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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."
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.
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?
Maybe thats the gray market Chinese import version.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Probably some Anti-Apple shill.
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.
However, that is about to change now that Nokia will be putting out quality WP7 smart phones.
'Nokia' and 'quality' should not be put in the same sentence.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
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.
I think your post misses one huge flaw with WP7
The developer API, it's too restrictive. No good way to get your apps to share data between each other. Only network connection allowed is HTTP. No single source of online storage (last I checked the SkyDrive API wasn't opened, so you can't use it, by the developer contract).
Yes, it has a clean and effective API, but in terms of functionality from 3rd party apps, it lacks, and would still lack, even if it had all the developers of iOS and Android combined.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
Or you should visit the Firehose more often.
The UI may be great and the development environment good, but Microsoft, in a misguided attempt to lock developers to the platform (that only works when you have them to begin with), made it impossible to use c++ and OpenGL on them meaning every part of an Android or iOS game/app has to be rewritten to work on Windows Phone 7.
When you make it too hard, developers will stick with the platforms where the customers are; Android and iOS
I have a WP7 phone (HTC). I've never seen those issues. I'm guessing they are hardware/driver issues. I'm guessing the UI toggle is tied to the processing state of the action - it stalled in the middle, so it died.
And you can't blame the phone OS if the store can't make their WiFi and phones work together. I've used my phone on my WiFi at work and the Sprint store, and had no issues whatsoever.
WP7 has it's flaws, particularly with the 3rd party dev API, but the issues you mentioned seem more likely to be AT&T or the hardware manufacturer.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
Come on, that's not fair. The first poster, TechCar, has a long history of 8 posts dating all the way back to two days ago! :)
The one Windows Phone evangelist who claimed the current devices would be upgradable, quickly walked those statements back.
Source here .
If you buy one of these "beta test" phones, you will soon be stuck in a multi-year contract with a device that will not be upgradable to the current version of the OS. There is nothing beautiful about that. Do not buy before Win Phone 8 is released!
Pretty much everything you just complained about is not true anymore. When they released Mango it allowed for more than just http requests and also the SkyDrive API is quit open. You should give it another gander because things have changed drastically in the last year.
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.
When MS bought out the Chevron utility and built it as an option, it made the platform attractive -- no worrying about rooting or jailbreaking. A recent XDA article showed that that functionality is going away soon.
I wish it weren't the case, but I am tired of locked down platforms, and find Android the one that sucks the least. For example, if I want to block calls/texts with iOS [1], i'm forced to jailbreak. At least with Android, I can use Mr. Number or a root-level blacklist and be done with it.
What would be ideal would be a system similar to the one used for unlocking Nexus phone bootloaders -- an obstacle that will make Joe Sixpack go "hmm, maybe I shouldn't do this", but for someone who knows their stuff, would be trivial. That way, people who don't know what they are doing are protected by the phone's security and the gatekeeper at the app store, while people who are more interested in customization can do what they want.
[1]: Yes, there are apps that supposedly do blocking, but a lot of them do nothing except create a new contact entry with [Blocked] in it.
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.
Look, just because his name is similar to other first-posting newly created account names accused of being MS shills (TechNY/TechLA), the account was created just yesterday and he only made pro-MS and anti-Google postings since then doesn't mean anything. Doesn't mean anything at all ...
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
In Internet time, two days ago is like two centuries! ...wait a minute, we didn't even have computers and internet two centuries ago!!
TechCar is an alien visiting from the future!!!
Just because Woz originally helped found Apple Computer in the 70's doesn't mean he's a shill for Apple 30 years later, long after having worked as one of their employees, and after the company changed names (simply "Apple" today -- with the "Computer" part purposely deleted).
I really do think the man speaks honestly about technology he uses, no matter which vendor it comes from. He often likes Apple's products, and when he does, he'll tell you so. But the media seems to assume he's "supposed to be saying that" and jumps to conclusions whenever he says something good about a competing product instead.
As a big fan of the iPhone myself, I'd agree with Woz about Windows Phone 7 too. It *does* have a refreshing and attractive-looking UI to it -- something I'm doubly impressed came out of Microsoft, after their LONG standing belief that everything they designed should have a START button in the corner. (Even their embedded systems for such things as vehicle navigation systems still required developers to purposely code the software to completely hide the OS's UI underneath, because nobody wanted a touchscreen in their car or truck to look like it was just another PC running a version of Windows, with icons to double-click.)
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.
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.
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.
Yes, because anecdotal evidence tends to be more true.
I've found that to be true in my personal experience.
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.
It really doesn't matter how good (or not) Windows phone are:
1. The intersection of MS fanboys and people with widespread credibility is exactly 0.
2. Nobody (apart from MS employees and shareholders) wants it to succeed. - Most people who care about tech gear want MS products to fail so the company will die and be replaced by several other, better companies.
3. We all want competition, good products, and good value, but nobody associates any of those things with microsoft. We all reasonably expect competitors products to be at least as good and better value.
4. We'll happily take an apple/google duopoly over another MS monopoly anyday.
So unless the phones are both outstanding compared to the competition, and much better value, nobody is going to care about them. This seems unlikely.
If MS wants people to care about it's brands and products, it needs to split itself up into it's various divisions. Smaller, independent businesses would be forced to compete and innovate instead of relying on marketing and monopoly to ensure success. If WP7 became a genuine underdog, it might actually get some credible supporters. But since this won't ever happen, it will simply die a long, painful and expensive death. So props to MS on the strategy so far.
And thus completes the circle of life...cue Elton John!
"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" - Salvor Hardin
The astroturfing and that song have a few things in common... one of which is irritation. It's pretty sad how Slashdot is getting "gamed" so easily by this group. (I seriously don't think it's just one person...)
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Your complaint is hardly specific to Windows Phone 7 tho - I've not used it (consider that a caveat) so I can't comment on WP7, but I've had my fair share of UI glitches and software slide buttons sticking on both Android (HTC Desire, 2.1 iirc) and iPhone.
I've even had situations where the iPhone wont let me answer a call thats ringing, because the screen isnt responding to the slide - the call goes to voice mail, the screen reverts back to the lock screen, and suddenly everything works again.
I've had situations where I couldn't hang up the call on both the iPhone and Android. Now thats not a great situation to be in!
My iPhone also won't connect to my local pubs wifi, even when Im sat a couple of meters away from the router - won't see it, and if I try and connect manually it won't join the network.
So execution is really lacking all round.
Did you actually mean to say that you think Steve Wozniak is a paid Microsoft Shill? (Not to mention a clueless moron?) Or did you just fail to proofread your trolling?
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?
Apple's co-founder Steve Wozniak
Sadly, most Apple fans these days don't consider Steve Wozniak the co-founder of Apple. They think Steve Jobs said "Let there be light" and then created everything Apple by himself. And I wish I were joking.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
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!"
And out of his eight posts, four are negative of Google, one is negative of Linux, and three are positive about Microsoft.
This is the kind of online argument I'd expect: ... you're a stinky poopy-face!
A: This is a superior product, because XYZ.
B: But it's inferior because other products have KLM, which is better than XYZ.
A: Whaddaya mean, XYZ rocks, KLM sucks!
B: Your product sucks!
A: Well, yeah
B: I'm not, but yo momma is!
A: B is totally like Hitler!
I am officially gone from
"Yeah, I played with it too, and it did feel like an early release product."
You mean it came early? Eeewww.
C|N>K
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).
SEO/Reputation Management firms pay people to do this shit. I actually personally know someone who does this for a living ("Work from home" jobs) and I expressed my distaste for the acts to them several times. I eventually just stopped talking to them altogether.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Windows did it.
We all know it.
If Windows is anywhere near the scene of the crime, "Windows Did It."
Have we learned nothing?
The last good OS from Microsoft Was DOS 6.22. If you replaced command.com with 4dos.com.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
Current ones, maybe. You could cast one of the old Nokias (the old, phone-shaped ones) into Mt. Doom and it would still work (although I bet Mordor gets pretty bad reception).
Wish I knew how to get my beak wet on this. I have a WP7 phone that I simply adore and I'd love to get paid to say nice things about it. Maybe Tech* can hook me up?
Hey, I think the XNA API is rather nice (far superior to ObjC), plus there is a nice converting library for it called ExEn http://andrewrussell.net/exen/ . I'm a Java developer by history so I have a natural affinity for the Android API, but I think Microsoft did a great job with the API.
The issue I ran into using the windows mobile phones is that the one sprint offers doesn't support 4g, has a small screen, and is rather bad hardware all around. I'm waiting for one that is like my galaxy s2 then I will probably pick it up.
WTF Slashdot, why do I have to login 50 times to post?
I purchased a Lumia 900 on 4/8. Previous phones include Nokia N900 (still "running" MeeGo...) and HTC G2. So far the Lumia experience has been good. Pros: - Fluid, smooth and intuitive UI - Majority of everyday apps I use are native MS/Nokia, or good quality 3rd party (UC Browser, Nav, Google Voice, social networking, email, music player) - Excellent Nokia Drive navigation, probably best nav app I've used. Very quick GPS lock, nice UI while driving, good voice navigation - Good battery life. 16 hours of moderate/heavy use (not always on LTE though), with still juice left. - For me the home screen tiles work. IMO they are a nice compromise between an icon and widget, obviously this boils down to preference. Then again, if you load up your home screen with tiles, you've effectively made your home screen an app menu, just with super large icons... - Display works well in daylight - VKB is ok. Pretty quick swapping from portrait to landscape mode, but like with any touch keys, nothing beats the real keyboard. Pleased to find my native language as a quick switch option while typing. - LTE speeds so far have been good (7-8 mbps download in West L.A.; good/great 4G-speeds in Miami) - "Multitasking". Obviously nowhere near what the N900 offered, but in my daily use I find it similar to Android. - Last but not least, though this one seems to be an ignored feature of a modern smartphone: fantastic call quality -- mind you this on AT&T's famously shitty network. Cons: - Browser options (for now): IE9 is ok, not great, but I'd like to see Firefox and Opera Mobile as options. UC Browser as an IE9 variant offers some welcomed tweaks. - App menu: minor gripe in my use, but if you load your device with apps, the single file scrolling can become a real nuisance. Not that I found Android's App Drawer with 4-5 pages (or a cube/wheel/cylinder...) that much better. I use the KISS principle, worked on Android, works on WP7. - Battery (no percentage) and time displayed only on main screen, not when in app menu. - Display: while it works well outdoors, the screen res. does show its numbers, especially while browsing. Pixellation is apparent on the browser while zoomed out, after you pinch zoom in the text/font looks ok -- for some reason I'd think this would be the other way around. - Camera: Not bad, but not excellent either. It seems like my N900 takes as good pictures as Lumia 900, though this is subjective as I am not a photo-pro. So, the cam is a minor disappointment. - Integration with Zune. Only reason I've used Zune was to do a firmware upgrade. But, signing up with Microsoft/Apple, you kinda know that this is the shit you have to put up with. - Lack of specific apps. I haven't found an app yet that I couldn't live without -- i.e. I've modified my phone usage, like I had to do with the N900 -- but Android app market makes life much more fun if you have the time and energy to read about, test, and install/uninstall apps. - The non-upgradeability to WP8. This one's going to bring some suckage. Though I have to admit, I wasn't even thinking about it when I bought the Lumia 900 (ok, so I got a refund for the purchase price, thanks Nokia!). So I guess I shouldn't complain after all. And it's not like my 2-yr old G2 was getting any love from HTC/T-Mo (ICS Beta on it, ran like, a beta...). I have no idea how the app devel process varies between WP7, Android and iOS, but from an enduser, albeit not a superuser, experience, IMO Lumia 900 works well. I've dumbed down my device requirements, but so far I'm liking it. When I want to dig into an OS, I'll just continue tweaking my Arch with OpenBox :)
Don't allow posts from accounts less than a year old to appear as first post. Hold them in queue until a few dozen posts have been made. You could also slow them down a bit by requiring two mod-ups to raise their score one point.
AFAIK they already don't allow brand spankin' new accounts to moderate. The real challenge is dealing with established accounts that don't 'turf; but moderate up the turfers. It could be a political issue if you simply LART them.
I hypothesize that if a user's up-mods all go towards new accounts, that user is likely a shill. They certainly have a strange bias. There's not much reason to skew your mods towards new accounts. Yeah, sympathy for high ID numbers; wanting to make new users feel good; but that's not really productive. We can do without that.
There's still nothing to stop a determined bunch of 'turfers from gaining access. You should make them work for it though.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
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
This didn't happen because people are idiots. Admins censored the other ports, and people routed around it. Of course there are network tools that can tell if you are trying to piggyback something else through port 80, so you might as well finagle your exchanges into legitimate HTTP traffic.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
The main significance is WHO is praising the Windows phone, not that it is MS shilling. Unfortunately, the poster degenerated into Apple bashing, which I find annoying. If you want to bash, look at market share - iPhone and Android crush Windows phone, which has less market share than mac does. I don't know where Windows phone stands today, but it lacked numerous features when Windows Phone 7 was released and I was in the market for a phone almost 2 years ago (like multitasking, html5 support, threaded email, and copy/paste).
As for newsworthy, probably not as much as Ubuntu on Android though personally I dislike some of the changes made to Ubuntu lately (I have several flavors of Linux on various VMs for solving user problems, so "not using it" is not an option - I often have to use what customers use to see the problems they are seeing). I have no idea how it will translate to a phone.
Considering the posts have the same time stamp as the story it is obvious that /. is complicit in this and therefor unlikely to implement any changes.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
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.
No, it was a real response. You might like these kludges and braindead solutions, I don't. You might be able to hack HTTP into a replacement for all these things but that only means we don't get good replacements for those things.
Probably due to hidden SSID which the phones can't handle.
http://windowsphonesecrets.com/2010/08/04/windows-phone-missing-feature-of-the-week-connect-to-hidden-wireless-
networks/
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.
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.
Woz was the hardware guru who created the original Apple computers; Jobs was the marketing guy who got them in people's hands.
But as a true "geek", Woz has the decency to respect his competition, and no shame in giving them praise when it's due.
It's a shame so-called "businessmen" couldn't be as generous in their dealings with the competition.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
He had the audacity to put function over form.
Which is an equivalent mistake to putting form over function. A well balanced amount of both is what makes a good product great.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
This comment, and the other comments of this user remind me of an "Unspeakable Vault" comic strip:
http://www.goominet.com/unspeakable-vault/vault/376/
Maybe Steve Woz was just trying to channel Steve Jobs' spirit, but got Steve Ballmer's anti-spirit in an appalling New-Age screw-up. Did he also throw a chair or scream about killing Google?
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Yeah, and they've been paying clueless morons to rave about their shit on the internet too.
Well I certainly never saw a dime of that money.
One doesn't just get four bars in Mordor.
That is your opinion, which you are entitled to, but with which I disagree. While I don't own any Apple products, I have used them before, and found their functionality and user interface to be lacking.
that was Steve Jobs fucking mantra.
Hate to burst your bubble but IMO your human Adonis, The Great and Powerful Jobs, was an abject failure in following his own mantra, then. If so, why do I hate their stuff? Oh, right - because locked down, proprietary bullshit that I pay for but technically do not own is the complete opposite of "functional" in my book. BTW, how long did it take Jobs to catch up to the PC industry, by realizing that having to click the mouse and hold a hotkey down is not the most functional way to access a context menu? 20 years?
It WHY they are successful, you git.
Negative, Ghost Rider - they are successful because they managed to turn being a douchebag hipster with more money than sense from a niche market to the mainstream... or maybe because douchebag hipsters became mainstream on their own...
Their image comes from having better products.
Again, this is a purely subjective topic, but what exactly makes their products "better," and what are they better than? Their OS is interesting but not spectacular, and kind of a pain-in-the-ass to use; their MP3 players are pretty, sure, but require locked-down, proprietary software; Their tablets are... well, as useful as any other tablet (which, to me, is not useful at all), but hardly anything to write home about.
Their products are "pretty," I will admit. Unfortunately, in this case, pretty doesn't make the sale.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese