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Wozniak Praises 'Beautiful' Windows Phone

judgecorp writes "Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has praised the user interface of Microsoft's Windows Phone, saying that aspects of its user interface are more 'beautiful' than comparable sides to the iPhone. The comments, in a New Domain, follow on from a comment by Forrester boss George Colony who blogged that Apple would decline in the post-Jobs era. Both pieces have kicked off the kind of online argument you would expect."

19 of 362 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Windows Phone 7 by RyuuzakiTetsuya · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I played with a Lumia 900. It's well thought out but execution is lacking. The thing wouldn't get on the in store AT&T wifi. So I go to toggle it off and see what LTE is all about and the soft toggle for wifi on/off gets stuck in the middle. Err. What? It's a UI element! Really?

    Windows phone 7 is full of interesting and good ideas with poor execution and little polish.

    --
    Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
  2. Re:Windows Phone 7 by cptdondo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    OK, the hyper-coordination between articles praising the WinPhone and gushing first posts is getting annoying.... How about a 15 minute rule between article and first post? Or maybe restrict first post to accounts that have been around for more than 15 minutes?

  3. And.....? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So what if Woz praised something a competitor produced? He's entitled to his own opinion, negative or positive, and it says nothing about the state of Apple. Is Apple going to decline without Jobs? Who know, but Woz having an opinion is hardly a sign one way or the other. The only thing it does is dispell any notion that he's an arrogant prat who couldn't possible even deign to glance at a competitor's product without vomiting.

    Maybe this sort of thing gets to me too much, but I'm really fed up of this "you must be 100% for whichever brand-tribe you join!" guff. If he liked bits of another product then so what, that's competition for you.

    1. Re:And.....? by squiggleslash · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Well, I'm curious to know Woz's opinion on things. Woz may be associated with Apple, but he's a smart geek who's been in computing since the beginning, and he's not a fanboi of any particular technology despite his Apple connections.

      Would you have written something similar, or considered it non-newsworthy, if the subject was Dave Haynie, Richard Stallman, Chuck Peddle, or James Gosling?

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
    2. Re:And.....? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      he's not a fanboi of any particular technology despite his Apple connections.

      Which I think is something which appearss to be missing in large chunks of the general population these days (at least, the population who actually care about technology). If you take a glance down the comments sections of many sites it's a perpetual argument-to-the-death for their own personal preference. I even know people who are like that in person when it comes to tech, but why? Why are people so obsessed with insisting that what they have is the absolute best ever and don't you dare disagree with me? At which point did people stop being consumers and start being believers?

      Would you have written something similar, or considered it non-newsworthy, if the subject was Dave Haynie, Richard Stallman, Chuck Peddle, or James Gosling?

      That depends on the context. Stallman has heavily criticised Apple for their ethics, which is something I'd be interested in hearing about. Would I think it's shocking and newsworthy if Stallman picked up an iPhone and said "You know, I really like the aluminium body they give these things"? No.

      If Wozniak thinks the Microsoft phone is beautiful then fine. If someone wants to report "comments from a guy who knows about these things on #upcomingtech" then fine. But trying to tie that in to an article about someone claiming that Apple is in decline as if the two are somehow linked and therefore Steve must be about to jump ship? Come on.

  4. Its not surprising that Wozniak stuck to tech by Chrisq · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Its not surprising that Wozniak stuck to tech rather than going into management. He gives his honest opinion, saying what he believes to be true. There is no place for this sort of thing in the boardroom.

    1. Re:Its not surprising that Wozniak stuck to tech by crazyjj · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's sad that Wozniak was always hindered by his inability to be a bullshit artist. It's just not in his nature to kiss ass or blow smoke. You ask his opinion and he gives it, without any regard as to whether or not it's what you want to hear.

      Unfortunately this quality, which should be considered a virtue, is usually considered a handicap in the corporate world.

      --
      What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
  5. no surprise by smash · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Wozniak is a nerd's nerd. He isn't the general public, and what woz thinks is awesome is not likely to be what Joe average wants to use. That is not meant to be an insult by the way, the man is a genius. But he's a technical genius and not a genius with regards to what people want (that was Jobs).

    I'd say that getting a glowing review by wozniak is just as likely to be the kiss of death as it is to be the harbinger of iphone doom...

    --
    I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
  6. Since 1984... by sycodon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    George Colony who blogged that Apple would decline in the post-Jobs era.

    Since day one of the Macintosh, or you might say day one of the IBM PC, people have been predicting the demise of Apple. With every new model and every new OS, legions of entrenched industry analysts stood up and said with certainty..."whoa, this may be the end of Apple".

    I guess if they just keep saying that, one day it will be true and they can pat themselves on the back for being so prescient.

    --
    When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
  7. Re:Windows Phone 7 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Well, to be more fair, he almost certainly has a shitload more posts than that going back for quite a bit longer, just spread between a few dozen accounts.

  8. That's one of the things I like about Woz by Lucas123 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    He's not an Apple fanboy. He just likes good technology regardless of who makes it.

    --
    The mill's closed. There's no more work. We're destitute. I've got no option but to sell you all for scientific experiments.

  9. Re:Windows Phone 7 by CowTipperGore · · Score: 5, Insightful

    TechCar is the latest iteration of a large group of astroturfing accounts. There's a bunch of high UID accounts with similar style names (two random words smashed together) that shill pro-Microsoft and anti-Google positions. Unsurprisingly, he was born yesterday to post in Bonch's story claiming Google management knew about the wifi harvesting. He shows up to defend a well-established anti-Google (and pro-Apple) shill and has since posted a series of anti-Linux, anti-Google, and pro-Microsoft comments.

    Assuming he follows the same pattern as the rest, mods will catch on in a week or two and his karma will plummet. The account will get put to sleep and a new one will be created.

  10. Re:Windows Phone 7 by h4rr4r · · Score: 4, Insightful

    HTTP is not a replacement for every other protocol. I am sick of the brain dead thinking it is. We have other protocols for a reason.

    As a simple example, http sure is not enough for an ftp client, ssh client, etc, etc, etc. 7.5 of course will let you do all these things.

  11. Re:Windows Phone 7 by Dishevel · · Score: 4, Insightful

    And you can't blame the phone OS if the store can't make their WiFi and phones work together

    Umm.
    Yes. You can. In almost all cases. If the store Wifi is working and everyone else can get on and that phone can not, What exactly is to blame?

    --
    Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
  12. Re:Windows Phone 7 by Mister+Whirly · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There's a reason, Woz has been an engineer and not a designer at Apple.

    Yeah - he actually invented things instead of putting pretty packages and a neat UI on existing things and marketing the hell out of them. He had the audacity to put function over form.

    --
    "But this one goes to 11!"
  13. Re:Monumental failure. by DrXym · · Score: 4, Insightful
    "Apollo" or Windows Phone 8, Microsoft's next version supposedly allows for native code support if the rumours are to be believed. But that doesn't help developers out there right now. Porting C written to OpenGL ES to C# XNA more or less qualifies as writing from scratch. Perhaps the big boys have the resources to put people to work on a port but I doubt many do.

    With just a little bit of glue and abstraction over input devices a game could probably share 90% of the code between iOS, Android and even the Blackberry Tablet OS / Blackberry 10. If you utilised some 3rd party gaming API it's probably even more again. Microsoft really need that native support and preferably OpenGL ES, even if its through gritted teeth.

  14. Re:Windows Phone 7 by ByOhTek · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You are assuming it is working with all of the others.

    Also, you are assuming the issue isn't with the driver or hardware (which would be the manufacturer of the phone, and not the OS).

    --
    Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
  15. Re:Windows Phone 7 by Gr8Apes · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's still a "windows" phone, advertised as such, so any failings in operation that appear to be software related will justly be seen as an MS failing.

    --
    The cesspool just got a check and balance.
  16. Re:Windows Phone 7 by gstoddart · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I have a WP7 phone (HTC). I've never seen those issues. I'm guessing they are hardware/driver issues.

    If users are going to have to fight with drivers on their Windows phones, then Microsoft has already lost the race. Nobody wants to muck with drivers on their friggin' phone. What the hell does that even mean? It's not like someone swapped out the network adapter or anything -- so if they wifi doesn't work out of the box, the entire phone is suspect and isn't ready for consumers.

    And you can't blame the phone OS if the store can't make their WiFi and phones work together.

    Well, then maybe the OS+phone combo, but people kind of expect wi-fi to be a well solved problem. Find the network, enter the password, and go. It's not like it's new or anything.

    If I was testing out a phone, and I couldn't get it to use the wifi in the store, I'd simply move onto the next phone. That's some serious warning signals the phone is going to be problematic.

    --
    Lost at C:>. Found at C.