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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."
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
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
*Just look at the "Apple moving to Intel" story for proof of that.
A few vocal proponents does not mean all or even most x86 fans are clamoring for OS X and many of the ones who are just want it to see what all the hype is about.
$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.
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
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?
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
I hope you meant 'asperger' syndrome...
Really.
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.
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--
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 the 'tard who got his first mod points today modded down a post replying directly to part of TFA. Idiot. The point was to try and throw some bitter satire at an article that sounds like it's about someone who is...bitter. The fact that I have to explain that is, well, sad and makes me, well, bitter.
Friends help you move. Real friends help you move bodies.
Never forget: 2 + 2 = 5 for extremely large values of 2.
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?
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?
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
... 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
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...
What the fuck are you talking about?
The man crashed his ultralight and nearly died.. An experience like that tends to make you appreciate life a little more, and it reorients your priorities. I've never seen or heard anything about Woz getting 'screwed' by anyone at Apple, except possibly for the Atari incident at the top of that link.
Nope, I think Woz was doing what he always does, just being a nice guy and a thoughtful hacker.
I think you missed the point somehow. He was saying there were many non-Apple applications superior to Apple ones, while you seem to be looking to argue the opposite way.
I would add Motion to that pile. Not to mention Final Cut Pro.
D
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
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.
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?
My argument was that some of his "poor" friends not making enough from their music is not "about the worst thing in the world".
Go ahead, argue it.
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.
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.
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
After reading this whole thread, I've come to a startling conclusion:
You can't please everyone.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
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.
I think you've set a record for the most people confused in the smallest amount of text. Moron.
Were you born without a sense of humor, or was it surgically removed later?
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.
Apple can't make the world's worst software. The first time I wrote helloworld.c, it didn't even compile.
After all, I am strangely colored.
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'.
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.
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
People have conflicting needs.
:-(.
I've talked to people whose number one love in their lives is fooling around with their hardware, always getting the latest video card or swapping motherboards or whatever. Even a rabid Machead like me agrees that they'd be nuts to get a Mac.
I know a music composer who probably should have stuck with an ancient machine running MacOS 9. He really doesn't like learning MacOS X because it's new and modern and he doesn't want new and modern. Pity he had to return that creaky old machine to the guy who loaned it to him, so I had to set him up with something I had, which was more modern even though I personally considered it ancient.
Then there's someone like me who's highly loyal to the Mac because I love the designer look and feel, together with Apple's great software. Of course I salivate at the new Quad Processor G5 and only tiresome financial limitations prevent me from plunking down my money right this moment.
Just because my type of person puts thousands of dollars a year in Steve's pocket doesn't mean my type is right. Nor does it mean it's wrong. It's just the way I am, and the way these other people are.
So you're right, you can't please everyone.
D
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.
I hate people that don't use correct grammar or correctly spell their or there properly.
Don't forget they're.
1) Any DRM is bad DRM. If I don't have control over what I'm about to buy, then I'm not going to buy it. If I buy a CD, I have full control over the content. I can shift formats, rip apart the data, whatever. Buying a DRM encumbered lossy format, converting it to Red Book CDDA, and then ripping *that* to another lossy format is stupid. I can tell the difference between the original, the first gen lossy, and the second gen lossy, and I don't have a very good ear for it.
A company will get my business if they give me the product I want, and DRM is not involved with the product I want.
2) Apple gives you a way to remove for now. They could remove this in the future, as they have removed other features involved with ITMS already.
3) A very large percentage of people that *know* about this stuff are definitely *not* okay with it. The average and below don't know what's going on. They buy into the marketing without a clue of the shortcomings.
Anecdotally, out of the 35 or so friends that I spend time with, none of them has bought a CD from a company in the RIAA cartel in the last few years. None of them spends money on ITMS, and it's because of the DRM and the AAC format. Several have bought iPods, and more than that have bought other devices, like stuff from Neuros. To that end, I don't think I know anyone that uses ITMS. I know very few people that have bought *any* CDs. All the DRM, the high prices, and the reprehensible business practices have pushed all of them away. We now go to concerts and buy self-published CDs.
I've talked to people whose number one love in their lives is fooling around with their hardware, always getting the latest video card or swapping motherboards or whatever. Even a rabid Machead like me agrees that they'd be nuts to get a Mac.
;)
Actually, that used to be me. With my Beige G3, overclocked and modded monstrosity that it was.
Then I got a dual G5, and you know what? I don't miss the hardware tweaking one bit
For what I spent on the G5, it was roughly the equivalent of what I spent over 5 years hacking around on the Beige G3, CPU upgrades, peltier coolers, extra fans, case-hackery, video card after video card, new logic board when I blew the first one, new hard drives, new IDE card, new USB card, firewire card, etc.
I didn't want to spend that kind of money on a new G4, because Apple's main bus bandwidth problems were always a constraint until the G5. My G5 makes me happy. But then I found out they're going to x86. Sad. I'm planning on maybe putting together an intel box and trying to run a bootleg copy of OS X86. But frankly, I just don't want to spend the time. I wont replace the G5 until Apple forces me to by coming out with another great piece of software that they only make available on x86. You know damn well they're going to do it, even though they say they won't.
And as far as Apple Apps go, no, not all of them are the best-of-breed. I'm a firefox user myself. Safari's quirks and shortcomings outnumber Firefox's. (adblock, flashblock). But on just about every other software front, they make me happy. Oh- I guess I'm a bit steamed about the whole QuicktimePro thing. Really pisses me off when I think of it. I try not to think about it too much - and stick with VLC.app.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
The best way to solve the QuickTime Pro problem, of course, is to drink the Kool-Aid in full and buy Final Cut Studio.
:-).
It includes a no extra charge QuickTime pro license
However, even I was a little upset when I realized that during the time between when I purchased Tiger and Final Cut Pro 5.0 (and corresponding Final Cut Pro Studio) came out, I would have to settle for QuickTime Amateur unless I wanted to pay for a license that I would never use after I purchased the inevitable Final Cut upgrade. This was not a very nice thing for Apple to do, not after I've blown thousands of dollars on Apple software (let alone hardware!) over the years.
I like Safari because I can use emacs keystrokes on it. I also like OmniWeb (and even paid for it, what the heck, $29 isn't going to break me or anything) because their tab implementation, with its scrolling window and page thumbnails is really cool. When I try FireFox and Opera, I note nice features but I can't use emacs command keys and without that feature life is pretty bleak over here.
I think it will be a few years yet before we see X86-only software. But I'm sure there will be software that will run a lot better on the faster X86 systems, and I'm sure that will cause me to buy one. The processor doesn't bother me as long as the OS is great.
I've really been pleased with my PowerMac G5. It's the now-ancient 2ghz dual processor model. I was expecting that I'd replace it in a year or so when the 3.0ghz came out, but of course it never did. So it's had a pretty healthy service life. It's probably going to get replaced sometime next year with some kind of quad processor machine (whether I hold off for Intel or get the last of the PowerPCs is to be determined).
D
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.
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?