Woz Dumps on MacBook Air, iPhone, AppleTV

AcidAUS writes "Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak heaped less than lavish praise on the company's iPhone, MacBook Air and Apple TV products when visiting Sydney this morning. Wozniak said he was puzzled by the lack of 3G support on the iPhone and that he didn't believe the MacBook Air would be a hit."

Comments

3G

[dangerz]

While I definitely do miss the speed of 3G, all the other features of the iPhone made it worth it. I came from the Cingular 8525 and while it was an ok phone, all the apps on there seemed like they were made for a computer. Tiny buttons, slow response times and nothing worked well together.

The thing I like about the iPhone is while it does have a lot of apps, all of them were made for a phone. MMS is stupid not having, but I knew that when I purchased it. Hopefully it's just a firmware update.

Overall, it's a pretty good phone and I dont regret buying it.

No questions

[TheMeuge]

I do however question the release of the iPhone without g3 support.

I don't. The reason is so blindingly obvious, it takes a superb amount of fanboyism to ignore:

Apple released a non-3G iPhone, to ensure that everyone who buys the first iPhone for $500, will buy the iPhone3G for $500, a year later.

Re:No questions

[timster]

Because there is SO much free space inside the iPhone case for large extra chipsets. And AT&T's 3G network is well enough built out that the average user can expect 3G performance to be better than EDGE performance a significant majority of the time. And there are no independent tests confirming that 3G chipsets available in 2007 used much more battery power even when just making calls.

Not.

Re:No questions

[node 3]

There is probably an entirely different reason Apple "chose" not to include 3G. Yeah, and that reason is pretty obvious once you think about it. This was Apple's first phone. They basically started from scratch, and didn't know ahead of time what sort of choices would be better than others. By all accounts, the iPhone was barely ready for show at MWSF '07, and just barely ready for roll-out in June.

Apple felt it was better to get the parts they had working, working well, than it was to start adding whole new parts into the mix. While I would definitely like 3G, I'd rather have EDGE + the iPhone that's out now than 3G + delayed iPhone + lowered battery life + other aspects of the phone being less finished.

I also don't buy the "other 3G phones don't have battery problems" argument. The chips themselves don't lie, and they *do* require more power. You can't beat physics. What you *can* do is make the necessary concessions. Such as using less power on the rest of the phone, or using aggressive power management, or using a larger battery, or using EDGE chips most of the time and switching over the 3G on demand, etc. But in all of those cases, it would *absolutely and without question* diminish some other feature of the iPhone, making it larger, or later, or less powerful, or more laggy, etc. If the biggest complaint about the iPhone is that it uses EDGE instead of 3G, then given all the other great features of the phone, it's more than a fair trade, *especially* since a 3G iPhone is inevitable.

As for the battery being non-replaceable, the real question for me is, had the iPhone had a removable battery, would I have caved in and bought one by now? And the answer, for me, is a resounding 'no'. This means such an iPhone would have been larger or had a smaller capacity battery, and would have been structurally and aesthetically less solid. In other words, a whole lot of lose for absolutely no win.

re: Would you pay twice as much for better UI ?

[King_TJ]

I think your question really hits the nail on the head, actually. When people buy Apple products, they're almost *always* doing so specifically because they're willing to "pay more for a better UI". And yes, part of that inherently means "fewer features".

Did the iPod become a huge success because it had the "most features for the dollar"? Hardly! It didn't even have a lousy built-in FM radio tuner! The beauty of it, though, was the overall form factor and UI functionality. While China and Korea were cranking out cheap little generic MP3 players with tiny buttons and single line LCD displays, Apple came along with a player that was easy and actually *enjoyable* for people to manipulate. I remember when I first bought a 2nd. generation iPod, I'd hand it to reluctant people who said "I don't know how to use one of these things!" - and within seconds, they'd get a big grin on their face when they realized how that scroll-wheel let them move through the menus. The whole thing just had a "satisfying" feel to operating it, and even to simply holding it in your hand comfortably.

Mac OS X is much the same way. It's a visually satisfying OS, as well as one that most people find relatively "friendly" to use once they give it a chance. If your only (or main) concern is having the most possible options to tweak/modify, then OS X isn't for you. Many aspects of the UI are chosen for you by Apple's designers, and you'll have to buy 3rd. party tools (that often destabilize the system or fail when updates come along) just to force the changes. On the other hand, MOST of us just want an operating system that's stable, looks good out of the box, and does the things we need it to do. OS X seems to accomplish all of this quite well.

I see the iPhone as yet another device in this vein. Some phones really cram in too MANY features, and it just makes the menus hard to navigate. Most cellphone users can't even tell you what some of the options do, or at least how to get to them on their phones. The iPhone does a pretty darn impressive job of making it easy to access the things you really might want to use on your phone, while leaving out a lot of the confusion. (EG. If I want to call forward my number to another number, I don't have to to remember that my carrier uses * and some 2 digit code to turn forwarding on, and another such code to turn it back off. I simply tap the "Call forward" option on the iPhone menu and key in the destination number for it. I then slide the switch to either "On" or "Off" and it's done.) And obviously, the web browsing experience blows away most of the competition. It's the first of many "Smartphones" I've had where I can surf "normal" web sites and actually read the content properly.

Re:Hum

[smackt4rd]

I think they're just following the same old "ipod" strategy. (which has worked so far) They keep adding incremental upgrades to the device, and get to charge you $400 for each new one. Why not keep that up, if people keep falling for it?