobs “very seldom” calls him up to complain about his stance.

“We’re really good friends – never argued over these things – but once in a while he will just have a comment, ‘thanks a lot’,”
added Wozniak.

This story fascinated me and I set about finding out more about Wozniak. I then spent hours researching his past and present career (I went straight to Wikipedia). What amazed me the most was that Wiki claims that Wozniak still remains an employee of Apple. He still receives a paycheque and is an Apple shareholder.

Now we all get bored of hearing vendor speak about how great their latest offering is, but Wozniak has surely overstepped the mark of offering a balanced opinion. What exactly does his paycheque cover? Is he bothered about the effect of his comments or is he too rich to care? Is this proof that any publicity is good publicity? I’m really not sure and I’m not sure Wozniak knows or cares either.