The Guardian has run one of a seemingly endless string of Steve Wozniak articles, which you can find hurled across the internet, like so much toilet roll flung into a tree. This time, he’s moaning about Apple Watch, and specifically its shift into the jewellery market, where the unit you buy is as much about status as functionality.

You’d have to be naive to consider Apple wasn’t already somewhat in this space anyway. While I’ve long argued Apple kit is worth the outlay due to its broadly superior usability compared to rival products, there’s always been a hint of elitism about Apple. And purely within single Apple product lines, there’s clearly space for the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ — after all, there probably aren’t too many people buying the very cheapest iPhone or iPod because they really want that model. With Apple Watch bands, this is even more overt. On this concern, I somewhat agree with Woz, although Apple Watch remains only a small part of Apple’s business rather than something that drives the company.

The problem I have with the report is it highlighting two concerns that come up a lot in interviews with Woz, and then get widely reported as some kind of fact:

Well this isn’t the company that Apple was originally

Good. A stagnant company is one that fails. But also: what is the original Apple? Woz and Jobs in a garage, hacking away at the Apple Computer 1? The company that found a modicum of mainstream success in the Apple II? The company that created the Macintosh, but then found itself almost obliterated by the IBM juggernaut? The company that nonetheless instigated a desktop publishing revolution?

That only takes us through a small part of Apple’s history, but it showcases how the company has changed many times. And during the more recent Jobs/Cook run, we’ve seen shifts towards consumer computing, rethinking media industries, revamping mobile devices, and more. If we still had the company Apple was originally, would we have the iPhone?

or the company that really changed the world a lot

At which point did this stop? The Apple II? The Mac? The iPhone? The iPad? Where’s the cut-off point in Woz’s mind about Apple’s ability to be influential and change the way things are done?

I respect Woz and his various achievements, but it’s odd that so many column inches are reserved for the opinions of someone who has had almost nothing to do with Apple in three decades.