Slashdot Mirror
Woz Says Big Software Doesn't Work
chrizbot writes "A friend of mine studying journalism at Google's alma mater interviewed Steve Wozniak of Apple Computer fame. He chimes in on open source, DRM, record companies and how software from big companies suck so bad (including Apple's!). The part my friend doesn't include is how he guessed a trick was performed and won a necklace from him!" From the article: "Sometimes the engineers are true artists and really care what they're doing, doing a really great job. Although, I don't know how much I can even say that because the big companies, Microsoft, Apple and AOL, they tend to turn out the crappiest products, you know, software-wise. The ones that have the most bugs, the most items that are supposedly in there but don't work. The most things that are left out because they aren't finished. The most things that are inconsistent with the way they did their last program. I get the worst, worst software almost always from Apple."
No wonder it's so damn smart!
Has it got a Master's? Or should we call it Doctor Google?
I get the worst, worst software almost always from Apple.
But I'm not bitter.
Oh, c'mon. Like this "woz" person has any clue how a computer works. I bet Apple wouldn't touch him with a ten-foot pole...
Be a real patriot: Question authority. Think for yourself. Formulate your own conclusions.
I get the worst, worst software almost always from Apple.
;-)
This Woz guy is obviously a MS$ fanboy troll!
"reality has a well-known liberal bias" - Steven Colbert
Burn Him Burn Him !
Guns are for wimps... Use a crossbow.. this way you can pin them to their chair when you go postal.
Perhaps he's right, he does get the worst software from Apple... (ok, there's two ways I can go with this) 1. But at least Apple patches them or 2. That's because Apple doesn't like him very much Take your pick ;)
-Daniel
Well at least he's honest about it. But don't be shocked if a lot of people refuse to purchase anything from your company because of it.
Is he wanting to "jab" Apple into being "better" at what they do due to an underlying love? What are his motives? Does he cite specific reasonings for his rants?
Perhaps there is no ulterior motive and he is just reporting his experience...
Why does everyone have to have motives and such?
Finkployd
"Sometimes the engineers are true artists and really care what they're doing, doing a really great job. Although, I don't know how much I can even say that because the big companies, Microsoft, Apple and AOL, they tend to turn out the crappiest products, you know, software-wise. The ones that have the most bugs, the most items that are supposedly in there but don't work. "
It's a symptom of two things, from the standpoint of poor quality software produced by people who are capable of much better:
1) Nothing personal at stake for the people actually producing the software. It's a lot different when your livelihood directly and visibly depends on the quality of the product your employer produces. Whether it's because it's my own company, or I get fat stock options, I'll work harder when I'm trying to reach the cheese.
2) Diluted responsibility for the product. 2,000 people working on a product means that in all likelihood, my individual contreibution will go unnoticed, and therefore I have less incentive to perform well. Also, even if my contribution is perfect, it won't have that much effect on a huge project.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Clearly, he doesn't get any software from any of the other companies named. :P
Join the Empire! http://www.empirereborn.net/
When the 6502 was a hot processor, Woz was a pretty fair hack electrical engineer. Running the video off the CPU was a cute trick. But he hasn't had anything relevant to say about computers in a very long, long time.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
You have to understand Woz is from a different era and genre of computing. He has been out of the business since the days when Assembly was king and you had to hack programs and optimize them very, very hard to get them to work at all.
Most folks I know from that era feel the same way about today's large programs whether they are from Apple or not.
Come on, give the old guy a break there was a hell of a lot more to the article than that one quote.
Anyone else RTFA?
ACK
I get the worst, worst software almost always from Apple.
He must not buy anything from Microsoft or Adobe then.
My view has always been: don't let developers (including me) use the latest & greatest technology. Force the build once a week to be run on an "old" PIII @ 800 Mhz w. 128MB RAM. If it's un-usable for quick testing, then go back and fix it.
(by the way, I know I'm being generous in those specs, I personally test all my software on a dog-slow Pentium II @ 233Mhz w. 64M RAM running various "older" OS versions (Win2000, Linux 2.2!, etc.)
Then, when you roll it out to your users and their running the latest 3GHz, 4GB RAM machine, they are happy.
Linux & GNU seem to be the latest (last five+ years) culprits in the bloatware regime. I remember actually compiling the full kernel on an 8MB machine (yes, it took four hours)...now you can't do in under 32MB
(although I guess that's more GCC bloat than anything)
Things are just too big and bloated now.
Give me an old "Classic" Unix with no X, just command line.
Let me pipe my various home-built tools together to create a final simple working FAST result.
TDz.
Big company software "sucks" as he puts it because to exist in the mass market like MS, Apple, AOL, etc you have to create software that has the potential to be all things to all people. Or at least get as close to that as possible. This increases complexity, complexity increases the number of flaws.
Kind of a "Duh" statement. It's simply not economical though for everyone to sit around custom building and tweaking their software.
So your friend figured out that Woz can't take six separate, solid rings, and force them to interlock - that one of the rings must have a break in it. Wow. Your friend is really amazing, dude. I never would have guessed that one of the oldest tricks in the book was actually unknown to someone. Next thing you know your friend will be figuring how to walk on broken glass, lie on a bed of nails, or get CmdrTaco's girlfriend to go out on a date with CowboyNeal.
Friends help you move. Real friends help you move bodies.
Never forget: 2 + 2 = 5 for extremely large values of 2.
break with the "tradition" of their insolance and:
... just the agregate personal fortunes of the top swindlers who perpetrated this biggest scam in the history of the world.)
1) offer customers a sincere apology for their negligence
(no court seems able to get a comprehensive conviction
against any of them anyway, so they should't have to worry
about liability), at the same time as
2) distribute a genuinely effective set of patches to those
customers as they wait for the company to develop a new
product that actually does what it says it should
3) distribute that genuinely secure product to customers FOR
FREE, with full on-site support to smooth the transition
4) offer a discount on upcoming products to extend good will,
5) and eat the crow they so richly deserve.
I figure all in all it will only cost them about a trillion bucks. (Yeah
But why should the software industry be held to a different standard? Other industries end up eating losses all the time.
Because if all those middle/upper-level managers in other sectors that wanted to cash in on the "replace workers with machines" craze of the 90's would propose such an ultimatum to their companies' stockholders, then they would have to admit that their blind greed backfired all over their damned faces!
Because this is slashdot where everything is a conspiracy. You should get modded -1 for stupid question.
Feel free to mod me "-1 - Angry Jerk".
Wearing an orange Apple polo, dark dress slacks and a stainless steel, analog-and-digital Bell & Ross wristwatch, Wozniak greeted me at the door. After talking to Wozniak for five minutes, it was obvious there is weight to his reputation: he is affable, candid and sharp. The remarks that follow are excerpts from our discussion.
Orange polo and dark dress slacks. Check.
Multi-thousand dollar watch. Well, maybe some other time.
MORTAR COMBAT!
Yesterday there was an article about 10 things Google trys to do to attract good programmers.
In my experience the lack, or opposite of those 10 things can often demotivate otherwise conscientious, talented programmers from doing the best job possible.
Big companies often do that, while doing other things that interfere with software quality.
It's obvious to me now why he was in charge of hardware and not software at Apple. I'm sure (like many slashdotters) he's happy using pine for email and lynx for web browsing. After all, they don't have any bugs, right?
rm -rf
Please do *not* say "well, woz has assburger's syndrome".
just don't. That's an excuse, not a diagnosis for 99% of the people who claim to "have it".
Really. Just stop it.
Does he honestly believe that commercial software has more missing features than open source software (in general?) I installed Ubuntu recently, and out of about 4-5 packages I tried to use, I got exactly zero working correctly. Some looked like they worked, but actually didn't. Some just froze when they started up. Some returned obscure error messages I have no clue how to debug (partly because they're written in programmer-ese, but mostly because they're completely undocumented in the manual or the web. Hey, if your program can possibly return error -34525, MAKE SURE YOU DOCUMENT IT!) (*)
I'm sorry, I can't buy any of this crap. Apple and Microsoft might not be kings of software development, but I can tell you that all the software I've downloaded to try on my Mac, EVER (even including the stuff in Fink repositories) worked the first time I ran the software. It may not have done exactly what I wanted, and it may not have had the best GUI in the world, but it worked. That's far more than I can say for the majority of open source software I've tried.
I will say this, though. Apple's QA has gone WAAAY down hill. I'm not even positive they test software at all before shoving it out the door now. Safari just stole focus from this text field because I had the audacity to load a new tab. DVD Player steals focus twice every time you insert a DVD. Finder crashes or freezes at least once a day. And the GUI for Spotlight is almost comically bad, both in the menu bar and in Finder windows. My theory? Those programs are developed mostly by workers at NeXT who didn't have much experience with Classic MacOS. But to have the OS go from zero focus steals (in OS 9.2.2) to stealing focus every goddamned five minutes (OS X), that's just sad. Even Microsoft has gotten to the point where 90% of focus stealing bugs are solved.
(*) Go ahead, call me a moron for not being able to get it to work. I know you want to.
Comment of the year
...but mobs are hard to organize.
Both are generalizations that don't always fit the models that development teams are cast into.
Some software behemoths can make some pretty damn good software or at least have a pretty responsive team for fixing bugs that can (and will always) arise. But some open source software I've worked with has completely alienated me because the organization of it was so abyssmal that nothing ever really got done to crawl out of alpha 0.0.0.halfapercent.9 despite all the phenomenal talent pooled between the developers.
Stereotypes are dangerous so pick your poison, should you decide to follow that route.
Perfecting Discordia
www.stevenvansickle.com
Points I came away with:
-Apple is no longer what they were when they started out, and now their proprietary software sucks, the 3rd party Apple MAC software is great, and the Apple Macintosh software is great
-Proprietary software traps you
-Open source is good for companies that would like it, but Apple software is still better
-DRM is a necessary evil in the digital downloading world, since people share files and hurt the artists
-CDs and Itunes should be cheaper, artists should be able to set their own price
-Software is huge, complex, over-hyped and under-supported and it is only going to get worse
-Colleges should train people to design software with a humanist point of view
After reading this article, you could argue that the computer industry is quite depressing if you start to think about all the different things he has mentioned. If you want to build a better computer/OS/hardware/software, you should not put large corporations in charge of development, leave it up to those with a more humanist point of view. The only problem is, if by humanist you are saying it is for the greater good or some moral good, it is inherently against the profit model and the actions of greedy corporations who are always trying to increase profits or meet projected profit expectations and deadlines.
The Open Source community is the closest thing you can get to a 'humanist' point of view while computing. Since the profit motivation is taken out of the equation, everyone can benefit.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Why does slashdot give the software-whingers so much air time? It gets really quite boring after a while to hear for the 10,000th time the badness of the software from Apple/MS/you-name-it/but-not-open-source.
Bell & Ross Fusion. What's that annoying commercial (for a different watchmaker) say? That "your watch tells more about you than anything else you wear"? How about that if you paid $2000 for a watch, you paid about $1990 more than necessary!?
MORTAR COMBAT!
I think some of the very worst software comes from hardware manufacturers. HP printers for instance come with the most appallingly crappy software, a lot of it just badly replicating things that the OS (Windows or Mac) does anyway.
Then I brought a Nikon camera recently, and the stupid software they shipped with it managed to screw up both a Mac and a Windows machine.
Yeah, and I like to play nethhack also
rogue & nethack & dungeon for me. None of that bloatware Doom or Unreal stuff, right?
With large companies you get big office politics. That is a big detrement. The engineer or programmer can't always do what they know is best or right. They follow direction from managers that many times don't agree and who are more interested in building their own empires than doing right by the customers.
Evolution or ID?
Why should I care about Woz and his "opinions"?
/. about what we think is good or what sucks in software. I think we should listen to Woz for pretty close to the same reason I hope the software industry listens to us.
a) Because he's a long-time industry insider who knows what is possible with software.
b) Because he's an end-user and knows what he'd like to see in software.
c) But why Woz and not someone else? Well, we do listen to those other guys too. You, me and a bunch of other people rant on a pretty regulare basis here on
TW
Those who can do. Those who can't sit on the sidelines and kvetch.
I want a pony!
A SLUTTY pony.
The part my friend doesn't include is how he guessed a trick was performed and won a necklace from him!
Pulling up your shirt is a pretty easy trick...
Fuck hayrides.
I couldn't give you an example. It happens just all the time. Over and over and over.
In other words, I, uh, don't really have one. But the Apple of today sucks, yo! *Returns to vigorously typing e-mails on his Lisa*
It sounds like constructive criticism to me. He uses Mac only. So obviously it doesn't suck too badly. He doesn't point out any specifics about what sucks, but he lingers on UI design, which has become much less consistent with OS X. First aqua, then brushed metal, then Garageband pops up with some wood grain thing. Now there's a whole new 'Pro' look going into things like Aperture. It's like the Themes from OS 8.5, but now they are app specific. It's a common gripe.
Worlds worst software, and yet Apple software (OS X) is the one piece that x86 fanboys clamor for.*
*Just look at the "Apple moving to Intel" story for proof of that.
I'd like to nominate this phenomenon the "Death Star Syndrome," or DSS.
So, I know that everyone gripes about Internet Explorer and Microsoft Office, but in general, everyone I know that uses iTunes, iPhoto, and all the other Apple applications are really happy with them. Being a long time linux user, I haven't had a chance to use these apps... but... what are the complaints about them? I read the scathing Aperture, but apart from that people seem content.
What are the issues I don't know about?
sig.
$2000?! You could buy a pretty good laptop for that! I guess we see where Woz's priorities are these days. Apparently it's very important that he really know what the correct time is!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Why have some major software players gone to crap? Because they have to appeal to the lowest common denominator in order to sell in the kind of numbers it takes today to get software published and noticed. That and the fact that Joe wants one software package to do everything
Granted these moves are often made in the guise of software integration but the fact is that the more gizmos you pile on the more issues you're going to have. At one point most geeks were happy about software that did one thing well, now Joe comes in and he wants one package that does everything including wipes.
Look at the hardware market too; HP was a Godsend when they weren't trying to put out 85 different products that did everything. Now we get lousy equipment such as "all in one" devices. Sure, they have more function but the problems are out of hand.
I guess the question is are we ready for mammoth apps and devices that do everything or do we need to cool our heels and get what we have today working right first then tackle the issues of more functions in a tighter package?
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
This pretty much works for anything. Just figure out who are the Zealots for something and those are the people to watch. You cannot beat passion with money.
Gui's have are now like fashion. You have to change them so they look "new" and not dated. wood grain???? Yes I would like to see more thought to UI and less to eye candy. The problem is even in OSS eye candy is fun to work on and is easy to show off. Ease of use is a lot harder to show.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Preach it brother!
If it's dead, you killed it.
I told my managers about that exhaust port being a vulerability. My group did extensive simulations showing that a small, one-man fighter had a 0.0016% chance of getting close enough to launch a radiation missle down the port, triggering a chain reaction in the main reactors. When I threated to go to the GAO, they took the whole team off the project and put us on designing improved Bantha saddles. When I tried to tell my story to "Sixty Parsecs" Lord Vader himself saw to it that I was transferred to the cloud mines of Bespin.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Did you have an actual argument or are you content with lashing out at one of the few computer programmer legends who actually has a heart? Didn't think so either. Crawl back under your rock, troll.
because no one goes off of their sheer will to do something... they have to have something in return now of days to do something at all. when was the last time u did something for no reason that actually took work to do? for example... would you go out and write a 10 page essay just for the fun of it... if you do ur f-ed up
(yes i know i suck at spelling fell free to correct my grammar and/or spellin i dont care, im still not going to change
QT 7 on Windows: There is no way to make it ignore the proxy you set for Windows. QT 6.x has a "Streaming Proxy" panel in which you could just uncheck all the boxes and be done with it.
You can tell this guy has "lost touch" when he starts recommending you use OS 9 over OS X; I'm glad those days are over personally, I kind of like being able to fully multitask.
Best. Webhost. Ever. Dreamhost.
why do I make so much money on it? Why does it work for my grandmother?
Faggot en flambe? Et tu? Goodbye.
-34525 is the number of milliseconds you were using the program when the error occurred. Geeze, I thought EVERYONE knew this. But, for those knew to these kinds of things, here goes:
34525/1000 = 34.525 seconds. So, approximately 34 and a half seconds before deciding to use this program, there was a problem. You lament this, but predictive software like what you have is a GODSEND - trust me. You probably had a chunk of that wonderful singularity thing on your desk. But no . . . NO . . . you had to dismiss this out of hand.
You'll never get the best software from a company who's business model is to cater to the largest userbase possible. The options they include in a software package will never be the best, merely good enough for the masses and at a price the masses can afford.
It's kinda like expecting the very best food from somewhere like McDonalds. That'll never happen. Instead you have to go to the little corner bestro to get really good food.
I have to disagree. Every writer, painter, musician, etc, not to mention all the FSF programmers, etc. seem to put quite a bit of work into something that, at best, has the potential to bring them wealth. Or, for an example closer to home, you're wasting your time posting on slashdot without hope of recompence.
Boys from the City. Not yet caught by the Whirlwind of Progress. Feed soda pop to the thirsty pigs.
He is right, the giant software companies pump out inferiour stuff considering the resources available.
One of the worst offenders is IBM when they try to write stuff.
Ever try to work with MQ Series? Visual Age? (I could go on 4ever)
That is why I applaud IBM for supporting Eclipse! They may fund it a bunch, but it is so much better than any of the products I see from them.
It is ironic that even when a company fully funds an open product, it is way better than what is produced when all the cash and control is kept inside. I think IBM is really starting to get it.
You posted 66 comments to slashdot, what did you get in return for that? Often people just like to express their opinions.
Finkployd
Woz Still Loyal Apple Zealot
From the article: "...I love every part of the Apple world. The whole world of Apple works together."
Trust me. This is an inactive account. Regardless of what the
The old man is getting senille
Big Software? = More Lines of Code? = More Bugs?
Big Software? = More Requirements? = More Requirements You Can't Get To?
Scanner software for each of the handful of flatbeds I've had has been atrocious. Really, really bad.
Cell phone interfaces -- hoo boy.
(Woz may or may not be bitter. His Apple cracks mostly just read like he's trying to innoculate himself against charges of bias.)
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
That was the most painful thing I've tried to read for a long time. Typos and minor errors I'll put up with (even though /. apparently has editors). But this reads like it was written by a retard.
I get the worst, worst sentences always from journalism students.
Although, I don't know how much I can even say that because the big writers, journalists, authors and such, they tend to turn out the crappiest sentences, you know, readable-wise.
EDMC - the company that runs the Art Institutes - uses nothing but HP workstations. Kayaks when I was there - IT has had NO END OF PROBLEMS with HP kit, and have repeatedly submitted POs to Corporate requesting better, more reliable hardware that Does What They Need for much less cost, but EDMC Uses HP, Period. They're immune to logic in this respect.
Why? I used to know exactly, but to cut the hemming and hawing down - either one of the EDMC Corporate Suits has a friend or relative at HP, or an HP employee is on the EDMC board.
WOZ dos some great stuff. But that is just a silly statement.
I use software from Microsoft and Macromedia all the time and it works great. Outside of Outlook which doesn't seem to deal well with IMAP servers, My MS software contrary to urban myth now runs very stable.
Same for my Macromedia tools.
I dont have a Mac and I am not a big fan of Apple's closed system business model, but OSX from all I know is an amazing peice of software and their video tools are grear.
On the otherhand I also work with Linux and other open source software. Most of the Sever side stuff is 1st rate, but the desktop still sucks compared to Windows, especially for stability.
This sounds to me like WOZ saying whats in his heart as rebel, not what is reality.
haha 66 comments posted in the time that i am waiting for the next thing to break @ work
(yes i know i suck at spelling fell free to correct my grammar and/or spellin i dont care, im still not going to change
... I still use Classic MacOS apps for productivity - Photoshop 5.5, Illustrator 9, Office 98. They do what I need, and just as importantly, after Classic is loaded (and before Adobe gave the ghost of a shit about optimizing for OS X, cold start - classic launch + app launch), the apps launch a hell of a lot faster than their modern, "featureful" counterparts, and they're a hell of a lot more responsive, too.
:(
Is it Adobe sucking? I don't think so. ALL OS X apps are like this. Except video, which is the single biggest improvement in OS X.
For day to day use, OS X is still loads slower than 9.2.2... and I remember some people bitching about how much slower 9.2.2 was compared to 7.6.1.
The features I want, use, and need were all on the market six or seven years ago. Unfortunately, SPEED was ONE OF THEM.
So yeah, it ain't just UNIX that's Succumbed To Bloat - OS X is by far the worst offender. Full install of everything I needed on my old powerbook (OS 9.2.2 and all the apps I used) was ~800 megs and could be stripped down to 250-300 if I Had To. A fully loaded and Useable OS X install - which includes that Classic environment, as it's the only way to actually get anything done half hte time - is somewhere around 20-30 gigs. 40 if Final Cut Pro goes on the box.
bloat--
Assburger.
Say it out loud.
You'll feel better.
Asperger my ass.
Uhh Woz, you're sure you're not bitter? I know you're worth lots of money, and are kind of pissed about Be getting raped by apple. Are you sure your' not bitter?
That's a pretty narrow viewpoint. I know somebody who wrote a 50,000 word novel last month for NaNoWriMo. I don't think he's got a vision of publishing it, but he just wanted to write it to see if he could.
People climb mountains and build airplanes for the sheer joy of it, not because they think they're going to get rich doing it.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
HERATIC
Because you think he's affiliated with a greek goddess?
because no one goes off of their sheer will to do something... they have to have something in return now of days to do something at all. when was the last time u did something for no reason that actually took work to do? for example... would you go out and write a 10 page essay just for the fun of it... if you do ur f-ed up
Rather like your shift key, apparently. Of course, wanting to write a 10-page essay "for no reason" requires the ability to think, to write, and to look beyond the superficiality you have mistaken for reality.
call it a hunch, I just dont think The Woz see's many Real Poor People at the country club.
Which country club would you be referring to?
Would that be the one where he teaches computing to underprivileged children, and provides them with free laptops?
..when the author misspells "Britney Spears", I mean REALLY. :)
IBM is not only supporting Eclipse, IBM created Eclipse and gave it away as an open-source project after releasing version 1.0.
Today all the developer tools created by IBM are based on Eclipse and they are top-knotch products, too bad they do not work on OS X. Visual Age is a product that was discontinued over four years ago. Today, Rational Application Developer for WebSphere Software is hands-down the best Java IDE out there, period.
Back in Woz days, I could have become a millionaire if I had received a penny for every time I criticized IBM. Remember the PS/2 with microchannel? Today however, IBM produces very good software. Just look at their new WebSphere Process Server. It is an astounding product.
Java would be dead without IBMs unconditional support and great products.
If your not getting software from big companies, then what software is he talking about?
Open source software? I mean, if he thinks things are left out of big company software, has he actually used open source software? Software developed by a bunch of independent people in a community environment isn't all that great. I find them to be adequate replacements of expensive proprietary software, but there is ALWAYS something lacking, some feature not yet implemented, or some functionatlity that doesn't quite work right, or just novel approaches to a solution that doesn't always seem well thought out. There is nothing wrong with Open source software, just that there isn't a more streamlined and obvious goal, it is perpetually developed on and so I find them to be in perpetual beta states. Open source software also suffers from the, "If I don't like it, I will write my own variant", so one product is split into multiple varients with difference in opinion of how things should be done. You can't solidify and industry when it is constantly evolveing apart from each other. If he doesn't like software from big companies where a team of 100 are working to the SAME goal, how can he like open source software where thousands are adding to it without direction?
What is left then? Shareware products or retail products by an individual or small company? While I will agree that software written by smaller teams of people tend to be more focused, this focus could have detrimental effects on the final product. Too often software by small companies focus on a few great features, but the other features, those taken for granted are lacking in skill or direction. Software from small companies do a few things very well, but generally lack in areas simply because they don't have enough manpower to consolidate the entire application into one great product. The reason why few shareware or small company software products seldom make a big impact in the industry simply is because of the fact they do a few things well, but are generally not great products in themselves. Generally these companies are absorbed by bigger companies, eventually, I have found few people want to struggle to work with a team of 10 people producing an underdog application when they are tossed millions to integrate their few good features into a larger retail product.
As for his dismissing Apple's products, from ALL of the big company software products out their, Apple is consistently good. There is a focus on consistency between product lines, and Apple has always focused on ease of use and streamlined operation. Sure, there are always a number of issues I have to scratch my head over and wonder why Apple either ignored some obvious solution, or is still offering a buggy feature that hasn't been fixed in 2 or 3 versions, but in general, from iTunes to OSX, I prever to use Apple products over Microsoft of Linux. When it comes to hardware, I think Apple needs to refocus on what PC users want so they can gain more marketshare in computer hardware, but from a software standpoing, Apple is rock solid.
But I also won't dismiss Microsoft's products either. Security issues asside, MS still creates software where features are always immediately available, they have perfected the task orientated methdology of software, when you perform an operation, the tools and UI widgets are immediately available streamlined for that operation. Windows Vista will introduce a new level of task based software interation that is unsurpassed by any other OS, which is why Windows consistenly remains the number one OS. If Windows wasn't making it braindead to use a PC, consumers would have revolted ages ago.
So, what has Woz done for us lately? Other then bitch about every software product and company out there, is he gearing up to offer us some new innovative application that is great? Or is he just worried that the industry is staring to forget about him and he needed to say something controversial comment to remain in the headlines. If big software doesn't work, then why is this industry so strong?
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
If you're insulated with a steady paycheck, bennies up the wazoo, and you're insulated from the top mgt by several layers of other mgt, and they're insulated from you, is that the recipe for bad software & bad stuff in general?
ho ho!
Your opinion was fresh and relavent fifteen years ago!
Apple people are different from me! YARR YARR YAR
I would wager he sees usabilty issue, load issues, and has a good idea of what software should be doing that you do not.
The kind of stuff where once pointed it out, seems incredible obvious and will bug you everytime you use the software.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
M0D PARENT POST ^UP^
... but he's still a git. ;-)
Which doesn't mean I don't want a powerbook. Because I do. Oh so very much.
Eviscerati.Org: All Hail the Eviscerati
And then we have Aperture.
These two are enough to get started?
How big is big? How much software do you suppose is in a commercial airliner? How about the F22? (I think the answer is order 100k for flight control on 777, and 1m for F22, but that's based on vague recollections. I do know that it's bigger than a breadbox in both cases.)
There are two core problems here:
1. We rarely have time to do it right, even when we know how
2. We don't emphasize correctness in our development tools or methods or in our business practices.
Personally I'm totally frustrated by the attitude of "it doesn't have to work", both from software developers and from software consumers.
dave
As the price of computing power and system memory have fallen over the years - it only makes sense to put these increased resources to work. The trick is to use these resources intelligently - and to effectively manage the complexity. It seems like a lot of ppl (especially old-school nerds) like to blame the growth of software size & complexity - but that's oversimplifing things b/c that growth is inevitable and necessary as we expect more functionality. How people manage this growing complexity is what makes the difference between good and shitty s/w. The main goals are the following:
... don't let it out until you've really banged away on it
1) manage s/w complexity (good s/w design)
* if you fail to do this, any large s/w system will buckle under its own weight
2) TEST the damn s/w
3) manage UI complexity
* provide access to many features without overwhelming the user
So if you are mad at some shitty s/w : don't blame its size, blame the shitty complexity management (and inadequate testing) that produced the digital lemon you are using. People _can_ make large, complex, yet highly stable and successful software systems - there are many examples to prove this point.
Anyway I always 3 Woz - even if he's somewhat irrelevant to computing these days.
-vk
Or you give up some idea and like vultures, there's a group of architects or managers wanting to take your idea and make it there's. They know the rigid hierachy of management forces one to cabinbalize others.
All in the quest for "quality". riiight...
The majority of Mac programmers are arrogant. Just go to #macdev on irc and you'll see what I mean. And the moderators are the worst.
I want to buy Woz a lap dance at a strip club. He is one of the coolest people who was ever involved in technology. He is the one most responsible for the change in the IT environment from stuffed shirts to free thinkers.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Explain Why. Bet you can't.
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
Man, hadn't thought of that, but it's scarily true. My dad's just going to walk through the steps in the manual, installing whatever software came with it. Even if he had an iPhoto, even if that smooth little Mac automatically booted iPhoto and offered to download images when he plugged in the cable, he'd still doggedly try to follow directions and use the one described in the manual.
Another lovely aspect is the high chance that, when you call HP to say "My scanner is incredibly dusty inside right out of the box," they will charmingly imply that because you haven't installed the included software they can't say what the problem is. So now you're on a tech support call installing crap software you have no intention of using, just to get them to admit it's a quality control problem. Because, partly, the half-written software forces them, in turn, to be rigid about what they can support.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
One, customers like lot's of features. If they didn't, complex feature bloated software wouldn't sell and we'd all have simpler software.
Two, programmers/architects protecting their job niche. If you are good at understanding complex software, you will get promoted into a more important job. The last thing you will do is then simplify the software and nullify your advantage over your coworkers. It's a big game of chicken. Go ahead, attend a product design meeting and watch the top dogs try to out do each other in making the discussion so complex the others can't follow. Last man standing wins.
Three, it's anti-competitive. This is related to two. It's to a company's advantage if their software is so complex and feature ridden that their competitors cannot even hope to duplicate it's function. For example, if the windows desktop is so complex that opensource has major problems duplicating its functionality in Linux, do you think Microsoft is going to simplify its desktop?
This post is a deliberate distortion by exclusion. Flame bait.
From the article:
"
Is it difficult having started this phenomenon of a company any maybe not agreeing with some of its decisions?
Oh no, I agree with it so much. There's just a few areas that are my own values cause me to be a perfectionist, but I do not go criticizing Apple very much at all. I mean, no, I love every part of the Apple world. You can look with your eyes and just see that it always has - every version of Macintosh, including the PowerBooks - the most beautiful product quality and they generally tend to lead the others in terms of qualities you like -- thinness, size of screen, pixels on the screen. The whole world of Apple works together.
"
Or, for an example closer to home, you're wasting your time posting on slashdot without hope of recompence.
...
What?!? You mean we don't get paid for this? Dang
How can a post be modded "overrated" or "underrated" when it hasn't been rated yet?
Those underprivledged children with the free laptops must be the ones making the music that we are pirating. My mistake.
Why stick up for big business?
Individuals and small companies turn out really crappy software products, too.
I have a real dilemma with software these days. When I purchase software, whether shareware or commerical, I am more and more getting nervous by the fact that the software may not exist in the future. I have purchased many pieces of software that are now obsolete due to companies being purchased, people no longer willing to keep up their software, or just don't work. What I find is most stable is Microsoft Office. I know I will get flamed hard for this, but I have word docs that are over 10 years old and they still work. I have files from some programs that I cant even remember what their names are anymore, it has been that long since they went obsolete. On the same token, there is some great open source freeware that has been highly developed and matured over time and it has that same stability. I just wish there was more of this. I even have hardware that is obsolete, not because it is broken, but because no one will make software or drivers for new o/s'. Very frustrating! So I dont know what is better, the big companies are guilty on many fronts, they purchase the small companies and then make the software die. The flip side, some small time developer gets a "real" job and next thing you know, it is gone as well. What to do...
So what? How is this relevant to anything?
steampunk web design
Now I agree that a widespread, production use OS is the wrong place to be experimenting with things. (That correct place is in experimental window managers, which are optional on unix systems. Really good ideas will get adopted; bad ones will sink silently.) But you have to have change eventually.
The only constant is change.
you should read everything on the internet as if it had "but I'm probably talking out of my ass" appended to it.
But at least Steve's fighting for perfection...
You keep on using that word. I do not believe it means what you think it means.
"perfection", to Steve, does not mean software that works perfectly and is easy to use and consistent. "perfection", to Steve, probably means a great deal of things, boiling down to what serves his ego best at the moment. "perfection", to Steve, seems to mean fast and flashy, not reliable and logical.
So if you define "perfection" that way, you may be right, but that's not how most people understand the word, so substitute "what strokes Steve's ego". Then your sentence reads:
But at least Steve's fighting for what strokes Steve's ego...
Hmmm, the image word is "godhead"; funny, that.
That's a really cool link, despite that dubious domain name.
Interestingly, every Mac user I know who's seen Amarok on my FreeBSD desktop wants it. It's funny how insignificant a built-in lyrics browser, Wikipedia tab, Last.fm integration, and album cover manager seem until you have them. There's no way I'd switch to something as relatively featureless (as a music player, not as a web store frontend - iTunes has that one nailed).
iTunes is the best if you can't run Amarok. If you can, there's no comparison.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Assigning error numbers is a much more corporate thing (so that the messages can be translated, and because of "coding standards", and for listing them in the documentation). OSS rarely if ever uses error numbers. Error numbers are also the cause of the funny Windows "Error: no error detected" popup (caused by passing 0 to the lookup-the-error-message routine).
A more typical problem with OSS errors is that they will report something like "/etc/foobaz.zoo : no such file or directory" and you have no idea how to create this file or what to put in it, or whether there is some other switch or file that will make it not require this file. This is due to the programmer never testing the program other than on their own system where they already have it working. Or they will report "missing curly brace" with no other information such as the line and file that was in.
Getting this wrong kind of hurts the authenticity of your statements.
Mod parent -1 fuckwad.
The gambit then is to wait for someone (or if you're inclined, yourself), to fix it.
While I use and apprciate Open Source, I can hardly point to it as a panacea for all that ails the Software industry.
How one can go about making wild claims about large companies producing worthless stuff while Open Source and small companies producing good stuff is completely beyond me. Whatever this guy has been smoking... pass it on!
My biggest beef with OS X software ( aside from the Finder, which just needs a *complete* re-write ) is the recent lack of UI consistency. Try this : launch Safari, Mail, and iTunes ( most recent versions, in OS X 10.4 ). Check out the look of the windows... are any of them the same? Not really, they're all slightly different-looking... and iTunes looks like no other OS X app ever !
The difference between brushed metal and standard windows was annoying and unnecessary enough, but what is the rationalization for those three Apple-authored applications having such different looks ? Who needs 4 different styles of window dressing on a single machine? They're making Windows look like the platform with UI consistency, WTF is going on at Apple with these differing looks for different apps ?
Believe it or not I use all those apps regularly and the inconsistency does not bother me all that much but then again I like the complete absence of an every-body-must-be-the-same, 'lemming mentality' this inconsistency brings with it. For all it's faults the OS.X graphical UI is still infinitely superior to Windows which it self is full of suboptimally implemented applications (Try looking at some of the sytem Administrative tools that ship with Windows 2003 Server just for example. I partickularly hate the 'IIS Manager' and the 'Computer Management' tools). The example on arstechnica where they cycled between the different looks for Finder was nice, they did have a point and it left me thoroughly confused when I tried it. However, how many users out there are flipping between Finder looks every 2 seconds? Or, more realistically, every two or three days? Pick a look and stick with it, having a choice is not necessarily a failing. I will however agree with the fact that Finder needs a rewrite simply because it has ergonimics shortcomings in all of its incarnations.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
if bugginess were the measure of corporate size, then Newtek must be almost as big as Microsoft.
I get the worst, worst software almost always from Apple
he's obviously never had to deal with windows spyware/adware/crudware.. those aren't written by big companies, and their 'engineers' love what they're doing...
The reason girls and Windows users don't understand UNIX is because all the documentation is in Man files.
Again, I think IBM is moving in the right direction, but, to defend most of the software I have seen from IBM would be stretching reality a bit.
You conveniently leave out the fact that the majority of IBM software still is not up to snuff. You didn't mention MQ series, the majority of the Rational products around here are NOT stable, and are not intuitive and are missing functionality(like Rose not being able to reverse engineer Java 1.5 on our AIX or Windows platform). Even though Lotus Notes has come a long way, it is still a bit kludgy.
Oh, I didn't mention DB2(UDB), what kind of product makes you write your Stored Proceedures in C and compile them??? And it is a differn't codebase on each platform.
Again, I love the direction IBM is moving, but, I do not love the majority of software they have produced.
Yes, you are right, they are a huge force behind Java.
The one real compliment I would make to IBM was the work on OS2, it was good for its day.
Even the much criticized Wikipedia gets this right.
John C. Dvorak is not August Dvorak who is not Antonín Leopold Dvoák.
I think you've set a record for the most people confused in the smallest amount of text. Moron.
Yeah their products suck, but they know how to sell them. People will buy and drink old motor oil if you make it look healthy and useful and call it something completely different. Marketing convinces people they need products, and in this case, people are being convinced they need expensive bullshit. But that's capitalism for ya; nobody wants to own a bag of dog poo, but if you take that same bag of poo, slap a $2,000 dollar price tag on it and get some paid advertising that guarentees people will see it everywhere they go, everybody will assume it's worth what theyre told it is. Simply by owning the dog of poo, people will think they have raised their social status, improved their health, fixed their relationships, and found meaning in their life. And before you know it everybody will want one.
;-)
Linux is free and worth every dime, and just so happens to do all of the above
The worst, worst software comes from sourceforge.net. :-)
For the impatient, the Google guys are on Stanford's list. They're listed last in the "Business Leaders" category, the only ones out of alphabetic order. Guess which Slashdot anger magnet's CEO comes first alphabetically?
well, I said this opinion before, but I see no trouble in repeating it, the answer to your problem isn't using software from big or small companies, open source or closed source. The real answer is to use standards, and mainly standard data format.
Data are the facts that you want to record/save as is and which you can't easily reproduce, like an article you wrote (which you can't remember for ever) or a painting that you drew.
So as I said before, we really need portable data format, than portable processing interfaces (I think ultimately a program without the data, is just a data processing interface).
MS Office or Anonymous-Organization Office, it would not really mater.
You know, for someone who has admitted you don't know what you're talking about, you sure like to make yourself look like an idiot.
If you don't know what you're talking about (which you've already admitted), why do you continue to comment?
Repairing the permissions on your OSX drive using Disk Utility never hurts. This should be done about once a month, and before and after all system updates. If problems persist, try creating a new user and see if that solves it. If so, move your settings over to the new account and start using that one. For major OS upgrades (10.3.x -> 10.4.x, etc.), always choose the Archive and Install update option, and never a simple update. You might just try an Archive and Install installation of your current OS version again, and see if that solves the problem. If not, you can do a clean install and manually update the critical settings you want from your old install.
"I like systems, their application excepted", George Sand (French)
Even the grandparent mentioned this about 1), but it's worth reiterating since you appear to have ignored it. AAC is a standard codec. Part of the MPEG-4 suite of codecs. The first 'A' stands for 'Advanced', not for 'Apple'.
*waves hands* There! That's an AC modding-up for parent! Well deserved, too!
But during the times in my life when it was part of my job to use a Mac, I never regarded it as less than a pleasure. Even when it bombs, it tries to be funny about it. Macs are computers with character.
Okay now i am not a fanboy for anybody. I just have a different view. Okay lets look at the software. Is windows bloated yes! Is apple bloated yes! is linux bloated No but it is once you download everything you need to make it have everything the competition has. Is Billyboy evil? No. Does Billy Have a monopoly? According to the government yes! according to me not really. Have you ever had an idea? I have, and it seems to me that if i sold lets say a widget. and another company produces a widget that does the same thing. now i add a piece of red tape to my widget. how does that mean that i have a monopoly? That is like saying cause i own campbells soup that i can't produce bowls and include it with my soup! in example internet explorer and windows! Has billy done wrong by being competitive and winning. Okay some say that creating an unfair market is wrong! well i disagree. its like sony comming to market with the ps1 i never heard anybody claiming unfair there when they spent more money and lost more money to create an unfair market. But microsoft does that and everybody throws a fit? is that fair. In my opinion no! hold everybody to the same standard. When apple was about to fold who came to there rescue that is right the evil billy boy. Now i know it is not written anywhere but it is kinda funny how ms office and internet explorer found its way on to a competing os? and it was right before they would have died that it just so happens these appeared! Now don't get me wrong i am just looking at this from a business mans view. I think we are all being a little hard on bill cause he has more money then the competition. Remember he was once a software developer who was poor. Do i think any of the oses that are currently out there are better than the others? I preferably use windows cause it is the one that 90% of the world uses! And most software is developed for this platform. The other reason is i like to play games. And mac and linux are just not gamer friendly. That is my look on the situation.
Hmmm, runs kinda slow on my x86-64 O/C'd Venice but I think that's just 'cause it's new n' raw. It's in the wild and runs most everywhere in x86 land, although the install can be tricky.
... Standards and Practices !
This guy is just wrong about a lot of stuff. Right place, right time, you know. Don't forget he is responsible for some of the original apple OS code, so not much slack cut for that eh'.
PenGun
Do What Now ???
I agree. I've found THE worst to be scanner software, like the crap that comes with Canon's CanoScan LiDe scanners. Ugh. Luckily Mac OS X has printer drivers for nearly every popular printer built in so that's not a problem. Also iPhoto/Aperture do a good job of importing photos, plus it just mounts the memory card on my desktop.
-tom
It's called KDE and I'm using it now. In fact, it's the only desktop environment I would say is perfect. XFCE is close (and is ideal for older hardware), but lacks many features. My reasoning is simply that I consider a desktop environment broken if the windows don't snap together in a certain way. So, I completely agree with you. If KDE had an XML config file like you suggest, I could post it and you'd understand exactly how I think windows are supposed to behave.
I've seen a lot of things, but I've never been a witness.
Im sure somewhere you had a point. But it has long since departed.
You debating and logic skills are showing the thought processes of a 10-year old. Im not kidding, if this is who you are, and you are over the age of 20, you should find some form of professional help. Trust me, your life will get a lot worse before it gets better.
The only question now is, will you be the one who stops the slide, or will it be someone else who does. And just a piece of advice, if you leave it to someone else to stop your slide, you will not be in a very good place in your life.
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
"English" should be capitalized.
If your grammar was ever off she would proclaim that the "grammar mobile" would be coming to your house and that the grammar police would be notified.
If your grammar were ever off, you mean. Subjunctive mood, please.
I hated her back then, but have since realized how much I hate people that don't use correct grammar or correctly spell their or there properly.
Not me. I hate people who presume to lecture me on grammar and yet make mistake after mistake themselves.
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
What's wrong with DRM, as long as the company itself gives you a way to remove it almost instantly and seamlessly? You should be burning a Red Book CD with any new tracks you purchase anyway... and then it's just a matter of re-ripping it to MP3 format and deleting the DRM-encumbered AAC files.
If that's as bad as it gets, then whatever, dude, I'm fine with it, and so is just about everyone else.
I hate people that don't use correct grammar or correctly spell their or there properly.
Don't forget they're.
One of many fallen apples... One of the better user interface gurus...
http://www.asktog.com/
Don't take the sharp bits off the saw because sharp bits are not friendly to humans--let the saw have sharp bits because it's in the nature of the tool to work that way.
That's really a caricature of his position. He's not saying make the tools less useful, but make them more intuitive and make it difficult to do the wrong thing and cut yourself. Simplify them and don't have so many buttons on your saw all with cryptic icons jammed next to each other (remind you of any software?) that the user isn't sure what each one does and could press something dangerous by accident. Then when you have a new feature like 'loosen blade' add another button, and hope the user doesn't try it when in use.
I think the latter approach might be more interesting. We've tried to use the GUI to "intuitively" show the user what to do, but frankly this only worked when you had like a dozen tool icons to pick from. Software now has so many features, so many file formats, so many protocols and stuff, that GUIs are just really complex. So what if there's a button for everything? Most people can't find the buttons because there so many layers to the GUI. People thought it would be easy because you could just "press a button", whereas a lot of the power is in scripting and modeling stuff.
The problem lies with the assumption that all those features need to be exposed to the user all at once. There are established methods for cutting down on the features exposed, but the most important one is to go for 'convention over configuration' (a RoR phrase, but applicable here) - don't make the user choose unless they want to, and when they do want to tweak make it obvious where they would go. There are sensible defaults for most things, but they're not often chosen, or even thought about.
The aim of the interface should be to simplify the tasks to the point where the user can just start their main task and then add other stuff later if they need to. Now I'm not very keen on the MS 'Task based' approach, and Apple, frankly, has lost its way by abandoning consistency, but this stuff isn't rocket science. Your software should teach people to think about and organise information. It should guide them to do the right things and not the wrong things. It should make decisions for them and then let them easily modify those defaults if they need to.
I don't feel we're stuck with bazillions of Word documents because it made the computer easy to use and natural. We're stuck with them because MS wanted to lock its customers into one solution, and left it with a borked binary format to ensure that. Word is an example of almost everything that's wrong with GUI design in software today - the cryptic buttons, ad-hoc styling, overloaded menu bar, inconsistent behaviour when printing, attempts to auto-style which get in the way, 'handy-hints'.
A counterpoint to that approach from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry -
"A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."
Apple like Google think they live in the "Valley" were most of us live in the rest of the world. I don't want to pay to test out the software, I want it to work the way it is supposed too. iMac is really a joke. Tell me Job's can you spell your name on your compute in Japanese charecters? Can you read Japanese? Well either can I and although I live in Japan I can't read or write in the language. You are really screwing up, by limiting choices.
and they generally tend to lead the others in terms of qualities you like -- thinness, size of screen, pixels on the screen. The whole world of Apple works together.
Thinness? Sony. Size of screen? Apple's just somewhere random in the pack. Pixels on the screen? Apple's been trailing there for ever. It's not until this year that the 17" Powerbook had more pixels than my old 14" Thinkpad, and they're still behind the leaders.
Mac OS 9 was the result of the original Macintosh metaphors evolving to the point of absurdity. Mac OS X brought the Macintosh into the 21st century, but in the process, abandoned one of the core principles the original Macintosh design: instead of teaching people about computers, why not teach computers about people? We relate to OS X because we're leveraging our existing computer knowledge, and it works much better than the alternatives. It is a great OS, but it isn't inherently user-oriented and easy to understand like the Lisa and Macintosh were in 1984. In Apple's defense, I'm not even sure this is possible. The user-centric model that Woz adores doesn't fit in today's networked, multi-user, multi-threaded environment. We expect a lot more from our computers today vs. 1984 and it is difficult to reconcile these expectations with simplicity and elegance. And user interface can always be better, because one size never really fits all.
While I agree with you on the other shit (brushed metal, woodgrain, etc) - the "Pro" interface is the best thing since ... errr ... something else that was really good. It's not just a "look" - it is very functional and space-saving. I wish the whole of MacOS X was like the "Pro" interface.
... and then they built the supercollider.
That's just plain dirty. That file-path is ridiculously long to get to something so useful. If you use Quicksilver from blacktree software, it allows you to set a keyboard shortcut to bring up the keyboard viewer which comes in very handy. or you can make sure you have a back up of the original Key Caps.app which I also have on disk somewhere.
Well aren't you the smug intellectual victor here. I think you're displaying the debating skills of a 17-year-old. Seriously, the other guy might look like an idiot, but you look like a total asshole. And by pointing this out, I'm displaying the skills of, what, a 22-year-old? Depressing.
If other reasons we do lack, we swear no one will die when we attack
/* unassuming office of Steve Wozniak, whom many consider the father of the personal computer.*/
There have been so many people called the "father of the personal computer", that I'd hate to be seen with the mother
ba-da-bump
A Haiku: my language choices/assembler pascal lisp c/old school programmer
Well I'm sorry you missed a logical "leap" there (more like a small hop), and even more sorry that you mouthed off about my "debating and logic skills", all infered from 3 or 4 clear sentences. Reread your message, and figure out exactly which family member/girl-who-wouldnt-go-to-prom/coworker/boss it is your are flaming here. Then take your problem up with them, instead of scooping up innocent bystanders. I wouldn't normal give such sweeping life-advice as I'm hardly in a position to, but you lowered the bar enough to let that happen.
I said "He is an idiot for thinking that music being stolen from (some musicians) is about the worst thing that could happen. Especially since the (some musicians) he is talking about are probably sitting at the country club with him."
You said "Is that the country club where he gives free laptops to kids?"
Now THAT doesn't really make sense. What point were you trying to make?
My comment can be summed up as: "These musicians he is talking about are probably already rich, does he really think that if they lose some money from privacy it's the WORST THING IN THE WORLD?"
So when you mentioned the poor kids getting free laptops, you were just being a character witness for the Woz (but that doesn't really have any bearing on anything I said. Very strange method for debating, guy.) But I (jokingly/sarcastically) assumed you're comment actually had some MEANING in context of "a response to my claims about the (some musicians)", and therefore meant "Those (some musicians) he is talking about are poor kids who need free laptops!" It was kind of a joke. Of course thats not what you meant, but it was hard to figure out what you meant.
So do better next time, and stop airing your dirty laundry on slashdot.
Why stick up for big business?