‘Worried’: Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak isn’t a fan of the Apple Watch

APPLE’s co-founder has hit out at the company, saying it sold its soul and strayed from its original objective.

APPLE co-founder Steve Wozniak has hit out at the company, saying it sold its soul.

In a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything), Wozniak, who is responsible for inventing the first ever Apple computer, claimed he “worried” the company has fallen victim to commercial opportunities by taking the tech business “into a jewellery market”.

In a pointed statement, he claimed the launch of the Apple watch in September 2014 strayed from the original goals of the company and focused on false appearances “where you’re going to buy a watch between $500 or $1100 based on how important you think you are as a person”.

“I had some other smart watches, and I got turned off … Basically about all you can do on it is talk and tap a little.”

While he claimed he still “loved” his watch, he was clearly concerned by the product and its overbearing costs.

“The only difference is the band in all those watches. Twenty watches from $500 to $1100. The band’s the only difference? Well, this isn’t the company that Apple was originally, or the company that really changed the world a lot.”

But, he said, “You’ve got to follow the paths of where the markets are.”

Apple Inc CEO Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak (left) met in high school and founded Apple in 1976.

Apple has remained tight-lipped about the popularity of its watch, refusing to disclose just how many units have been sold.

But according to Venture Beat, the company had raked in at least $1.68 billion in revenue for the product.

Wozniak, known to his fans as “The Woz”, hinted his frustration with the product might have developed due to the company’s changing landscape.

“The founding of Apple is often greatly misunderstood,” he wrote.

“I like clearing the air about those times. I like to talk about my ideas for entrepreneurs with humble starts, like we had. I fought being changed by Apple’s success. I never sought wealth or power, and in fact evaded it.”

The iPhone and Apple Watch.

But it’s not all doom and gloom.

“Wearables are becoming very attractive because of the less hassle to use them. I like picking up my watch, and asking it to send a quick text to my wife, or using it for other things without having to pull the phone out of my pocket,” he said.

“The Apple Watch does some amazing things with Apple Pay, boarding passes for aeroplanes, and all the Siri commands that work. I do wish the speaker were louder.

“Of course, every once in a while I’ll put my hand on a table in a restaurant, and pull my hand back, and it pulls back the fork with me, that attaches to the magnet of the watch.”

First world problems, eh?

Elsewhere, Wozniak approved of the “new Apple” but said he “dearly missed” his Apple co-founder and former high school friend Steve Jobs, who passed away in 2011 after an eight-year battle with pancreatic cancer.

Wozniak praised current Apple CEO Tim Cook for “continuing a strong tradition that Steve Jobs was known for of making good products that help people do things they want to do in their life”.

Wozniak, known for his somewhat odd and quirky personality and who once dated comedienne Kathy Griffin, said he was “more into products than socialising” and in an ironic twist, confirmed: “I do not carry around my phone answering every text message instantly. I am not one of those people.”

Other highlights included his thoughts on Siri (“the app that changed my life”), his interest in self-driving cars (“I’m so happy not using my hands or feet”) and his favourite up and coming gadgets (“the Oculus Rift, or any of the VR headsets”).

In January, Apple reported the largest quarterly profit of any public company in history, beating its own record for the first fiscal quarter of 2016 by $400 million to a total of $18.4 billion.

The company sold 74.8 million iPhones during the quarter.

View the full Reddit AMA with Steve Wozniak here.

Originally published as ‘Worried’: Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak isn’t a fan of the Apple Watch