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Apple Co-founder Steve Wozniak Openly Lauds Rival Samsung

By Caroline Diana
Published on: 04:51 PST, Jun 11, 2016

This may come as a shock to Apple fans, but Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak openly lauded Samsung for its innovation.

Wozniak is particularly impressed with Samsung’s virtual reality (VR) gear, which he believes is otherworldly. Samsung’s Gear VR “takes you to other worlds,” Wozniak told Tech Republic.

“It’s so real, and it’s basically everywhere you look. That one makes me emotional. Virtual reality is going to have a big future. It could die like 3D TV. But there will be a lot of games possible and that’s enough to make the market work,” Wozniak said while accepting the Alltech Humanitarian Award at a recently held conference in the U.S.

South Korean tech giant Samsung has been setting the trend for VR-based headsets and intends to outperform the likes of Oculus VR and HTC Vive.

Currently, Samsung Gear VR is one of the best and affordable ways to the virtual reality world, as it costs just $100, according to Nashville Chatter Class.

“I hope Apple is working on a VR that’s advanced compared to the ones we’re seeing,” added Wozniak, who is a favorite among the geek community.

Surprisingly, Apple has been taking it slow in the virtual reality technology.

According to Trusted Reviews, TrendForce estimated that virtual reality will be $70 billion market by 2020.

Analyst Jason Tsai said, “These explosive growth projections do not sufficiently reflect just how hot the VR industry is right now. The figures do not include the value of non-commercial uses of VR technology. For example, the industry is currently pushing the development of free software and do-it-yourself apps. While these projects do not immediately generate revenue for developers, they have a vital role in the promotion of market growth and innovations.”

Despite the high demand for VR boom, Apple has been lying low.

“I wonder if it’s a priority for a company that seems more emotional about watches and cars currently. You know, real things for real people. I suspect Apple will wait till VR technology has been well developed by others before stepping in. Of course, the company could surprise us next week at its Worldwide Developers Conference, but I doubt it,” Wozniak told CNET.

Wozniak is convinced that artificial intelligence will be the future. However, he is not too happy about Apple’s digital assistant, Siri.

“Sometimes Siri doesn’t get the words right, and I’m pissed,” Wozniak said while noting that Google Now and other voice assistants aren’t perfect, either, reports CNET.

“It’s not like a perfect human yet, but I want to get there,” Wozniak said at a Salesforce TrailheaDX conference in San Francisco, according to CNET.

“It’s a friend, our best friend, we fall in love with it. We’re still a couple hundred years away from everything running on machines, but machines already ‘won the war against humans’ because a company will fire a human, but it won’t fire a machine,” Wozniak said.

In a recent interview with Mashable, Wozniak said that he watched three days of live basketball using the VR headset.

“VR feels very differently now because I actually participated in it maybe as much as twenty years ago, trying on headsets from the University of Colorado down at NASA. Now it’s just any movie you can imagine — any scene in a movie you want to be in you can be so much more in it. And live sports — I watched three days of live basketball just this last weekend and you can actually put the helmet on and you’re right there under the basket almost and they’re coming and shooting but it’s live. That was an experience and a half,” Wozniak said.

“But emotions, man — the feelings from the best things in your life that have taken you in a new direction even movies even comics. That’s what VR does because it is so real you live it,” Wozniak told Mashable.

[Photo by Jeff Chiu/AP Images]

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