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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."
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
...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
OK so I'll take the bait and feed the troll. Woz has probably forgotten more in the past week than we collectively will learn in the next year about computers and computing. Never underestimate any person that has a root knowledge about how something works. While others may say, "but he hasn't been working with the tools.... or doesn't understand the current state of things...". This doesn't mean the man doesn't understand FAR more about how to get a certain task accomplished. I try not and underestimate, or discount people that don't have the same skill set as me, and you would do well not to either.
I couldn't fail to disagree with you any less.
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?