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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."
You know you want to.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
I am an Apple user and thus somewhat bias. I do however question the release of the iPhone without g3 support. I also believe that it needs a removable battery so that I could keep a spare.
On another note no one can say that the iPhone did not change the face of the cell phone market. I can't say if the new Air will do the same thing for the notebook market or not.
Well, Steve is just stating what everyone else is thinking! Everyone who isn't completely in love with apple, that is. Although apple has great products, they're not for everyone, and because of that, they lack certain features.
... respectable ... is saying it!
... so if they're a little bigger (because they're not manufatured with VERY tight tolerances, like the ipod nano), then I'm okay with that.
For example, the macbook air isn't very good as a main computer, and the lack of 3G iphones has to do with battery life - Apple has chosen to offer certain features which are mutually exclusive with other features - I'm glad someone
I know a girl who has apple everything. She wouldn't buy a music player if it didn't come from apple - and she has 4 ipods, and 3 apple computers. She likes things to WORK, and she likes them to look beautiful. So, she ** IS ** apple's target market.
Me, on the other hand, I prefer other options - I LIKE figuring out how my gadgets work, and I like repairing them at home
All those comments could have come right from here. :)
Personally I think the Macbook Air may sell well, because Apple's proven they can get users to suffer through all kinds of hardware deficiencies to get their software.
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.
The greatest experience we can have is the mysterious.
- Albert Einstein
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.
Really?
FTA: Wozniak, who has moved on to new ventures since Apple but is still an employee and shareholder...
I would say that he is earning off of these products.
It's called the MacBook Pro. I'm sure he has a few. The Air isn't for him.
And of course everyone wants 3G on the iPhone. Judging from the sales, it's not a fatal flaw.
Woz also states in the same interview that he's tired of reporters taking his comments out of context and making him look like an Apple-hater.
Quote: "[Jobs] calls me and he says he doesn't like something that I was reputed to have said. But he gets it out of context. A reporter's seized on a comment and strung along with that. I'm very positive on Apple, but I'll also point out things that could be better, or aren't the way I'd like them to be."
I would say it's more newsworthy than Linus or RMS saying something, because everyone always knows what Linus thinks, and RMS never shuts up. It's been a while since I read a quotation from Woz.
When Google announced the availability of the Android SDK, Apple should have seen that as a shot across their bow. It's just not occurred to them that if Android really works out in the real world the way that their slimmed down OSX does, that they're going to run the serious risk of having to play catch up with Google.
Apple should have released an SDK for the iPod Touch that gives full access to the system on both the iPod Touch and iPhone when the iPhone is not on a cellular network. A certification process for the code that interacts with a cellular network is one thing, but all of this rumored crap about the restrictions should have been dispelled by Steve Jobs announcing it as a general SDK open to everyone.
All it's going to take to kick the iPhone squarely in the balls is for someone to make a very sleak Android-based phone that has no developer restrictions on it. People are going to write good software for Android, and then Apple is going to have to convince casual users why they should pay for a phone that doesn't have all of the cool features and add-ons that are free or cheap for Android.
The p-133's weren't first-gen by a long shot.
The 1st-gen Pentiums were P5 (Intel product 80501/ 80500) - 66 and 60 mhz (the 60mhz chips were those that couldn't pass QC at full speed). - .80 micron process. Your p5-133 is either a P54CS or (if its a lappy) a P55C. You skipped both the original P5 and the P54C.
Good thing too - the original P5 was expensive, and slowwwww compared to an AMD 486-120.
The MacBook Air needed to have a touch screen. Then I could finally use a laptop that's not a fucking giant block of electronics as a replacement for my clipboard.
They should call it the Breeze or something. And put a low power mode for writing notes. The battery needs to squeeze out 8 hours for the device. It can be slower, that doesn't matter, it just needs to be a replacement for a clipboard.
There needs to be a mode on it called "scribble" or something, where the screen fills with a blank, lined or graph paper-like background, colour selection bar at the top, maybe a clear-screen quick button, a snap-to function for making quick hand drawn graphs, and IM support so you can reply with handwritten IMs, send notes, etc. It makes IM more personalized, and reduces the easily intercept-able plain text messages.
Make a version that's reasonably cheaper, maybe a low-colour display, flash memory storage, slower processor... but again, it's designed for taking notes. Maybe some web surfing as well. The advantage needs to be long battery life to get through an entire day of work or school without having to recharge it or plug it in.
Now I've shared the angst I've had pent up over electronics for the past 5 years. Somebody do something with this. Otherwise I'm just going to make it myself.
or, to be clear: it spends more power, but during much less time, so the energy / byte ratio is lower than, for instance, EDGE. Most 3G phones I know don't load a page in the browser while you are reading another (the iPhone certainly don't), so, the battery would endure MORE if the iPhone was 3G.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
Although I saw several MacBook Air's at the local Apple store in my relatively (1M by the Census) small town, I also saw reports of it being intermittently being sold out in the larger markets. Hard not to call that a hit, unless they only built 5 of them.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
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.
The iPhone is only a success in markets where mobile phones are treated as single-function devices. In the US market, this is the case. In the rest of the world, it isn't. The iPhone is like OS X: It does 70% of what I want it to do, and it does it very well. Unlike OS X, I can't add the remaining 30%. In contrast, the iPod does 100% of what I want it to do - it plays music. As someone who owns two Mac laptops and an iPod, I am not interested in the iPhone until it is available in an unlocked form.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
My wife and I listened to his book (oddly named iWoz) while traveling in Alaska. He's brilliant, and so is Jobs. They're brilliant in different ways, though. Steve Jobs has an innate ability to know in advance what the consumer will like (and he's right most of the time, and wrong sometimes. See 1st generation Apple TV, the G3 Cube, etc.). Woz had (and presumably, still has) an innate ability to make it work with what he's got.
Which is why I understand Woz not seeing where the Air will fit in today's market. It's not quite a part of his skillset. He's still a genius.
-Rob
Biblical fiscal responsibility
Jobs does this so often there is a name for it. He knows that he has a fairly large fan base that will believe anything he says, even when it screws them over. Look at the fiasco with the AEBS and TM or the keyboard issues on the MBP that they have finally attempted to fix after nearly a year. It will be a bad day for Apple if people are ever logical about most anything they sell.