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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."
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.