Wozniak Calls For Open Apple

aesoteric writes "Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has voiced a renewed desire to see the company open its architecture to the masses, allowing savvy users to expand and add to their products at will. However, Wozniak qualified his desire for a more open Apple by arguing that openness should not impinge on the quality of the products themselves. He also sees any change of heart on openness as a challenge when Apple continues to rake in huge cash with its current model."

Comments

No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[crazyjj]

Unfortunately, part of the effect of the Steve Jobs reality distortion field was to basically write Woz out of Apple history almost completely. If you listen to many
Apple employees and fans, you would think that Jobs created Apple single-handedly, perhaps with divine powers. There is very little respect (or even acknowledgement) at Apple for Woz or his contributions in the early days. In fact, very little respect is afforded there to the engineering of Apple products in general, versus their design and marketing. So, though it would be nice to think that Woz's voice might have some impact on Apple, he's probably even less likely to be listened to at Apple HQ than some random man-on-the-street.

Woz's story makes a lot of Apple die-hards very uncomfortable (particularly the bits about Jobs screwing him over). And the standard response seems to be just pretending that he doesn't exist, and ignoring him. It's sad and unfair. But that's the way it is.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

And without Woz Jobs wouldn't have had anything either. No Woz = No Apple 1

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[rigelglen]

Without Woz, Jobs would have been nothing and Apple would have been a failure. Jobs isn't a god, of course he was an innovator, maybe a genius, but everyone makes you believe that Jobs came up with EVERYTHING, the User Interface, Design, EVERYTHING. This isn't the case, even Jobs admitted it, he said "It's the talented people at Apple that make the difference" or something like that.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[Bigby]

There are far fewer people like Steve Woz out there than there are Steve Jobs. Therefore Woz > Jobs.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

While Woz was certainly not the recipient of terribly fair treatment, I suspect that there is a second reason why he was removed from the picture comparatively early:

The success of the early Apple designs (the II particularly) rested in no small part on assorted deep-hack chip count and cost reduction measures, the sort of thing that Woz is reputed to be very good indeed at. It did lead to somewhat arcane and tightly interlinked designs; but this was back when reducing the chip count in your floppy drive was still Serious Savings or having Woz go up the mountain and descend bearing the design for ADB made your peripheral interconnects genuinely better than the other guy's. In Apple's later models, they just kept moving closer and closer to commodity circuits wrapped in nice industrial design and a friendly software layer.

Obviously, somebody still has to design their logic boards; but that hasn't really been Apple's competitive edge in ages. Jobs occupied a larger-than-life seat on the pantheon; but the members immediately behind him in public awareness and clout were the industrial design guru and the supply chain/manufacturing guy. Board-level engineering elegance appears to have been swamped by volume savings on commodity silicon some time ago.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[iluvcapra]

Wow, I've read many accounts of Apple's founding and Woz is always prominent, we've all read fanboys but I've never seen one claim Woz didn't contribute, I've never seen anyone minimize his contribution and I've never read any equivocation on his treatment at the hands of Jobs. You sir have erected a straw man; I think you'd be challenged to find a single link or quote from Jobs himself along these lines.

There is the simple fact that he left, and that he, by his own admission, had no idea how to make money off his inventions, and would have been happy working the day shift at HP and make a little money running Apple as a mail-order schematic business. To say that he was an engineers genius and critical to Apple's first success is true, but it's also true he had no idea of the potential for the business, he was by all accounts an awful salesman, and at the time he really didn't have any ambition beyond building a slightly cooler IMSAI clone.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[Entropius]

Jobs wasn't an innovator. He came up with a few UI tricks using engineering advances that other people did the hard physics for.

What Jobs was was a marketer, and a good one.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[htnmmo]

Found some interesting quotes from Wozniak related to apple and jobs.

He gave up a lot of his wealth, and even potential wealth to spend more time doing things he thought were more rewarding in other ways. So when he asks people to give up their share of the pie it's not a do as I say not as I do thing.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[tripleevenfall]

Jobs created first, a market segment, and that was "A PC for the rest of us". (Not to mention really swallowing up the mp3 player market with their device, and now pretty much owning music distribution.)

I don't think Apple meant to take over the PC/mobile computing industries. It just turned out that most people were ready for something that will get out of their way and "just work". They were more successful than they ever would have imagined, by producing devices that just work and let people use computers/tablets for what they want without having to spend so much time on it.

There's nothing wrong with this. If you don't like Apple's ecosystem, you can go the Windows our Linux route. They just found a niche that didn't turn out to be a niche.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[macraig]

Indeed. Job's contribution to Apple was a corporate mindset, marketing, and ultimately the selfish controlling "closed" nature of every product it brought to market. The difference between the two men can be distilled down to one crucial personality trait: respect. Wozniak has respect for Apple's customers that Jobs never did. Jobs treated Apple customers like cattle, to be guided through narrow constricting chutes and confined in little cages, all while milking them of every last ounce.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[Anthony Mouse]

That's because you misjudge what people mean by "design" -- Apple's goal is to make products that make you say "wow" rather than (necessarily) products that stay with in spec and achieve six nines of uptime, keep working after you accidentally sit on them, or never break or spontaneously combust in normal usage. And it's pretty much always been that way. The failure rate of the power supplies in "mirror door" PowerMac G4s was something preposterous like 50%, but they sure were pretty.

It's way more important to Apple that people think it's cool than that it actually works; if something doesn't work, you fix that in the next generation (and then have entirely different problems).

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[spire3661]

I was with you right up until you got to 'all they think about is marketing and design to the detriment of engineering.'

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[spire3661]

Steve Jobs ACTIVELY screwed him on a business deal in the VERY early days of Apple. Jobs said they got paid X for a job they were to split the fee on, but really they got X + Y. Steve kept his half of X and all of Y.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[spire3661]

Jobs' innovation was trying to keep things as simple as possible. Go read up on the dev meetings regarding the Itunes Burn Cd functionality and how Steve came in and simplified the whole thing. Steve was a master at KISS.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[hal2814]

There are far fewer people like Jeffery Dahmer out there than there are Steve Wozniak. Therefore, Dahmer > Woz.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[spire3661]

Jobs was OUSTED, he didnt leave.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple really spawned twice. The first incarnation had Woz's help and indeed he helped to establish the brand.
The second incarnation was all Jobs.
But to say engineering is not their competitive edge ignores that, like that famous political cry, "It's the system, stupid" that makes Apple soar. Ergonomic design is pushing the envelope, hardware design is constantly improving, and software is written to be easily accessible and controllable, and the Apple now controls the supply chain rather than the other way around.

Apple is as perfect a manufacturing machine as there is today. Don't diss it, emulate it!

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

Nonsense. Brilliant engineers are often buried in the R&D labs of companies and universities. If it weren't for Jobs then Woz would've been buried in the basement of HP. It takes a true genius to not only aggregate those individuals but also shape their work so that they produce something revolutionary. Another individual like that was Enzo Ferrari... not an engineer but he was the final say on all decisions.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[zlives]

"The Psychopath Test" Author Jon Ronson

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[uglyduckling]

I think you're in an inverse reality distortion field there. I know many photography and video professionals who take their MacBooks with them wherever they go, edit in the field, have taken them round the world etc. etc., and have nothing but good things to say about Apple. It's true that they've had their fair share of issues, but part of it is the very narrow range of products they have on the market at any one time (compared to say Dell, HP and Lenovo) - usually they only have one product hitting a particular market sector, so when there's a problem it's well-known very quickly. All computer equipment has its issues, but for all the years I've been buying technology, the only equipment that I trust to carry everywhere are my MacBook Pro, iPhone, and Canon EOS 10D camera. Everything else I've ever owned has fallen apart very quickly, even from reputable manufacturers.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[The Infamous Grimace]

You're talking about the 'Breakout' incident.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[geoffball]

Apple employees and fans, you would think that Jobs created Apple single-handedly, perhaps with divine powers.

Jobs did create Apple single-handedly. He used Woz's hands.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[bartoku]

Without Woz, Jobs would have been nothing and Apple would have been a failure.

I am no Apple fan, but I do respect Jobs and I am not convinced he ever "needed" Woz.

Woz is great, very smart guy, but without him Jobs simply would have found someone else.

This isn't the case, even Jobs admitted it, he said "It's the talented people at Apple that make the difference" or something like that.

This was Jobs gift, he had an eye for such talent, in Woz and the others he used, I mean hired.

Like it or not the mentality that Jobs had set him up for success.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[luke923]

Chances are it was an outside agencies that wrote the sales pitch and that Jobs can't even really take credit for that either.

According to his most recent bio, that would be Regis McKenna.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[0100010001010011]

Jobs was a perfectionist and one that just happened to know what people wanted. He had his misses (the Cube) but rumor had it that the iPhone wasn't going public until it was 'perfect'. It just wasn't the big things, it was the small stuff like how a font looked in WYSIWYG or even rectangles with rounded corners.

Bill fired up his demo and it quickly filled the Lisa screen with randomly-sized ovals, faster than you thought was possible. But something was bothering Steve Jobs. "Well, circles and ovals are good, but how about drawing rectangles with rounded corners? Can we do that now, too?"

"No, there's no way to do that. In fact it would be really hard to do, and I don't think we really need it". I think Bill was a little miffed that Steve wasn't raving over the fast ovals and still wanted more.

Steve suddenly got more intense. "Rectangles with rounded corners are everywhere! Just look around this room!". And sure enough, there were lots of them, like the whiteboard and some of the desks and tables. Then he pointed out the window. "And look outside, there's even more, practically everywhere you look!". He even persuaded Bill to take a quick walk around the block with him, pointing out every rectangle with rounded corners that he could find.

To 90% of the other CEOs out there they would have called it good and moved on. Steve HAD to have the rounded rectangles. And this is one thing I don't mind about OS X. The defaults are such that they actually look good. I recently moved to MATE as my window manager but configuring it is frustrating more than anything. I don't like the choice. I just want to be told what the options are and deal with those and then use my computer to work rather than work on configuring my computer.

* If you want to read up on some stores of either Steve from the early years folklore.org has some great ones.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[luke923]

"In fact, very little respect is afforded there to the engineering of Apple products in general, versus their design and marketing."

That's because frankly none is deserved since the second coming of Apple.

That's the point, isn't it? Apple chose design and form over function and engineering sensibilities since its "second coming," which led to the litany of flaws you mentioned. The problems you mentioned aren't the result of Apple's inability to recruit and retain top engineering talent, but the problems do stem from Apple's willingness to release a product with technical problems just for the sake of aesthetics instead of going with a less sexy design so that they don't have to sacrifice quality.

Cause and effect, my friend -- it seems you have it reversed.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[ByOhTek]

The chances of Jobs finding someone else of Woz's caliber, who would also put up with him, are probably not very good. Could he have found someone else to fill the roll of Woz? Definitely. I doubt the person would have been nearly as good.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[ByOhTek]

Yes, but without Jobs, Woz's company may not have gotten the marketing and market share needed to progress.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[Lisias]

You are misguided.

Without Jobs, Woz would not had chance to show his invention to the money guys, and Apple would not had ever existed.

Without Woz, Jobs would not had chance to show a invention to the money guys, and Apple would not had ever existed.

Make no mistake - Jobs owns Woz as Woz own Jobs.

Jobs was not a rich guy looking for a clever inventor. He was lucky to be friends with Woz, as probably no other guy would risk his life this way with him, as Woz did.

We can argue forever about who is the father and who is the mother of Apple Computer.

But it's just silly trying go argue if Apple would exist without one of them: the answer is a sound "NO".

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[BackwardPawn]

It was when Atari was making a home version of Breakout and Jobs oversold his ability to create the product. Atari offered Jobs $750, plus a bonus for each chip Jobs could eliminate from the cartridge (by efficient programming). Jobs turn to Woz and told him they'd split the fee. Woz stayed up four nights programming breakout and did such an awesome job that Atari ended up paying Jobs $5,000. He paid Woz his $375 and kept the rest.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[Solandri]

This. While I do think Jobs is overrated, he's had one valuable contribution to the industry. Most other companies were content if their product worked, even if it shipped with a 300 page manual. Jobs was obsessed with making his products simple and easy to use, almost to a fault (e.g. only one button on the mouse).

IMHO it's this ease of use which is primarily responsible for Apple's success today. Regular people view computers as complicated, and computer geeks (e.g. the Linux community) as obsessed with that complexity. Apple has established a reputation for making computers easy to use, so they're the first (and often only) product people look at when buying a computing device, even if it costs more.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[Githaron]

I recently moved to MATE as my window manager but configuring it is frustrating more than anything. I don't like the choice. I just want to be told what the options are and deal with those and then use my computer to work rather than work on configuring my computer.

The best option for the configuration of any software is to be given a short list of standard presets with the option of customizing further. The average person will stick with the preset but the rest of us will not be annoyed when we can't get the settings the way we want.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[bartoku]

Perhaps Jobs could never find someone as good or as patient with him as Woz, but I am still not convinced he needed him to succeed.

As far as I am aware Woz did not come along with Jobs to NeXT, and as far as I am concerned today the company know as Apple is simply NeXT with the Apple brand.

Is there anything in Apple today that is from Woz? His comments seem to suggest it in no way reflects him or his genius at this time and has not for awhile.

Honestly I would prefer Woz's Apple, but the Wheels of Zeuz (WoZ) did not quite make it.

I maintain, for better or for worse, that Steve Jobs was set on his path to creating Apple as it is today no matter who was with him...

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[bartoku]

Perhaps I am misguided and it is silly to continue, but I am not yet convinced by your argument and entertained by the debate.

As far as I am aware Woz did not come along with Jobs to NeXT, and as far as I am concerned today the company know as Apple is simply NeXT with the Apple brand.

Is there anything in Apple today that is from Woz? His comments seem to suggest it in no way reflects him or his genius at this time and has not for awhile.

Honestly I would prefer Woz's Apple, but the Wheels of Zeuz (WoZ) did not quite make it.

I maintain, for better or for worse, that Steve Jobs was set on his path to creating Apple as it is today no matter who was with him...

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[ByOhTek]

As far as you are concerned, and reality, not necessarily the same thing.

Are any of pylons and struts on the top floor of a skyscraper the same exact ones as on the bottom (not identical, same)? Does that make the bottom irellevant? If Apple hadn't gotten off the ground, it wouldn't be here today. Apple now is NOT next, but a combination of the old Apple, and NeXT, both are extremely important to what it is today.

I maintain that Apple very likely would not be what it is today, without Woz.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[garyebickford]

I think that happens a lot. It happened to me. I co-founded an imaging company back in 1983 based on my idea for connecting a high speed CCD camera to an advanced workstation - bleeding edge stuff at the time. A few months later the company was already doing well, and my associate (a sales guy) and I brought in a new CEO who brought some VC money with him. I left in frustration three years later as the CEO was mismanaging the place horribly, although he did mange to keep bringing new investment money into the company. The history of the company as of a year or two after that was how the CEO had taken an interesting project by a couple of engineers and single-handedly created a company to bring it to fruition - literally our efforts merited part of a single sentence in a ten page history.

The last laugh was that after I left (I had been VP of R&D), in the next two years they went through seven VPs of R&D (I guess I wasn't doing such a bad job!), and spent most of the 1990s fighting a series of battles against financial types who were trying to force them into bankruptcy - people that the CEO had originally brought in to invest in the company. The financial shenanigans were rather distressing to me. In a short conversation about 1999, the CEO of the then-defunct company agreed that the three major things I had recommended, and he had rejected finally triggering me to quit, were all correct - but as he said, "I hadn't been forceful enough to convince him!" - sigh. And he spent ten years fighting in court instead of doing other fun things.

I still feel there was a good legacy. My track record in managing the engineering side was that we were technically successful on every project, usually under budget, and had excellent morale. I'm still friends with folks that I originally hired there. And we did some really great work in vectorizing, OCR and entity recognition for large format maps and drawings. We even did some work on constructing 3D models from sets of 2D drawings. We could generate terrain models from USGS maps. I got to tour the Space Shuttle External Tank manufacturing facility, and we built image processors that were two orders of magnitude faster than anything else out there, using chips from the cruise missile program (credit where credit is due - that hardware and a lot of the original code behind the OCR and other recognition capability was done by the Visual Understanding Lab of Bob Thibadeau, research professor at Carnegie Mellon). Of course, all that can now be done by any common desktop in software.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[bartoku]

Apple now is NOT next, but a combination of the old Apple, and NeXT, both are extremely important to what it is today.

What of the original Apple is left and what of NeXT is left? Let us look at what brings in the bacon today:

Mac OS X: NeXTSTEP, the big reason NeXT was acquired. Thank God OS 9 is gone.
iTunes: did not exist until Jobs returned, uses NeXT WebObjects
Mobile hardware (iPod, iPhone, iPad): Newton from Apple perhaps, it was based on RISC tech and had a screen...but it was axed and was any of it resurrected to build the iPod, iPhone, or iPad? iOS and iTunes arguably make these devices.
iOS: based on OS X see above...
PC hardware: x86, not PowerPC
Why did Apple flounder after Jobs left if the foundation was Woz and Jobs together, why did it bounce back with Jobs?

I will tell you why, like or not, Jobs nor Wos were the foundation.
Jobs however was the one that chose the pylons and struts and assembled them to make Apple what it is today.
Woz was a great strut, and it took 100 struts to replace him, but no one could replace the master architect that is Steve Jobs...

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[vakuona]

Without Jobs, there would be no company. Woz didn't even want to sell the damn computer he built. I hear Woz is worth $100m today. Well, he owes that to Jobs. Because Woz would still have to work today if it wasn't for Jobs.

Woz was a clever engineer, but I think geekdom views him with rose tinted spectacles. He was not that great. The people making the microprocessors he used. Now those were the really great guys.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[SomePgmr]

Maybe, maybe not... but his point was valid. An important bit of the supply & demand equation was absent in the topmost valuation. Not a lot of utility in (and demand for) more Dahmers.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[ShanghaiBill]

Without Jobs Woz's computers would have a different logo.

And that logo would have been "HP". Without Jobs, Woz would have continued to work as an engineer at HP, until Carly Fiorina laid him off.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[CanHasDIY]

It just turned out that most people were ready for something that will get out of their way and "just work".

A more succinct endorsement for Windows, I have not seen.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[k6mfw]

Unfortunately, part of the effect of the Steve Jobs reality distortion field was to basically write Woz out of Apple history almost completely...

sounds like what Jack Warner did to his three brothers.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[EvilBudMan]

Speaking of Atari, history could have been much different because around 1980 they really the best micro computer but the marketing was terrible. Later when Jack Tramiel took over what was left then all of the smart Atari guys went on to do the Amiga. Jobs has to be considered one heck of a salesman and a little bit of a crook as you just said.

I'm not too worried about the WOZ because he has enough money to play with whatever he wants for the rest of his life even so.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[EvilBudMan]

--Board-level engineering elegance appears to have been swamped by volume savings on commodity silicon some time ago.--

Not necessarily, there is always that smaller device.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[morgauxo]

Without the Apple of old how would Jobs have had the money to start NeXT?

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[EvilBudMan]

By someone that ran Pepsi in the ground for some time and then Jobs came back in with that NEXT crew.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[thetoadwarrior]

How was he screwed over? The guy got rich off the stock and still collects a pay check from Apple. Apple needed both Steves but, no offence, The Woz doesn't exactly have a great history of success so why should he be listened to?

He certainly didn't take Apple anywhere after Jobs left. In fact what has he really done since leaving Apple? At least Steve Jobs can say he's gone off and created Pixar and did well enough with Next to lure Apple into use, buying Next and then bring Jobs back who helped bring stop Apple from nearly going bust.

Don't get me Woz did something great in his life which is far more than most people can say but Apple haters try too hard to discredit Steve Jobs and act as if Woz is some poor guy who was thrown out and forgotten and that's far from the case. He was a proper employee of Apple after jobs and like I said is still taking in a pay check and has been made stinking rich from Apple. So he's hardly been wronged and quite frankly he doesn't have a long history of success that says me that yes people should be listening to everything he says as if it's business gospel.

After all this is a guy that likes WP7.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[thetoadwarrior]

But Steve Jobs also went on to found Pixar and save Apple from bankruptcy. What's the woz done?

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[thetoadwarrior]

He managed to start a computer company without him that did well enough for Apple to buy it up and allow him to save Apple. But you're right he didn't come up with everything and only an idiot would think that. He's obviously good at running a business and selecting the right people for the right roles. Given how many useless managers and CEOs there are out there, it's obvious that's not something just anyone can do.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[thetoadwarrior]

You mean people that can have one success that allows them to never have to think about working ever again? Well you are right about that.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[tilante]

Interestingly enough, Apple's people came away from their quick tour through PARC thinking that Xerox's interface did things that it didn't actually do. For example, Xerox's interface didn't allow programs to draw into a portion of a window that was obscured, and didn't have self-repairing windows -- when you dragged one window off of another, you had to click the revealed window to get it to repaint. Apple's people didn't realize that Xerox's system didn't allow those things, and thus, designed QuickDraw and the Lisa/Mac Window Manager so they *did* allow those.

Another example is drag-and-drop file management. It seems like such an obvious thing with icons for files and a mouse, but Xerox's interface didn't have it. Apple's people invented it on their own for the Lisa/Mac interface. Some other things that the Lisa/Mac interface did that Xerox's didn't:

* "Direct manipulation" of file/folder/etc. names (i.e., click on the name and type to edit it)

* Pull-down menus

* Resource forks for files, allowing for easy, clean internationalization of applications

* Files having type IDs and creator IDs embedded, so you could simply double-click a file and have it open in the appropriate application, no matter what folder it was in

* The clipboard holding typed data (and holding multiple representations of the same data)

* Desk accessories and control panels

So, as you can see, the Lisa/Mac interface was *not* just a copy of Xerox's. Quite a few things were added by Apple's team.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[IceNinjaNine]

Woz is great, very smart guy, but without him Jobs simply would have found someone else.

Oh horse shit. Just like Bill Gates would have had an "in" at IBM had he not been "Mary Gates' boy".

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[IceNinjaNine]

NeXT would have never been if it hadn't been for the original incarnation of Apple, which itself would have NOT happened without Woz. Your house of cards falls so easily....

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[R3d M3rcury]

Well...for appropriate definitions of "Ousted."

Jobs and Sculley weren't getting along about various things and Jobs wanted the board to get rid of Sculley or at least settle the whole "Who's in charge" question. Sculley was supposed to be in China but came back/didn't go because of this. There was the big meeting in the board room and, ultimately, Jobs lost.

Keep in mind that, at the time, Jobs had been in charge of one of the company's biggest failures at the time, the Apple III. Macintosh wasn't looking too good--sales were well below Apple's estimates--which was also Jobs' baby. So here's a guy who has cost the company a ton of money and he's asking the board to put him in charge.

Jobs was "demoted" to Senior President in charge of Absolutely Nothing, given an office in Siberia, and would be trotted out on occasion to say something was "insanely great." Needless to say, Steve wasn't thrilled with this, and left.

So you're both right. Technically, Steve quit. Realistically, he was ousted.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[bartoku]

Gates is a whole other story.

I simply ask where was Woz when Jobs founded NeXT?

Where was Woz when NeXT technology replaced everything at Apple, when Apple today is essential NeXT, not the original Apple?

I am no Apple fan, I love Woz and his philosophies, but I am under no delusion that and know that Apple 99.9% Jobs.

It was when Jobs left Apple that it crumbled not Woz leaving, it was when Job returned to Apple that it was reborn and became the success it is today with Woz no where in sight.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[bartoku]

Ross Perot.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[Lisias]

I think I now understand where you want to go. And I may agree with you, *IF* you are talking about the current Apple's status quo.

But I think you are not correctly dealing with some facts of the past:

1) It was the Apple II money that funded all the company in order to lead it where it is today.

2) The Jobs that came back to Apple is not the same Jobs that was kicked out from it.

The first fact talks by itself. The second one demands some further explanation:

The first Jobs' Era at Apple did not ended up very well. He was driving the Company to its demise. The Steve Jobs of the era was mining the company's finances with projects far beyond the current technological cost/benefict and, yet, promoting uneasiness inside the company. It was ugly. It was bad.

The Scully guy had take too much time to control the situation, and most of the difficulties Apple had after the Jobs' Era were long term collateral damaged already did by Steve. It was ugly. It was bad.

But Jobs is not dumb neither stupid. He learnt his lessons, and improved himself. The Next itself was not a huge success (he was still pushing the current technology beyound an affordable cost/benefict , but this does not implies a complete failure!), but what this guy did with Pixar is formidable.

And all this new knowledge (that he did not had in this first Apple Era!) he took with himself when he returned to Apple.

What make Jobs a formidable guy is not their long career of successes, but his ability to bring on its failures until he find a way to use them to make something else in a huge success. (Next it's still alive inside MacOSX).

So, yes, the present Apple is Jobs, and it would probably be history without him

But no, the present Apple would not existed at all without the money earned with Woz's Apple II. He started the whole thing.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[HermMunster]

The fallacy of Woz's argument is that closed equates to quality. It does not. They have no relationship. I've wielded a Mac since the early days. Even today it is obvious there are quality issues abounding in OS X. Open one of their computers up one day and observe the components, look for blown capacitors, look at the obscure designs of the boards, and KNOW THIS, they are using regular PC components and technology and have been for a long time.

This isn't to say that LONGER development cycles don't add to quality, they do. Apple couldn't survive with release early and often.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[Entropius]

I dunno, I have a Mac that I have to use for work, and the UI sucks balls.

Besides: does this "ease of use" explain why I had to enter in fucking arcane escape sequences into the configs to make the Home, End, PgUp, and PgDn keys on my keyboard work?

Is that "just works?"

I think not.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[Entropius]

This.

Linux Mint is a great example of this. You put the CD in, install it in ten minutes, and bam! you have a working desktop that doesn't suck. If you want it to do something else -- like, say, not suspend to ram when you close the lid -- you can change it. If you don't like Gnome, you can install whatever the hell else you want.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[bartoku]

And I may agree with you, *IF* you are talking about the current Apple's status quo.

Yeah I am no Apple fan, but it is hard to argue with their revenue numbers and branding success.
For better or worse the Apple of the past died. Is Jobs culpable for that death? Perhaps.

1) It was the Apple II money that funded all the company in order to lead it where it is today.

Jobs burned that money and had to go to external sources, Ross Perot, to fund NeXT...
Now would NeXT ever had gotten off the ground without Apple funding? Perhaps not...
But what funded the start of Apple? I have no doubt Jobs would have found a way, we can see that in his past.

2) The Jobs that came back to Apple is not the same Jobs that was kicked out from it.

No doubt the Jobs that returned gained from his experience at Apple and from being pushed out of Apple and so forth.
But this in fact support my argument that is what not Woz but Jobs and his growth that created Apple.

The first Jobs' Era at Apple did not ended up very well.

My understanding was that Jobs wanted to go one direction, the direction he took NeXT, and those who were then in control of the company he created wanted to go another.
I would argue that Jobs succeeded in taking NeXT there, although not without causing the same problems he left Apple with before getting it right.
If Apple had not interfered with Jobs then he would have taken Apple exactly where NeXT ended up, and possibly quicker because he would not have been starting over and had more capital and branding.

But no, the present Apple would not existed at all without the money earned with Woz's Apple II. He started the whole thing.

Perhaps not, but I believe Steve would have found the money, he always did. The Apple money was used up before NeXT took off.

Remove Jobs and there is no Apple in the past, Woz stays at HP.
Remove Woz and perhaps there would be no Apple and we would have had Pixar earlier or something else, who knows.
But we would know one Steve no matter what, and that is Jobs.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[muon-catalyzed]

Woz is the true and only founder of Apple. He single handedly enabled them, he alone made Apple 1 computer in his garage. He started it all, if it was not for Woz and his early efforts, Jobs would be selling used cars or something...

Therefore Woz >> Jobs.

Also it is well known fact that Jobs just copied Sony, after Apple nearly exited the market at around 1998, Jobs in desperation copied Sony products (Sony was totaly dominating the market at the time), from Apple Pippin (PlayStation), iPod (Walkman), Apple stores (Sony Style stores), App stores/Walled garden (PlayStation store).. everything predates Jobs' efforts.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[HermMunster]

Jobs was obsessed with brands. He wanted to make a brand. He was obsessed with the look of certain products. He simply followed what others had done. This doesn't mean that's bad. It's good. But let's put his quality efforts into perspective.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[HermMunster]

Apple licensed it from Xerox. Sort of hard to not know what you were licensing.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[icebraining]

Regular people view computers as complicated, and computer geeks (e.g. the Linux community) as obsessed with that complexity.

No. Mac OS X, Windows and the Linux environments that try to imitate them are complex. The Linux base, as UNIX, is very simple. And the proof is that is hard to learn. Making a "idiot friendly UI" requires an immense amount of complexity.

I'd quote Dennis Ritchie, but this is /.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[cheesybagel]

I guess you never saw a C-64, VIC-20, or Atari 800/400 in your life.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[drkstr1]

I'm glad to know I'm not crazy. I also have to use a mac from time to time at work, and everything about it just seems so unproductive to me. Given that it's touted as the pinnacle of user design, I was beginning to think there was something wrong with me for not being able to see it that way. I especially love the super sleek mouse our designer uses. It's so sleek, symmetrical, and wireless, you can't even tell which way is front until you notice your cursor movement is inverted or not! (I could go on and on with similar examples, but I really should get back to work, rather than diving into a long rant...)

I am no command-line snob. I really appreciate a good UI that stays out of my way and lets me get my job done quickly and efficiently. I am all for the values Apple is going for in their products. I just don't think macs hold up to that standard is all.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[vakuona]

Well, if we are looking at his success as a marketer, then he was bloody successful whichever way you look at it. He was bloody great. The company he led right up until just before he died is now essentially printing money faster than the Fed.

If the proof of great marketing is in the results, then no question he was bloody great.

Steve Jobs was successful in founding Apple, incredibly successful in founding Pixar, and out of this world successful in restoring and elevating Apple.

Woz's last major contribution to the world of tech was co-creating the Apple ][. In 1977!

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[Just Some Guy]

Besides: does this "ease of use" explain why I had to enter in fucking arcane escape sequences into the configs to make the Home, End, PgUp, and PgDn keys on my keyboard work?

Since I have no idea what you're referring to as all the keys work out-of-the-box on my MacBook, I'm betting that you hit the "Linux User On A Mac" trap. You try to do something and it doesn't work as expected, so you reflexively Google for a solution and find a forum post for 2005 that kind of half-assed patches around the problem. Almost every time that's happened to me (as a Linux User On A Mac), I've later discovered that 1) there was another "native" way to do it with a couple of mouse clicks that were completely obvious in retrospect, or 2) I was trying to inflict a much more complicated workflow onto something much easier to use once I quit fighting it.

As far as I know, all Macs come with working movement keys. I hate to say this, but I think you were just using it wrong.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[bryan1945]

The older people who were paying attention to the personal computer revolution remember the Woz. But you're right, 30 years will tend to obscure lesser figures/events. There was even a time when /. loved Apple, believe it or not. Time passes, things change.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[tyrione]

As far as you are concerned, and reality, not necessarily the same thing.

Are any of pylons and struts on the top floor of a skyscraper the same exact ones as on the bottom (not identical, same)? Does that make the bottom irellevant? If Apple hadn't gotten off the ground, it wouldn't be here today. Apple now is NOT next, but a combination of the old Apple, and NeXT, both are extremely important to what it is today.

I maintain that Apple very likely would not be what it is today, without Woz.

Having worked at both NeXT and Apple I can honestly say you are FULL OF SHIT. Without NeXT Apple closes its doors 15 months after the merger. After Steve was brought back as iCEO we had 3 months of working capital left. We canceled the Sabbatical Program which had 1/3rd of the entire staff holding 12 weeks of paid vacation. Steve told them ``there is the door, don't let it hit you in the ass on your way out.'' And some arrogant developers left. He canceled the Fellow Program as well. Brilliant moves. Either they pitched in and learned NeXT Technologies or they got out of the way. We wasted nearly 3 years of in-fighting to nurse along OS X to get it back to being more of a logical leap from Openstep and it's still not there.

Steve Jobs would have founded Apple with or without Wozniak, with other Engineers. You clearly never worked around the guy. He drew people in like a Black Hole. Even at a tender 21 he could walk into a room and people wanted to see and hear his ideas.

Most Engineers [Programmers but I'll include ones with actual proven Engineering disciplines like myself] and for that matter most people [98%+] of the populace have zero Vision for seeing how technology can evolve. Steve had it in spades. It's the reason Ivy stayed and the the top designers wanted to get chewed out and hopefully see a few of their designs come to light.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[tyrione]

There are far fewer people like Steve Woz out there than there are Steve Jobs. Therefore Woz > Jobs.

You have proven your own ignorance. Sorry, but there were dozens of competing systems when Apple and Woz with Steve showed off their option. There has ever only been one Steve Jobs. There are hundreds of Engineering innovators who start their own corporations and who left PARC to do it. Wozniak is the big compassionate teddy bear who after Apple couldn't produce squat because with all his tinkering he never evolved with today's EE fields and expertise. He got rich and enjoyed life. Science surpassed him decades ago and if you think otherwise, just look at his work after Apple. To be competitive and evolve your knowledge you have to keep current with trends and see where those trends are headed. He's never saw much past his own nose. He was buried in his hobby that Jobs saw as a means to make a revolution. Steve did this with PIXAR, NeXT and then again with Apple.

Sorry, but Wozniak isn't the smartest guy in the room and he'd feel extremely inferior to all the talent at Apple today. However, Steve walks into a room and no one smarted off without eventually getting challenged on their superiority. It happened at NeXT, PIXAR and back again at Apple. Steve Jobs comes around once every century. Wozniak came once when a new industry hadn't arrived due to Steve Jobs dragging hom along. Woz would have gone into obscurity at HP and he even admits it.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[LateArthurDent]

Besides: does this "ease of use" explain why I had to enter in fucking arcane escape sequences into the configs to make the Home, End, PgUp, and PgDn keys on my keyboard work?

Do you have arcane magic that actually make them work properly for all applications? If so, please share. I've googled for this from time to time, but no solution really works. It works for an application, but others remain broken.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[motokochan]

The issue the parent had is that certain keys on the keyboard behave different from how UNIX and Windows traditionally handle them. For instance, PgUp and PgDown only scroll the viewport. They do not move the cursor. The fun is when you're very used to the cursor moving and then press one of the directional arrows to find you're back in the original position. You have to remember to click the mouse in the document to re-set the cursor position. Likewise, Home and End move the viewport to the very top and bottom of the viewport, not the expected beginning and ending of the line, if you're in a multi-line textbox.

So, while the keys do work, they are quite different from other OSes out there, leading to some very annoying behavior if you're keyboard-centric.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[Anarchduke]

I don't know about that, we could send all those Dahmers to congress for a free buffet.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[Just Some Guy]

Note that Option+PgUp/Down scrolls and moves the cursor, the theory being that you most often want to come back to your original spot after navigating around to look at other parts of the document. I don't know that I agree with it, but it does have a rationale.

Ctrl+A and Ctrl+E usually work as expected.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[jbolden]

Woz's influence is rather limited after 1980. Apple at the time Woz was involved was one of many really interesting hobbyist computer companies. It was not a major center of innovation. And Steve Jobs did not screw him over. He got hurt, wanted a demotion, and then quit. The only reason people even know who Steve Wozniak is is because of Steve Jobs.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[EvilBudMan]

Well very interesting indeed. I did read once where Jobs took a class in calligraphy and therefore wanted fonts. So maybe Jobs was a little more than a salesman, but they did get copied and now we have more Windows machines on the desktop. Like I say the open vs. closed thing goes in cycles. Right now people seem to prefer closed systems but little by little I see that changing even for Apple. Isn't H.264 open? Apple actually has better support for this than Android and as we all know money is not in PC's any more and maybe not even in cell phones but Apple also has a huge lead in tablets for now.

I wouldn't bet for them but I also wouldn't bet against them either.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[EvilBudMan]

Thanks for the answer. I wasn't trying to troll. I didn't think I would get modded at all. Anyhow, I think it led to a great answer either way.

Sidenote: If someone follows you around modding you down at every opportunity, how do you figure out who did the modding?

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[jbolden]

Don't confuse sales with profits. Apple for many years, since their market share hit about 7% has had most of the profits from PC hardware. In terms of sales they are up there with Dell, Toshiba, HP but around 4-5th place... Their share has come down quite a bit as most of the manufacturers aren't fighting for market share at the expense of profits and their has been substantial growth in the emerging world where Apple is not as popular. But they still are a huge winner on profits

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[jbolden]

Besides: does this "ease of use" explain why I had to enter in fucking arcane escape sequences into the configs to make the Home, End, PgUp, and PgDn keys on my keyboard work?

Those keys work fine for me out of the box using a Windows keyboard. The escape sequences are how keyboards have been mapped for decades if the the mappings don't match up. That would be the same on any system if you wanted to remap a keyboard.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[jbolden]

Oh I see. Thanks. I didn't get that from his description at all I thought he was having trouble mapping his keys and was using termcap.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[tilante]

Didn't think you were trying to troll, which is why I gave a simple and direct answer! And I'll note that Jobs wasn't responsible for each and every improvement of the Apple UI over the Xerox one -- he came up with the ideas for some of them, and exercised a lot of control over the UI's appearance, but he wasn't the source of everything, which is why I keep saying "Apple's people" in my post. A lot of people contributed to the Mac's UI.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[tilante]

Actually, Apple didn't "license" it from Xerox. This was before anyone had decided that a UI could be protected by copyright. Rather, Apple and Xerox negotiated for Apple's engineers to be allowed to visit PARC and see Xerox's UI in action. Apple didn't get an actual working Xerox Alto to play with, nor did they get any materials, code, or anything else but a few demos. Their source of knowledge about Xerox's UI when they began designing the Lisa/Mac UI was seeing it in action on their visits.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[Entropius]

Step 1: Turn on Macbook
Step 2: Plug Apple-brand keyboard into it
Step 3: Notice that the "home" and "end" keys on that keyboard don't work

There's no room for "using it wrong" here. There are buttons on an Apple-brand keyboard that do nothing when plugged into a Macbook, without hackery.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[Entropius]

They in fact don't even scroll the viewport half the time. In Firefox, for instance, they just do nothing.

Hell, I spend most of my time in ssh, anyway (talking to clusters). Scrolling the viewport doesn't get me to the bottom of my file in vi.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[Entropius]

Nope. Just iTerm, so it's still a fail. iTerm, incidentally, is better than the shitty terminal that comes with OSX, but you can smash the stack in it easily: running cat on a big binary file by accident results in ALL of your open terminals dying. From the errors thrown as it dies I bet there's a buffer overflow exploit lurking there.

Also, it handles the death of ssh very very badly -- tabs just freeze. Since it's a Mac and turns off every time you close the lid, with no way I can find to make it stay on, this happens all the time.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[Entropius]

Huh, so a Windows keyboard works, but an Apple-brand one doesn't? So much for that legendary "it all just works!" thing. And look above -- another guy can't get them to work, either.

I've not had this problem with any Windows or Linux system. Ever. Hell, from the questions Ubuntu asks, it'll manage to support a Klingon keyboard layout if I happen to have one lying around.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[motokochan]

Oh, thanks for the information. I don't work all that often in OS X, so I wasn't aware of that modifier. I'd personally like the behavior the other way around, but it is what it is.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[motokochan]

Interesting on Firefox behavior. I normally don't use the keyboard for movement there, so I wasn't aware. Besides, the behavior is different depending on where the "focus" is. For example, textboxes in forms grab control of the movement keys. Scrolling with a touch pad or mouse is more consistent.

Concerning VI, "G" in command mode will get you to the last line of the file you are editing. Likewise, "1G" or ":0" (zero) will take you to the first line. Similarly, ^ and $ will take you to the beginning and end of the current line in command mode. If you're not familiar with all the text movement options, I highly suggest learning as it makes things like deleting 10 lines at once very easy.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[motokochan]

Yeah, if you don't use OS X enough to be familiar with the annoyance, you would probably be confused. It's quite the pain when you're used enough to the way the other OSes handle it and happen to be using OS X.

I think the escape sequences mentioned are similar to what is described here.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[JBaustian]

Wozniak was a very good engineer who happened to be at the right place at the right time. Jobs is the one who changed entire industries: computers, telecoms, music, movies, maybe television.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[JBaustian]

I've observed my nephew and his friends (8-9 years old) using Macintosh computers, and I'll wager not a single one of them has ever read a manual.

If they can figure it out, then Entropius should be able to figure it out.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[jbolden]

Huh, so a Windows keyboard works, but an Apple-brand one doesn't? So much for that legendary "it all just works!" thing.

No a Windows brand keyboard and an Apple brand keyboard both work fine. Grandparent was just describing this terribly. Turns out that what the grandparent wanted to do was not remap the keyboard but assign multiple letters to a single keypress and was upset he had to modify (indirectly) his termcap.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[jbolden]

I've been using OSX for a dozen years. I'm well familiar with those buttons and like the fact that viewing and typing are separated. It is essentially like the old fashioned modal editors.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[Marxist Hacker 42]

"Jobs created first, a market segment, and that was "A PC for the rest of us". "

I would argue that it was Woz's Apple I, with it's wood case and 6502 microprocessor, that did that. The rest is innovative, but nothing close to a TV you could Type On (have to be over 30 to realize the magic of that- if you're under 30, that magic has *always* been in the world for your entire life).

The Apple I spawned the "PC for the rest of us" home computer market- three years before the IBM PC came out.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[EvilBudMan]

Right but by this time, I don't think the WOZ had much input into the Apple design of the Lisa or Mac by that time. Someone else thought I was trolling and modded me down for that reason, which I haven't figured out why because really I just wanted to know.

Back to the original subject. Apple was more open during the times of the Apple II plus the fact that they went after the educational market which Atari and Commodore really didn't do. The original Atari 800 had some bus support but not too many manufactures of peripherals came along for that like they did for Apple. In fact back then, I think, all of the manufactures published their OS until Microsoft/IBM came along.

Right now Apple's iPhones are not as closed as some think and neither is Google's Android as open either. I don't remember Apple publishing the OS for the MAC but one advantage they had was a Laser printer and fonts.

Many people forget Jay Miner was probably just as smart as the WOZ, but he is dead now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Miner

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[Ol Olsoc]

Wozniak has respect for Apple's customers that Jobs never did. Jobs treated Apple customers like cattle, to be guided through narrow constricting chutes and confined in little cages, all while milking them of every last ounce.

Apparently he also had the genius of his disdain for his customers somehow managing to delude them into thinking that their machines worked well, did what they wanted them to do, and look good while doing it. What a bastard!

I never ever bought one Apple device because of Steve Jobs. I bought them because they were very good machines. I also bought various Microsoft powered devices - mainly because when I supported them, I needed to know how. After using and supporting both since the mid-80's, I'm qualified enough to have an opinion based on practical experience.

But back to the topic of this part of the discussion. I couldn't give a tinker's damn about Steve Job's personality. Genius isn't always packaged in Sainthood. Einstein liked to get some strange now and then. Edison Electrocuted elephants (although that one does fry me) Point is, If you want a saint, worship Ghandi or Mother Theresa - but they had their issues also. And if it's really important that the CEO of your computer company have no faults, don't buy from Apple.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[Ol Olsoc]

Open one of their computers up one day and observe the components, look for blown capacitors, look at the obscure designs of the boards, and KNOW THIS, they are using regular PC components and technology and have been for a long time.

If you are referring to the infamous Rubycon disaster, That was not limited to Mac's. I've replaced caps in many Dells, and several other Non-Mac PC's built in that time frame.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[Ol Olsoc]

No. Jobs was a snake oil salesman and you are just trying to repeat his sales pitches.

Did you also know that Steve Jobs:

Skinned live puppies and made merkins for the Swedish Mafia out of them?

Steve Jobs went to classrooms around the nation and undid all of the important self esteem work the teachers were doing, and is responsible for all the emo kids?

He manipulated real estate data, single handedly causing the housing crisis and the resulting worldwide recession?

Stole the president's birth certificate, and refused to return it?

pooped in the Pope's ruby red slippers.

What an evil bad man this Steve Jobs was.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[Ol Olsoc]

I'm glad to know I'm not crazy. I also have to use a mac from time to time at work, and everything about it just seems so unproductive to me.

I use both. They are just different. Most people who can't seem to figure out Mac are just trying to force the Mac to operate like the Windows PC.

In short, do you get in an automatic transmission vehicle and declare it stupid because there isn't a clutch pedal?

Given that it's touted as the pinnacle of user design,

I was beginning to think there was something wrong with me for not being able to see it that way.

Well, I wouldn't say something was wrong with you, but really, expecting every machine to operate identically is a bit much. If you think your argument is valid, then a person who used Macs all their life, switched over to a Windows machine, and said it was "unproductive" - their argument would be just as valid. It's different. Different is not worse or better. I can do the same things on my Macs as I can on my PCs. And it's not all that hard to switch between them.

I especially love the super sleek mouse our designer uses. It's so sleek, symmetrical, and wireless, you can't even tell which way is front until you notice your cursor movement is inverted or not!

Can't see that little gray Apple logo on the bottom, eh? You really would have hated that hockey puck they shipped with early iMacs (it was a real monstrosity - there were aftermarket clip on doo-dads that made it look sort of like a real mouse. Anyhow, there are several Apple mouses, and any USB mouse on the market that will work just as well or better, according to your tastes.

side note: I did get thrown by a "mouse" one time - a woman needed some computer help on her Mac, and she had this crazy thing that had an actual pool ball that fit into a cradle, and you used it almost like an upside down mouse, spinning the cue ball around. Then you'd click along the side. It pretty much immobilized your arm.

I really appreciate a good UI that stays out of my way and lets me get my job done quickly and efficiently. I am all for the values Apple is going for in their products. I just don't think macs hold up to that standard is all.

Perhaps. I think that perhaps you are a little rigid in your outlook. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it can get in the way of ease of use and adaptability. Most of your complaints have been of the mechanical variety. And as for Command line - give me a Unix shell any day.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[HermMunster]

I've been in this industry for over 25 years. I've used Apples from the beginning. I have kept up on developments of the industry for that long at least. Apple licensed it from Xerox and it is hard to understand how they couldn't have known what they were licensing.

You probably need to go back and read some of the history written by those involved in it. There's plenty. Apple visited Xerox and played with the devices, etc. Both Jobs and Gates admit to taking from Xerox. Apple did a cya by licensing it.

Apple did try to sue Microsoft for copyright on the interface elements many years later. They lost. You just can't copyright certain things such as the feel of a chair or carpet or the dash of a car. You can't do the same with a computer software interface nor with the look of a machine.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[Lisias]

Yeah I am no Apple fan, but it is hard to argue with their revenue numbers and branding success.
For better or worse the Apple of the past died. Is Jobs culpable for that death? Perhaps.

I'm a huge Apple II fan (still have mine! and use it!), but computers don't live forever, and the Apple //e was already the ugly duck on the home computer party at that time. From the best computer of an era, it became one of the technically worst by Apple Computer negligence.

It was the open architecture (and a bunch of stubborn god damned good programmers) that saved the Apple II line from oblivion.

The Apple IIgs could had give some more time to the architecture, but Jobs were obsessed with the Lisa/Macintosh project and, well, undermined the product to prevent it to run against the Mac.

The Mac is a good machine at its own merits, however (I have a old Quadra here. Impressive). But I also think that IIgs could had found its own lucrative niche and, so, giving Apple another source of revenue.

Jobs was not that wrong on the Macintosh idea. What I fail to understand is why he needed to sacrifice the Apple Computer's cash cow (Apple II line) in order to reach his Mac vision. Apple Computer probably would not had run in all that financial problems, at first place.

But this is all done, and doesn't matter nowadays anyway.

Perhaps not, but I believe Steve would have found the money, he always did. The Apple money was used up before NeXT took off.

Without the huge success of the Apple II, the true is that Jobs would not reached the money guys.

Apple II popped up Apple Computer to the stars. When Jobs gone for funding NeXT, he already had Apple Computer on the Curriculum. I don't think he would get the money he got without this on his Résumé.

Remove Jobs and there is no Apple in the past, Woz stays at HP.

Without any doubt, you're right here. Woz is a great engineer. Not a business man.

Remove Woz and perhaps there would be no Apple and we would have had Pixar earlier or something else, who knows.

The odds are against you (I think no one would give so much money to Jobs if he didn't co-founded Apple Computer), but anyway, who knows? You may be right: there already existed Angel Investor at that time, it's not impossible that Jobs could find one.

But we would know one Steve no matter what, and that is Jobs.

No doubt about it.

But, honestly, some of us will remember Woz more foundly.

I will. I'm an engineer.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[Aighearach]

I thought it was, Woz built the computer in his home office, and the garage involved was Jobs's parents' where they started the business.

The iPod is a copy of the Sony Walkman?! That is the best you do?? I would have thought he copied the Diamond Rio or the Creative Labs Nomad.

Actually if it wasn't for Jobs, Woz probably would have founded the Open Hardware movement instead of getting rich.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[Aighearach]

Are you going to clean up that mess, or just leave his head there on the floor?

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[tilante]

You might want to go back and read the history written by those involved yourself. Specifically, the stories on folklore.org, written by people who participated in the creation of the Macintosh. The bit about not knowing that Xerox's interface didn't allow drawing into a covered window and didn't automatically redraw parts of windows when they were uncovered comes from there. (Specifically, from the story "On Xerox, Apple, and Progress", written by Bruce Horn -- who worked first at Xerox, then later at Apple.)

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[Aighearach]

Kids don't need manuals. If they read them it is for entertainment. Duh.

Re:No one at Apple listens to that Steve anymore

[gohmifune]

Didn't he buy Pixar from Lucas?

Good luck with all that

[ddd0004]

This will never happen. They've built their current empire by tightening control. They are not going to turn a 180..

Yeah, I'm tired of the propeller/command key.

[jcburns]

....let's just go back to that Open Apple key instead. That's what Woz said, right?

Re:Yeah, I'm tired of the propeller/command key.

[Lisias]

Funny enough, I agree with you.

I miss the "Open/Apple" and "Closed/Apple" command keys. :-)

Gillette Razor Model?

[rullywowr]

I suppose the notion of Apple becoming more open to modifiers, tinkerers, hardware/software enthusiasts, and lowly programmers would be akin to Gillette giving away the plans and patents to its razor cartridges.

Re:Gillette Razor Model?

[ArsonSmith]

It is hard to tell the guy backing up the dump trucks full of cash into his drive way that he's doing it wrong. If you're ideas are better, why aren't you backing the dump trucks of cash up into your driveway.

Re:Gillette Razor Model?

[Gilmoure]

Or we all switch back to double edge safety razors.

Re:Gillette Razor Model?

[idontgno]

That begs the question that "balance sheets are the best scorecards".

I understand that is the conventional wisdom; anyone who questions that is generally viewed as some kind of heretic, hippy, or anarchist.

Question the premise and you allow points of view like Woz's, or Stallman's, or anyone who argues for more social responsibility and ecological awareness. But demand that every answer results in "MAKE MOAR MONEYS" and we wind up with shiny traps, tragically-abused commons, and proprietary ownership of almost anything that was once public domain.

So, yeah, society definitely needs to outgrow the "Wealth is proof of correctness" mindset.

Re:Gillette Razor Model?

[CastrTroy]

I used to use only Gilette Mach 3. Then I started to get really annoyed with the price. So I started buying the cheapest thing I could find and try progressively more expensive until I found one that worked well. What I settled on was this model, from Schick. At just over a $1 a razor, it's quite a bit cheaper than Mach 3 blades, which are almost $2.50 a piece. Also I find they last at least as long, if not longer. I usually use a razor for a month at a time, and then switch. Sometimes I'll go longer if I'm feeling particularly frugal.

Re:Gillette Razor Model?

[Gilmoure]

I've used the Mach 3 as well, for at least ten years but man, the blade price really started getting to me. Was also getting shaving bumps on my neck. Read something about getting away from modern shaving gels which can dry out skin and the multiple blade thing scraping up skin so decided to try the old DE. After 4 months, I'm hooked. Am only on my second blade ($6.00 / 10 German blades) too.

Re:Gillette Razor Model?

[maxwell demon]

So you think there's no middle ground between making shitloads of money and being broke?

Can't have it both ways

[Aggrav8d]

"However, Wozniak qualified his desire for a more open Apple by arguing that openness should not impinge on the quality of the products themselves"

The moment it is opened to others it will turn into the same mess that Windows has. Keeping the hardware closed makes development & support manageable. There's a reason nobody listens. This idea is dumb.

Re:Can't have it both ways

[Analog Penguin]

Opening the hardware is one thing, but Woz was also talking about software. Allowing more third-party access to Apple's "calendar world, their contact world" would hardly increase support complexity, but it would sure make it harder to leave the Apple ecosystem.

Re:Can't have it both ways

[SJHillman]

Yeah, it's great that Apple's tight lock and key has given it 90% marketshare over the last decade or two while Microsoft caters to a 10-15% niche because of their crappy mess... oh, wait...

Re:Can't have it both ways

[Microlith]

Except that you're under the assumption that he means to put iOS on other hardware. I suspect he means "stop being assholes about people who want to put arbitrary software on their devices" instead.

Re:Can't have it both ways

[iluvcapra]

Apple does open source their calendar and contact servers.

Re:Can't have it both ways

[Aggrav8d]

Your sarcasm (like most sarcasm) is confusing. Apple market share IS enormous and they're doing great. What are you trying to say?

Re:Can't have it both ways

[Aggrav8d]

No, I meant "don't let people be assholes and install whatever they want or modify their hardware however they like." Or maybe "Let them, but instantly void their warranty. Don't put up with that shit." Apple has no interest in adding iOS to other devices unless they design said devices. Goes right back to the manageable support issue.

Re:Can't have it both ways

[khipu]

The moment it is opened to others it will turn into the same mess that Windows has.

The Windows mess has little to do with hardware variability, and everything with poor design and poor implementation. And that's a result of how Microsoft is a bunch of competing internal fiefdoms, all of which are looking out for their own best interest, rather than a great user experience (a Microsoft breakup would have been the best thing that could have happened to them).

Technically, Apple could easily release OS X for PCs, and simply require PC makers to make compatible hardware with no (or only approved) drivers. PC makers would fall all over themselves to comply. The reason Apple doesn't do that is because it would destroy the mystique that they have and erode the obscene profit margins on their hardware.

Re:Can't have it both ways

[kebes]

I disagree. Yes, there are tensions between openness/hackability/configurability/variability and stability/manageability/simplicity. However, the existence of certain tradeoffs doesn't mean that Apple couldn't make a more open product in some ways without hampering their much-vaunted quality.

One way to think about this question to analyze whether a given open/non-open decision is motivated by quality or by money. A great many of the design decisions that are being made are not in the pursuit of a perfect product, but are part of a business strategy (lock-in, planned obsolescence, upselling of other products, DRM, etc.). I'm not just talking about Apple, this is true very generally. Examples:
- Having a single set of hardware to support does indeed make software less bloated and more reliable. That's fair. Preventing users from installing new hardware (at their own risk) would not be fair.
- Similarly, having a restricted set of software that will be officially supported is fine. Preventing any 'unauthorized' software from running on a device a user has purchased is not okay. The solution is to simply provide a checkbox that says "Allow 3rd party sources (I understand this comes with risks)" which is what Android does but iOS does not.
- Removing seldom-used and complex configuration options from a product is a good way to make it simpler and more user-friendly. But you can easily promote openness without making the product worse by leaving configuration options available but less obvious (e.g. accessed via commandline flags or a text config file).
- Building a product in a non-user-servicable way (no screws, only adhesives, etc.) might be necessary if you're trying to make a product extremely thin and slick.
- Conversely, using non-standard screws, or using adhesives/etc. where screws would have been just as good, is merely a way to extract money from customers (forcing them to pay for servicing or buy new devices rather than fix old hardware).
- Using bizarre, non-standard, and obfuscated file formats or directory/data-structures can in some cases be necessary in order to achieve a goal (e.g. performance). However in most cases it's actually used to lock-in the user (prevent user from directly accessing data, prevent third-party tools from working). E.g. the way that iPods appear to store the music files and metadata is extremely complex, at least last time I checked (all files are renamed, so you can't simply copy files to-and-from the device). The correct solution is to use open formats. In cases where you absolutely can't use an established standard, the right thing to do is to release all your internal docs so that others can easily build upon it or extend it.

To summarize: yes, there are cases where making a product more 'open' will decrease its quality in other ways. But, actually, there are many examples where you can leave the option for openness/interoperability without affecting the as-sold quality of the product. (Worries about 'users breaking their devices and thus harming our image' do not persuade; the user owns the device and ultimately we're talking about experience users and third-party developers.) So, we should at least demand that companies make their products open in all those 'low-hanging-fruit' cases. We can then argue in more detail about fringe cases where there is really a openness/quality tradeoff.

Re:Can't have it both ways

[Capt.DrumkenBum]

Apple could easily release OS X for PCs, and simply require PC makers to make compatible hardware

Apple is NOT a software company! Apple tried this once before and nearly destroyed themselves.
Personally I believe one of the main reasons that Apple stuff (mostly) works as advertized is because they don't have to deal with 1000 different video cards, 50 different sound cards, 100 different motherboards... Etc.

Re:Can't have it both ways

[Microlith]

I meant "don't let people be assholes and install whatever they want or modify their hardware however they like."

Wait, so an end-user doing that makes the end-user an asshole, but the vendor preventing that doesn't? What does that make the vendor, a patron saint?

Or maybe "Let them, but instantly void their warranty. Don't put up with that shit."

Refuse software support until they revert to stock I could understand. Voiding the warranty as a whole is just spiteful.

Apple has no interest in adding iOS to other devices unless they design said devices

And I don't think anyone has suggested they should.

Re:Can't have it both ways

[Aggrav8d]

> Wait, so an end-user doing that makes the end-user an asshole, but the vendor preventing that doesn't? What does that make the vendor, a patron saint? I didn't say anything about what it makes the vendor. Why do you jump to conclusions?

> Refuse software support until they revert to stock I could understand. Voiding the warranty as a whole is just spiteful.
Sure, refuse support. Then when they fumble the original stuff back in, offer support again in spite of whatever damage they've caused. You're very generous with other people's time & money.

>>> Except that you're under the assumption that he means to put iOS on other hardware.
>> Apple has no interest in adding iOS to other devices unless they design said devices
> And I don't think anyone has suggested they should.
You did, when you assumed I was making an assumption. Which I wasn't.

Re:Can't have it both ways

[Aggrav8d]

What you call hardware lock-in I call "really guys, I wouldn't have to do this if you stopped trying to jimmy with these things. If you take it to some discount fixit guy who does a number on it and then try to bring it back I'm going to tell you your warranty is void. Since you don't seem to be listening, I'm going to make everyone's life more difficult just to get you to cut that out."

What you call software lock-in I call DRM. Your "correct" solution is a low-hanging fruit of the poisoned apple variety - for every developer that can now successfully alter the system there's a thousand tech support calls from mr. clueless who read something on a forum, tried to circumvent the DRM, and has now bricked their device. No no no no no. If you're such a good developer then Apple's little tricks won't stand in your way.

Re:Can't have it both ways

[CastrTroy]

The reason they don't, is because they don't want 150 different models of Macs for people to choose from. Look at how many Samsung Galaxy phones/tablets there are. People are much more likely to buy if they understand what product they are actually buying. With the iPhone, you get 2 things to figure out. Black or White, and then storage space 16GB, 32GB, or 64 GB. That's it. Same goes for their laptops, desktops, and a tablets. Simple choices. Don't confuse people. Let people know what they are buying. HP / Lenovo / Dell /Samsung/ HTC and all the others could learn quite a bit from looking at Apple in this perspective.

Re:Can't have it both ways

[gtall]

Spoken like someone who has no respect for software. Software costs money, integrating it with hardware seamlessly costs money. If you don't wish to pay for that, please, buy anything else you like.

Re:Can't have it both ways

[Aggrav8d]

How is hardware variability not a design decision? They limited the choices to improve the design. Windows never did and thus we have a boatload of APIs and driver issues and configuration options... just look at the sound cards, every company comes out with something different for setting up positional audio and adjusting your audio style and who knows what else. It's a design disaster. Giving third parties the right to do the same would result is the exact same mess. Oh well the specs called for this, but we added extra features to be more competitive. So users could REALLY take advantage of it we'd need a new config panel branded in our unique style and OMG we're back to MS.

Microsoft breaking up is a stupid idea on the face of it. If the fiefdoms are bad, how does making each department into a separate company make it any better? Who at MS is in charge of overall design? No one. There's your real problem. The biggest concern I have about Apple now is they've lost their head designer and no one has really stepped in to replace him. I worry the design teams will argue, fracture, and turn into MS.

Re:Can't have it both ways

[djdanlib]

Windows' mess has everything to do with backwards compatibility. If they could break that without angering their 90% market share, they'd go nuts. Go ahead and browse through something like http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing and check out all the horrible duct tape and shims that are in place to preserve old apps.

Technically OS/X IS for PCs. The hardware is the same. Intel x86 processors, same as any Windows desktop. Same onboard audio hardware, same video cards, same everything. The difference is the standard driver quality being much better (since there are comparatively few to maintain) and the backwards compatibility isn't there. You can dual, triple, whatever boot it with other OSes.

I really don't understand the hype. Neither option is particularly special.

Re:Can't have it both ways

[Microlith]

Learn to quote.

I didn't say anything about what it makes the vendor. Why do you jump to conclusions?

Because you called the end user an asshole for wanting to do as they wished.

Only assholes do as they wish. Good people do as they're told. Right?

Sure, refuse support. Then when they fumble the original stuff back in, offer support again in spite of whatever damage they've caused.

Or acknowledge that people are going to want to wander outside of the walled garden. Give them a clean out and provide a scorched earth method of getting back to base.

You're very generous with other people's time & money.

And playing control freak to protect the richest company in the world's cash supply is... what now?

Re:Can't have it both ways

[Aggrav8d]

Ah, did you assume I was calling YOU an asshole? Did I break your bones with my sticks and stones? Would you scribble a mustache on a gallery portrait? Odds are your changes will NOT improve the product. If it did, you could sell it to Apple.

Of course you can wander outside the garden! Just don't expect Apple to help you if you fuck up. You knew the risks and now you're crying like a baby for help. Welcome to the real world.

I'm not protecting anybody. I'm explaining their point of view and why I agree with it. Your argument seems to be "I'm the customer and I'm always right! A company that's become successful should abandon it's successful methods to please me!". The first part's a tautology. The second is naive bordering on stupid.

I'll learn to quote when I want to spend all day arguing on the internet. Good day, sir.

Re:Can't have it both ways

[maxwell demon]

Oh, the Open Source UIs are fine. It's only that brain development hasn't yet caught up with them. :-)

Re:Can't have it both ways

[khipu]

Giving third parties the right to do the same would result is the exact same mess.

There really isn't much of a difference. Windows machines usually come preinstalled with every driver they need. Whether it's Dell or Microsoft worrying about that really doesn't matter. And Apple, internally, has lots of driver and configuration variety as well, and like Dell, they just deal with it so you don't have to.

More importantly, both OSes have a huge number of different USB-based devices you can plug into them. The fact that Windows deals so much more poorly with that than OS X (or even Linux!) is bad Windows product design.

If the fiefdoms are bad, how does making each department into a separate company make it any better?

Because in the current situation, the decisions that each major fiefdom makes are binding for the rest of the company. The people working on the desktop can't say "the new IE sucks, we're going with Chrome", and Microsoft management is apparently incapable of calling the right shots. Breaking Microsoft up would force these different parts to compete on merit, not on the basis of power.

Apple now is they've lost their head designer and no one has really stepped in to replace him. I worry the design teams will argue, fracture, and turn into MS.

I don't like Apple, so I won't shed any tears.

Apple clones?

[cpu6502]

Did they already try this in the 90s by selling the Apple Mac form factor, standards to other manufacturers? It didn't really work out well for them.

Re:Apple clones?

[phillymjs]

It didn't work out well then because the Mac was Apple's primary source of revenue. Not so anymore.

Specifically, what happened back then was that the cloners were supposed to take the low end of the market that Apple didn't want. Instead, at least one of them went balls-to-the-wall and made some machines that were faster than Apple's fastest. They began to hit Apple right in the bottom line, which is why almost immediately upon his return Jobs used a contract loophole to kill the clone program.

Personally, I would love to see Apple open up for at least some things. I can understand to a degree that they don't want consumers running OS X on non-Apple hardware, but since they don't sell enterprise-class servers anymore I think they should officially allow, certify, and fully support installation and virtualization of OS X Server on at least a limited selection of non-Apple hardware.

Re:Apple clones?

[betterunixthanunix]

They do not need to go that far. They can just drop the "only software we approved" system, end the censorship, and let people control their computers.

Re:Apple clones?

[jedidiah]

People get confused with the various ways that you can define "open".

Apple has lowered everyone's expectations so you're no longer talking about open access to source code. Now the problem is that you can't even install the binaries of your own choosing.

This is much more restrictive than any other general computing platform ever. It's more restrictive than Microsoft and it's more restrictive than the old Apple.

Something like Plex becomes "rogue software".

Re:Apple clones?

[NatasRevol]

Why should they?

There are already other options to do that.

They make more money than anyone else - revenues and profits.

They control their destiny rather than relying on someone else.

Re:Apple clones?

[betterunixthanunix]

This is much more restrictive than any other general computing platform ever

I am not sure that is true; consider how bad things were before PCs:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_computing

At least you do not have to pay Apple by the month to use an iPad.

Re:Apple clones?

[uglyduckling]

I think this will happen, further down the line. I think they will eventually release a 'server only' OSX that doesn't come with iLife and costs in the medium hundreds, so that there's little advantage to buying a third party machine for personal and small business use (because of the cost of the software) whilst encouraging medium-size audio, photography and video businesses to stick with Apple/OSX/iOS as a platform.

Re:Apple clones?

[betterunixthanunix]

It is a matter of what is best for the rest of society. Computers are basically the most important communication tool in industrialized nations, and we have every right to expect that our computers will do what we want them to do -- without first having to ask permission from the person who made the computer. Apple has already shown that they are willing to use their power over the app store to engage in political censorship. How can we have a free society if our ability to communicate can be hampered?

Sure, it is "not so bad" -- it is not as if iProducts will filter your web results, though there is nothing stopping Apple from doing such a thing -- but it is an attack on free expression. Just because there are other options out there does not mean that Apple should not be criticized; they are extremely powerful as a corporation and they are a market leader.

Re:Apple clones?

[NatasRevol]

How many businesses do what is best for the rest of society?

Do other market leaders act like that, such as Microsoft? IBM? Oracle? PeopleSoft? VMware? Dell? Lenovo?

On a tangent, since when do you get to decide what is best for the rest of society?

Re:Apple clones?

[RatherBeAnonymous]

At the time, I think that Apple was not prepared to become a pure software company. If they had continued down that road, and the clone makers would have forced the issue, they would have been going head-to-head against Microsoft as a desktop OS vendor. I think Jobs was just not ready to do that, but I think Apple could have usurped widows as the standard consumer desktop. I think they want to remain the big fish in a small pond.

We have an X-serve at work. Trust me when I say that Apple has NEVER made enterprise class servers. There simply is no technical excuse for Apple to not license OSX server to run as a virtual machine on non-apple hardware. VMWare and Parallels are ready to do it. I saw a reply from Parallels customer service where they essentially said that they had the technology working to allow direct installs of OSX on non-Apple hardware. But, they won't release it because that would violate their agreements and upset Apple. Again, I don't think Apple wants to be in the big server market. This is really frustrating for me because I end up having to rig up solutions because Apple won't sell me the software or servers I need from them

Re:Apple clones?

[Microlith]

It's more restrictive than Microsoft

Don't worry, Microsoft is not one to be left behind. In fact, this has been a long time goal of Microsoft.

They're getting into the lock-down pool with Metro, the WinRT API, and Windows RT.

Re:Apple clones?

[Microlith]

Apple has to be paid for -any- 3rd party software. They just shifted the cost on to the developers. I imagine they'll shift even more to the cloud in the future, at which point you'll pay by the month or your device will be crippled.

Re:Apple clones?

[betterunixthanunix]

Believe me, I have no doubt about any of that; my point was only that Apple has not yet gotten as bad as IBM was in the 60s and 70s.

Re:Apple clones?

[gnasher719]

Apple has to be paid for -any- 3rd party software. They just shifted the cost on to the developers. I imagine they'll shift even more to the cloud in the future, at which point you'll pay by the month or your device will be crippled.

Apple will absolutely distribute your software for free - if you agree to give it away to end users at no cost. You may also try to find a way to distribute your non-free software at lower cost to the same size of audience; good luck with that.

Re:Apple clones?

[CastrTroy]

The problem right now is that there's no way for the computer to distinguish between "do what we want them to do" and "do what we TELL them to do". For many people it is a big problem that running arbitrary binaries can open their computer up to all kinds of viruses/malware/failure. So Apple took away the ability for people to run arbitrary binaries on their iPod/iPad/iPhone products because users of these products for the most part are incapable of deciding what is and what isn't a proper program to tell their computer to execute. If you want to run arbitrary binaries, there's still other platforms. Get a MacBook if you really want to run arbitrary binaries. I'm convinced that the Apple model is better for 99% of the population. After seeing a "trending" rip of off Mario Kart for Android on the Google Marketplace, which required just about every access right they could ask for, including the ability to send text messages, make phone calls, and access your contact list, along with the wonderful user comments about how well the game plays, despite the fact that many were aware that it contained malware, but thell still gave it a pretty good rating overall because it played so well, proves to me that for the most part, people should be on the Apple model of approved only binaries.

Re:Apple clones?

[EvilBudMan]

Yep, Apple may be on top now as are many other closed systems, but over time the open ones win out eventually. WOZ is right about that.

Re:Apple clones?

[Microlith]

Apple will absolutely distribute your software for free - if you agree to give it away to end users at no cost.

Only after they get their $99 fee, and you win their approval.

You may also try to find a way to distribute your non-free software at lower cost to the same size of audience; good luck with that.

Well, since Apple bars users from doing anything they don't permit, yeah, good luck with that.

Re:Apple clones?

[Hieronymus Howard]

OS X has little to recommend itself on servers. Whilst OS X is undoubtedly 'Desktop Unix Done Right', it also seems to be 'Server Unix Done Wrong'. Any of the commercial *nixes, Linux or even one of the BSDs would probably be a better choice for most people.

I say this having been running a small OS X server for around 7 years and am now switching to Ubuntu. The only thing that I really prefer about OS X over Linux on a server is it uses the very nicely designed BSD firewall, rather than iptables.

On the desktop it's a different matter and I still prefer my Macs to my Linux Mint PCs.

Re:Apple clones?

[uglyduckling]

I think those who use OSX for rendering video, audio and 3D graphics over distributed rendering nodes would disagree with you. Many creative professionals have banks of (now ageing) X-Serves which they're having to replace with Mac Pros because it's the only high-end box that Apple sell. Recording studios often have banks of servers for running virtual instruments (like complex virtual orchestras) which would historically have been Macs. If Apple don't come up with a decent solution for them, Windows (not another Unix) will replace those in the back room, and inevitably the studios and desks too. The main thing that's keeping creative professionals on Apple kit is that their notebooks are so darn good. But Dell et al are catching up, largely by releasing near-clones of Apple style hardware.

Re:Apple clones?

[uglyduckling]

But you can't legally (EULA) or easily install it on third-party hardware. I expect Apple to wake up and change that sometimes soon, as they're effectively abandoning the server market. I know about the Hackintosh community, but businesses generally don't want to spend time making software work on unsupported hardware.

This just in!

[JustAnotherIdiot]

Steve Wozniak is now open for employment.

Re:This just in!

[sideslash]

I'm sure he's always open to another round of Segway polo, or buying a new cell phone to add to his collection, or hanging out with school kids and doing his best attempt at an inspiring lecture (he's not great at it, but everybody loves him anyway because he is a permanent duke of geekdom), or maybe just going home and rolling around in a big pile of cash.

He's definitely not looking for employment.

Re:This just in!

[Bigby]

Not just any cash; but $2 bills

Re:Good luck with that

[mark-t]

Woz? Judas? I'm not sure I follow the comparison.

Mr. Wozniak didn't betray Apple. Apple was growing in a different direction than the kind of environment where he was continuing to feel useful. His options of remaining with Apple were apparently to either continue being an engineer at Apple where he didn't feel he was contributing much, since Apple had well over a hundred engineeers at that point, or to move into a management position, but he did not want to move into management because he liked being an engineer. The only thing he felt he could reasonably do, while being true to his own following, was to resign.

Re:Good luck with that

[GameboyRMH]

It doesn't make much sense to me either but Apple fanboys sure don't like him. He's basically repeating what the FLOSS crowd has been saying for years.

not gonna happen

[pak9rabid]

He also sees any change of heart on openness as a challenge when Apple continues to rake in huge cash with its current model.

This....this is why it won't be happening for the foreseeable future.

Censorship

[betterunixthanunix]

Apple's lock down lost any claim to credibility when they started censoring political cartoons. This is about control and ultimately cash flow, not quality.

Re:Censorship

[Aggrav8d]

How is quality not a cash flow issue? Good products sell better.
Credibility with who? You? So what?

Re:Censorship

[_8553454222834292266]

Their censorship and control make the product worse, but possibly increase cash flow.

Good product sell better

If your definition of "good" is based only on sales...

Re:Censorship

[Aggrav8d]

Telling me what I think is rude, stupid, or both.

I design products. I'm very familiar with carefully limiting user choice to increase product quality and overall user satisfaction. I would love to give you everything under the sun but I'd reach a point of diminishing returns and quality as a whole would go down. Want more choice? Buy from someone else. Control = Quality = Sales.

Put your money where your mouth is and design something better than an Apple product that has less censorship. Then we can continue this conversation. Until then Good day, sir.

Re:Censorship

[Lisias]

you really don't mind what content you consume, as long as it's consumed on a quality device, I'm right?

I may be wrong, but I prefer quality content being consumed on a good enough device.

I do not condone censorship, no matter the excuse.

Re:Censorship

[Aggrav8d]

Making assumptions about my ideologies and putting words in my mouth is a form of censorship. For the record I'm not in favor of censorship and I'll consume any content, regardless of medium.
How many cases of Apple censorship have there been, in total? "That's not the point! We need to open Apple up because they could censor us!" Fine. Stop the online circlejerk, go buy some Apple stock, and submit a motion at the shareholder's meeting.

Re:Good luck with that

[Gilmoure]

Where is this criticism for Woz? I haven't been on slashdot as long as some but haven't really run across anyone dissing him. If anything, people still hold him up for his cool tech tricks he used in Apple/AppleII.

Re:Cut the Apple Open!

[belthize]

Better not, you'll find a disturbing number of internet worms and find it's rotten to the core.

Woz is a moron when it comes to business

[Anonymous Coward]

If it weren't for Jobs then Woz would still be working at HP

Re:Woz is a moron when it comes to business

[Lisias]

+1 Informative.

I'm Woz fan, but not a blinded one. :-)

Re:Never gonna happen

[dkleinsc]

I could imagine an Apple under Woz turning out much the same way as the Bell Labs story: Lots of world-changing technology, very little profit.

Jobs and Woz needed each other to make Apple a reality. Jobs needed Woz to have really cool products to sell early on - without Woz, he either would have ended up yet another commune-dwelling hippie, or maybe yet another marketing jerk in a suit (like That Guy in Futurama). Woz needed Jobs to go independent and sell his stuff on a mass scale - without Jobs, he'd probably be happily designing stuff for HP or some other big firm and playing with hardware tinkering and open-source software in his spare time.

Jobs is marketing, Woz is engineering

[Opportunist]

And that's pretty much the problem. As much as I hate it and as much as I think it's terribly, terribly wrong, what made Apple big is marketing, not engineering. And that's not trying to bash Apple, it's what you can easily see when you follow Apple's history. It was a niche product while they relied on engineering. It was a great product, well engineered, with a lot of technical innovations. As soon as they moved towards design and gadgets, in other words, as soon as they went for flashy and gimmicky instead of technical innovation, people started flocking to them.

Woz, as much as I agree with you, I'd sad to say that this would be a bad move for Apple. It would certainly endear Apple again to engineers, but financially it would not be beneficial.

Re:Jobs is marketing, Woz is engineering

[uglyduckling]

I disagree. The original iPod was an engineering feat. I know all the technology was already available, but that's the point of engineering - to do something clever and slick that works really, really well, by seeing and understanding what other people have missed. Same for the original iMac - it was a design and engineering triumph, totally iconic. The marketing was there too, but both are needed. See the Commodore Amiga for an example of great engineering and crummy marketing - and also the desire to maintain backwards compatibility holding back what could have been an amazing line of computers.

Re:Jobs is marketing, Woz is engineering

[k6mfw]

From those early days (late 1970s) there were zillion computer companies in USA (i.e. Ohio Scientific). In later 1980s most pretty much disappeared (along with the S-100 bus among other things). Someone said back then reason most went out of business was lousy customer service. Someone has problems with the computer, they call the company but response would be "that's your own tough s---." I'm sure that is not the only reason though once a company becomes a monopoly, they would not do that (they simply put customer service in other countries). However, those early days of first getting into computers I was amazed when I picked up one of those early Apple II manuals, "wow you can actually read this!" As compared to IBM 360 manuals which were big, thick, and scary.

Re:Jobs is marketing, Woz is engineering

[EvilBudMan]

In a way Apple is already doing this with H.264. They are more compliant than Android here. People will not pay for 50% profit margins forever, therefore open wins in the end.

Re:Jobs is marketing, Woz is engineering

[EvilBudMan]

Yeah, that and the deal Apple had and still has with the media companies, but now they are seeing cheaper rivals in that area like Amazon and Google.

VMWare

[Mente]

I'd settle for being able to install OS X on VMWare without hosting the VMWare hypervisor on a Mac Server 3.1 which they haven't made since Jan 2011. Yes, I understand that its possible, but not without violating EULAs of both VMWare and Apple.

I'd love to be able to run OS X in my VDI cluster.

The real motive...

[Anonymous Coward]

Woz wants Apple to open up so that OSX can make a difference where Linux failed. OSX is the best OS out there today with no doubt. The Apple "Tax" is stopping many from seeing all the virtues of OSX and Woz wants to change that. It's that simple.

Re:The real motive...

[betterunixthanunix]

where Linux failed

Where is that? We have a free/libre operating system that is useful and secure, which supports modern features and which is widely used. GNU/Linux showed the world that you can have a good operating system without proprietary licensing.

OSX is the best OS out there today with no doubt

I will raise some doubts about that. I need an OS that is not going to try to thwart me when I debug programs:

https://blogs.oracle.com/ahl/entry/mac_os_x_and_the

I also need an OS that will not refuse to run on hardware that was not produced by Apple.

Sure, there is room for improvement with GNU/Linux; that is not a result of deliberate efforts to prevent users from doing what they want to do.

Re:The real motive...

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux is not an Operating System, it's just a kernel.

I dare you to try and run a linux application on any random linux box without having to compile something or seek out dependancies. It just doesn't work unless you're hardcore nerd or engineer.

The same can be said about FreeBSD and Solaris, If you're not a nerd or engineer, using these operating systems are impossible for joe-average.

Basically you have Windows which works on 10 year old hardware if you have the patience, otherwise it comes with most new software, and nearly all applications work without having to install additional crap to make it work. MacOS X (and iOS) likewise don't require anything else to make an app work.

Once Linux/FreeBSD/etc get over this hump, it might work as a viable desktop, but right now, you can't even take make two minor versions of the same software work without having to recompile or update every dependancy, often at great time expense. If, nerds think this is a problem, imagine how many unpatched non-windows/non-Apple hardware is out there. Sure yes Linux and FreeBSD might run for years without a reboot, that doesn't mean that it's secure, just that it has much lower surface area for an attack vector than Windows and OS X.

Anyway, I bring up the same thing every time someone trots out the "Linux is better" argument. It's only better to people like Woz, because it's hackable. Apple's current hardware is far in the other direction where it's easy to use, easier than Windows. Windows only advantage is that it had the first mover advantage, much like iOS does now in the tablet space. Everyone built stuff for Dos/Win3.x 20 years ago (back when the Amiga , Atari and several other brands of Intel based PC existed) because it's the cheapest and most popular platform at the time. An equivilent Amiga or Mac back then was two or three times the cost, but did a lot more.

My how times have changed and now the PC is the versatile hackable box, and everything from Apple except the Mac Pro is a pain in the ass to hack on.

But hey, as long as Intel keeps trotting out high TDP chips, that leaves open the door for Apple to replace their laptop and desktop systems with ARM chips too. It wouldn't surprise me if they do this at some point, but really why aren't all CPU's equipped to use ECC ram and have 2watt TDP, not this asinine 135watt TDP non-ECC parts Intel keeps making.

Re:The real motive...

[Archangel Michael]

Name a version/distro that "Just works". And by "Just works" I mean wireless is easy to configure so that My Mother-in-Law can use it without being Root. And have programs that don't look like Crap that "just work". Don't get me wrong, I love and use Linux, but getting Mom, Dad and the kids on Linux. I've tried supporting them on Linux and it is easier to setup Windows 7 so that they can't hurt themselves and let them go than it is to support Linux. It just is.

Ubuntu is close but Drivers still are an issue, and I've not liked the UI changes of late ...

Re:The real motive...

[Jonner]

The issue is hardware support. If you buy a Mac, Apple has made sure the hardware works with their drivers. Machines sold with Windows usually work well because either Microsoft or the manufacturer has made sure the drivers and hardware are compatible. If you installing an OS on a machine which was sold with a different OS, you can never expect the same level of hardware compatibility. Try installing OSX on a machine sold with Windows. Installing Windows on most Macs today will work, but some of the devices like internal video might not be fully functional.

If you buy a computer from a vendor that supports Ubuntu or other GNU/Linux distribution, it can "just work." I convinced my sister to buy a Dell laptop with Ubuntu and she saved a lot of money compared to similar hardware with Windows. It hasn't been perfect in every respect, but there have not been problems with driver compatibility. Also don't forget about the millions of Android phones that "just work" without their users even knowing what Linux is.

Re:The real motive...

[Ant P.]

OSX is the best OS out there today with no doubt.

These kinds of claims make it all the more pathetic that the only users to ever have difficulty connecting to my wifi network had an iPod Touch and OS X 10.[4567]. In the end I had to disable WPA2 to allow the Macbook to connect - Windows XP caused no such grief.

Re:The real motive...

[Anarchduke]

http://omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/05/ubuntu-to-ship-on-5-of-all-pcs-sold-next-year/
http://venturebeat.com/2011/11/18/report-macs-now-have-5-of-global-market-share/
Nope, linux looks to be pretty lively. And thats only considering ubuntu's flavor.

Re:why does he bother?

[JazzHarper]

Woz knows that making some controversial statements from time to time keeps him from falling into obscurity. He doesn't seriously expect that Apple will follow his advice.

Umm...No...

[who_stole_my_kidneys]

and forego the billions of dollars it makes by having closed systems. I'm not a fan of apple, but as a business, keeping your products so tightly intertwined is the best thing you can do to continually sell products and accessories.

If you go to an open architecture, the only way you make money is from licensing, and manufactures in china will completely ignore this and screw you over.

There is a company that does that has been doing this very well for decades, Microsoft any one?

Has Woz ever succeeded on his own? No.

[Sebastopol]

Woz is pretty much a failure as a business owner. Yes, he's an engineering titan, a legend even, but why he should be taken seriously in a domain where he has an awful track record is beyond me.

Kinda like the Greek government asking Mario Batalli for financial advice...

Re:Has Woz ever succeeded on his own? No.

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

Because it'd be an amazing feat of engineering.

If they can prove that Google's really wrong about open and the tradeoffs you have to make with open with regards to security and ecosystem, it'd be so damned cool.

Of course warp drives are cool too, but I don't see that happening either.

Re:Has Woz ever succeeded on his own? No.

[tyrione]

Woz is pretty much a failure as a business owner. Yes, he's an engineering titan, a legend even, but why he should be taken seriously in a domain where he has an awful track record is beyond me.

Kinda like the Greek government asking Mario Batalli for financial advice...

Titan? You lavish too generously.

Re:Good luck with that

[Capt.DrumkenBum]

I have never seen anyone express anything but ultimate respect for the man.
Apple fanboys might ignore him, or not even know who is is, but I have never heard anyone put him down.

The man wears a nixie tube watch... How could anyone not respect that?

No one buys Apple because they have to

[sjbe]

Jobs treated Apple customers like cattle, to be guided through narrow constricting chutes and confined in little cages, all while milking them of every last ounce.

I think it's hysterical that you think no one who uses Apple products is bright enough to make an informed decision about them. Do you really think there are no Apple users who aren't acutely aware of the alternative products available to them? Seriously? You think no one has heard of Windows or Linux or Kindle or Android? No one is trapped by Apple.

People use Apple products because they want to, not because they have to. Almost no one actually requires a Mac and the majority of computers sold are made by other vendors. You can do virtually all the same tasks perfectly well on a Windows and/or Linux machine. There are respectable quality competing products for the iPod, iPhone and iPad, widely available to anyone who wants them, often at lower price points and sometimes with features missing from Apple products or with compelling design features of their own. And yet millions still buy Apple products and have for many years now. This does not happen by accident or by marketing and Apple certainly does not (even today) have the market power to force people into buying their products.

(And before anyone starts, Apple customers are not mostly status seeking hipsters either. Nobody sells that many units over that many years on image alone. If the products sucked they wouldn't sell for long no matter how good a salesman Steve Jobs was.)

Re:No one buys Apple because they have to

[macraig]

I think it's hysterical that you so completely misinterpreted my last sentence and then ran off on a long-winded rant about your distortion. You're quite correct that Apple doesn't force anyone to BUY its products. The force is applied before and after the sale, beforehand in deliberately limiting design and implementation, and afterward in lawsuits and other threats to enforce those limitations. My comments suggested psychology behind "open" versus "closed" and how the attitudes of Wozniak and Jobs reflect that. Open systems are about cooperation, synergy, and incremental evolution; closed systems are about dominance, control, and PREVENTING that incremental evolution and synergy. It's hysterical that you've been reading Slashdot all these years and apparently still don't recognize the difference.

Re:No one buys Apple because they have to

[billius]

For the record, I had three CS professors in college that used Macs and at least two of them had been Apple enthusiasts for 20 odd years. It always baffles me when people act like Mac users are "too stupid" to use Windows (as if that's some kind of great intellectual task?) or "don't know about other options".

Re:No one buys Apple because they have to

[0racle]

The force is applied before and after the sale, beforehand in deliberately limiting design and implementation

[citation needed]

afterward in lawsuits and other threats to enforce those limitations

[citation needed] No seriously, anything at all to backup your claims?

Re:No one buys Apple because they have to

[macraig]

Case in point, then: the App Store. Is that a closed and tightly controlled and limiting enough system for you? How about the original iTunes? Going much further back the timeline, how about the Macintosh hardware design? Lather, rinse, repeat. Are you really this unobservant that you need citations? Apple's been peddling closed systems since the end of the Apple ][... or perhaps since the departure of Wozniak.

Re:No one buys Apple because they have to

[the_humeister]

It's part usability and part marketing. It's the same reason that in blind taste test people prefer Pepsi instead of Coke, but take the blindfolds away and they go back to Coke. Or why women clamor over Louis Vuitton or Hermès bags. Sure they're good bags, but a no-name bag manufacturer that makes a bag that looks the same, made of the same materials, and has the same durability of an LV bag just won't sell as well without the LV logo on it.

Re:No one buys Apple because they have to

[multipartmixed]

It goes back to the Apple ][, actually. Don't you remember the lawsuits over the Laser machines, etc?

That said, some of spend significant hunks of our time creating, managing, and troubleshooting "open" systems. Sometimes it's nice to let somebody else manage all that crap. I consider that part of the premium part of an i-product, and a big reason why it gets a premium price.

We have at least 10 different tablet types at work. Guess which two get used every day? Hint 1 - they are both closed, Hint 2 - we only care about the web browsers.

Re:No one buys Apple because they have to

[macraig]

I'm too picky/particular to be satisfied by any off the shelf system*, closed or open; I must always hack it to some degree. That's why I personally prefer systems as open as possible, because they present the least barrier to what I need to do to make it work for me. Others' MMV.

* By "system" here I mean literally anything I might buy, though I confess I don't usually do much hacking of, say, aerosol cans. I've been known to do that at least once, though....

Re:No one buys Apple because they have to

[Ol Olsoc]

I've been a customer for years, and Jobs never once treated me like a cow. I had a job to do, deadlines that required maximum up-time and Apple fit that bill.

For some reason, some people on /. seem to think that getting the computer on an open system is somehow the zenith of personal computerdom.

It isn't. The computer is supposed to be a tool, and people are supposed to do work with it. I don't care if Jobs was a jerk - I don't care if the system is "closed". That means nothing to me unless it means that no one is allowed to design software for it except Apple, and that obviously isn't true.I want to sit down in front of the thing and it has to work.

Re:No one buys Apple because they have to

[Ol Olsoc]

It always baffles me when people act like Mac users are "too stupid" to use Windows (as if that's some kind of great intellectual task?) or "don't know about other options".

It's all Ford versus Chevy. And I've never actually met a stupid Mac user. Many don't know the gyrations you have to do to keep a PC running, but that is mostly a collection of tricks anyhow.

Re:No one buys Apple because they have to

[macraig]

This qualifies as Apple treating you like a cow, whether you have the impartiality to admit it or not.

Re:No one buys Apple because they have to

[macraig]

It's part usability and part marketing.

No, it's more sinister than that.

Re:No one buys Apple because they have to

[Ol Olsoc]

This qualifies as Apple treating you like a cow, whether you have the impartiality to admit it or not.

That's hilarious! Strikes me as someone thinking that is an example of Apple mistreating people might be a tad sensitive, though.

My favorite Apple horror story about Apple is when my magic mouse died on my home computer. Looking inside the mouse, you could see that the battery contact was broken. It's 5 p.m. on the east coast. I call, and in a short time an describing the problem to the tech person, he says, yes, your mouse is bad, and hands me off to another person who verifies my address. Had the mouse by noon the following day. no charge, and popped the broken mouse in the box removed the top sticker and mailed the broken one back. They emailed me when they got the old mouse, and told me they verified that my analysis was correct.

Another time a server power supply failed. Got on the horn with them, and they found one for me the same day. Those dirty bastards! I felt violated. Run up a ramp, hit with a stun gun, then butchered and turned into Hamburger. How dare they treat me that way? Much better were my warranty experiences with my non-apple PCs. Like waiting a month for a repair, then getting the computer back with the same problem, took three times to get it fixed. Another time I took the in warranty laptop back to the store, their service department gave me a xeroxed piece of paper "What's this?" I asked. "That's your warranty information". "It's just an address". "Yeah, send it off to the facility, and make sure to insure it for the full amount." "Wait - is that all the service I get?" "

There is more to engineering than specs.

[Brannon]

The slashdot crowd doesn't understand that and thus they don't understand why Apple is so successful. The "marketing" crap is your best attempt to rationalize Apple's success without having to expand your tiny little world.

Meanwhile, Apple is on their way to being the first $1 trillion company because nearly everyone else in the world understands something that you don't: "The ONLY point of technology is to make life easier for humans"--by that definition, Apple cranks out the best technology using the best engineering. Deal with it.

Re:There is more to engineering than specs.

[Jonner]

The slashdot crowd doesn't understand that and thus they don't understand why Apple is so successful. The "marketing" crap is your best attempt to rationalize Apple's success without having to expand your tiny little world.

Meanwhile, Apple is on their way to being the first $1 trillion company because nearly everyone else in the world understands something that you don't: "The ONLY point of technology is to make life easier for humans"--by that definition, Apple cranks out the best technology using the best engineering. Deal with it.

Your expert analysis fails to account for the continued existence of Microsoft, Android and pretty much every non-Apple technology. Could it be that you think "nearly everyone else in the world" means "everyone who agrees with me"?

Re:There is more to engineering than specs.

[LateArthurDent]

"The ONLY point of technology is to make life easier for humans"--by that definition, Apple cranks out the best technology using the best engineering. Deal with it.

Except that Apple makes some damn hard to use, completely unintuitive stuff. The fact that everyone associates Apple with ease of use is a damn impressive triumph of marketing. If you say it enough times, people will believe you.

Their stuff is certainly polished and looks really nice, but looking nice is part of the marketing effort. They remove so many options in an attempt to make the user experience follow their predetermined path that as soon as you need to do anything a different way, you're completely stuck. How do I get to the end of a sentence in a document, the end key keeps taking me to the fucking end of the document. How do I get music on the iPhone? Oh, I need to let iTunes organize it, I can't just drag music files into it. What happens if my mac has multiple users and I plug in my iPhone while another user is logged on? iTunes gives the user a scary message that it will delete everything in the phone if you proceed. But I just want to put the music that is in the database under my wife's account...oh, I need to somehow get the music to show up in my account first because the iPhone can't fucking sync with multiple iTunes databases...

Apple was a different company after the reboot

[clay_shooter]

The company was rebuilt after Jobs returned. The new team and focus pretty much made the company what it is today.

Re:Apple was a different company after the reboot

[HermMunster]

There were obvious issues with the company before Jobs came back. The lack of a decent OS (which Apple bought from Jobs), a bad series of high level executives that didn't know how to focus the company (not that another would not have done so and to say otherwise is to preach Apple's future doom) hurt Apple's future potential. Job's simply refocused on specific efforts, he got Gates to loan some money and continue to commit software development efforts, and brought his OS with him. This didn't happen overnight. It took years while building the right management team. Chrysler had the same resurgence with Lee Iacocca. And if it hadn't been for the rest of the industry turning down the developer of the iPod Apple would not be where they are today. So, hard work, a refocus, a new OS, a loan from Gates, and the serendipity of matching the iPod with a new 1.5" drive gave Apple it's resurgence. Jobs played a big part as a leader and was tremendously successful at redirecting the company focusing on products that were bound to benefit Apple (I'm sure there were many projects that were also of great potential that were killed). He was not a guru and through his ill temper and manipulation did he get people to serve him.

So, give him credit, but realize that there's a bit of distorted reality in how some here present what Job's did.

You don't do it yourself you find those that can

[clay_shooter]

A company like apple is bigger than one person. You don't create a company by yourself. You recruit and motivate the right people. Jobs was able to do that.

Mod up

[clay_shooter]

+1 I wish I had mod points for you.

When was woz's last design?

[clay_shooter]

I'm not sure how someone is a titan when his last (and only real design) was some time in the 70s.

Re:When was woz's last design?

[Sebastopol]

Heh, one could point the the utter failure of the "Us" festival in the 80's, I think he get's a lifetime "titanhood" pass if you look at the sheer # of problems he had to solve to make the Apple 1 & 2 work: ...an expansion bus and it's own (open) electrical and logical specification ...affordable 5.25" disk i/o (this alone would be a single major accomplishment for one hacker) ...his creative use of banked video memory to display high resolutions (280x192 was considered hi-res back then) ...and an F'ing basic interpreter in less than 8KB of ROM!!!

the fact that one person knocked a home run with all of these at the time earned him a pass.

I mean, just think of lack of resources and debug hardware: he couldn't google ApNotes or datasheets, he couldn't google for other problems people have (look at the arduino forums, now imagine developing without those). there were no digital storage scopes! he did it all by brute force of intelligence.

yeah, i gotta admit i'm a total fanboy. i'm barely qualified to praise the man.

The plane crash

[SgtChaireBourne]

A third reason is that he had a plane crash in 1981 which caused him to take a leave of absence. From what I read, it left some lasting, bad damage including memory loss. Between all that and being set for life, economically, he didn't have to go back.

Re:Never gonna happen

[AshtangiMan]

I remember reading an interview with Woz where he said the future of computing was appliances rather than general purpose computers. I think this is the path that Apple has always taken, or at least since they started trying to get the Newton to work. Their biggest markets are in the appliances (MP3 player, set top box, tablet, phone) rather than with the computers (which I like, but they really are commodity pieces in nice looking cases). I have no doubt that the Steves agreed on this and that Woz could step in and keep the engineering and product visions clean, but also have no real belief that that will occur.

Anyone else remember the Apple II?

[hughbar]

It had expansion slots! Oh, how I loved that idea. Something that PC copied and improved on and that we are heading towards again with Arduino shields etc.

My gut feeling [and I'm a greenie too] is that we need to modularise all our electronics so that we are not constantly throwing and recycling large hunks of kit. I'm aware that the structure and economics of the industry would have to change. But, after all, I'm from the post-war where things got mended and there were whole industrial 'ecologies' that did that.

About the only product that really has that now is the bicycle, you can replace nearly every bit of it. After you have done so, is it the same bicycle though? One needs to ask Heraclitus: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/h/heraclitus107157.html sorry, I'm beginning to ramble now...

Re:Anyone else remember the Apple II?

[hughbar]

Good morning America!

Re:Anyone else remember the Apple II?

[JustNiz]

>> we need to modularise all our electronics so that we are not constantly throwing and recycling large hunks of kit.

Nice idea, but all these companies, (Apple being one of if not the worst), are building-in limited life on purpose. For example have you seen how hard (read: impossible) and expensive (read:no savings over buying a whole new gadget) it is to change the rechargeable battery in most Apple products?

They are consciously and actively making you have to re-buy the same kit every 2 or 3 years because that is where a large part of their profit is coming from. They won't make any of their products modular, standards-compatible or serviceable as that would undermine their whole strategy.

Re:Anyone else remember the Apple II?

[vakuona]

I have noticed that there are almost no 1st generation iPhones on ebay! All of the original iPhones mysteriously stopped working on the 1st of July in 2010.

People need to get some perspective. Mobile phones are one of the most handled devices ever. You take it everywhere with you. They will not last forever. It would be very costly to buy something that would last twice as long.

Re:Anyone else remember the Apple II?

[hughbar]

>> They will not last forever. It would be very costly to buy something that would last twice as long.

Depends on how one looks at 'costly', just as money or as energy, non-renewal materials, time to re-manufacture etc. etc. Our money-only value system is part of what hurts us at the moment.

Re:Jobs would have found someone else

[xmundt]

Do not down play Woz's contribution to Apple. One of the major reasons for the success of the Macintosh was the IWM chip that was the heart of it This amazing hardware hack coupled complex state machine logic and individual circuits together in one chip to become greater than the sum of its parts. Woz's design used the partial circuits in a dozen or more different ways, reconfiguring itself on the fly to do what needed to be done at that point. Could another engineer have done this design and made it work so well? Perhaps, but, I doubt it. "IWM" stands for "Integrated Woz Machine", and well it should. It remains a pretty spiffy hack,
          pleasant dreams
          bee man dave

You guys sound like the Army

[Quila]

The logistics (fuel) guys say "Without us, your tanks wouldn't run."

The tankers say "Without us, you would have no reason for existing."

Woz supporters say "Without Woz, Apple would have nothing worth selling."

Jobs supporters say "Without Jobs, you wouldn't have been able to sell it."

Everybody needs to remember it takes a team where the members complement each other. Woz and Jobs would have sucked individually, but together they made Apple great. Jobs and Raskin made Apple great in the Mac. In modern days it was Jobs, Ive and Cook. And through most of the early history there was Tog, setting the standard for usability. If you want to talk about an Apple hero most people don't know about, look at the Tog.

Re:You guys sound like the Army

[mjwx]

The logistics (fuel) guys say "Without us, your tanks wouldn't run."

The tankers say "Without us, you would have no reason for existing."

Woz supporters say "Without Woz, Apple would have nothing worth selling."

Jobs supporters say "Without Jobs, you wouldn't have been able to sell it."

Everybody needs to remember it takes a team where the members complement each other. Woz and Jobs would have sucked individually, but together they made Apple great. Jobs and Raskin made Apple great in the Mac. In modern days it was Jobs, Ive and Cook. And through most of the early history there was Tog, setting the standard for usability. If you want to talk about an Apple hero most people don't know about, look at the Tog.

The thing is, without Woz, Jobs would not have had a product. It doesn't matter how good of a marketer he was, how much smoke he could blow up the worlds collective arses, without a product Jobs could do nothing.

Without Woz, Apple Computer would have failed. The Personal Computer still would have happened as Apple was not the first, nor were they the last. PARC's technology would have been used by someone else (probably Commodore) then IBM and Microsoft would have taken over as they did when Apple floundered.

Re:You guys sound like the Army

[Quila]

And you're back to the beginning, without Jobs the Apple I would have just been a project Woz tinkered on during his free time, and Apple Computer wouldn't even have existed. Back to the truth that it took a team.

Gillete's plans and patents

[Frankie70]

2012 - 5 blades on 1 razor
2013 - 6 blades on 1 razor
2014 - 7 blades on 1 razor
2015 - 8 blades on 1 razor
etc.

Re:Never gonna happen

[Archangel Michael]

I wish I had mod points, but you obviously don't need them. There is the phrase "It takes two to tango" and Woz/Jobs combo danced a nice dance, a beautiful masterpiece called Apple Computers. to me, people who hold Jobs up over Woz or visa versa aren't capable of seeing the whole picture.

Was Jobs a jerk? Probably. Is Woz a nice geek? Probably. Personalities being what they are, it often takes a balanced mix of personalities to get things done. Not everyone can be a General, we need privates too. What Jobs provided was (as a previous poster suggested) was the eye on the details while following KISS principles.

iPods weren't the cheapest, biggest, baddest portable music players, but what it offered is a nice package that followed KISS. In fact, there are still other music players out there that are fantastic and cheaper than iPod, but they don't have the "it" factor. Same goes now of iPads and the rest of the Tablet markets. You have iPads and everything else (Windows 8, Android ICS) with everyone else marketing via "More GBs, Dual Cores, 10 inch screens" that are not marketing the "it" factor of iPads. The difference? iPad marketing tell you what you can do with them, everyone else tells you what they are.

Point being, Apple tells people what they can do, not what the machine is. That is why people complain that they don't understand why Apple can see the same hardware for hundreds more than other competitors. Those complaints don't understand the difference in Marketing. And that is what Jobs is famous for. Woz's problem is that he is just a geek, he can make things do what he wants, and make the things so that he can do what he wants (two different things) Most people are more like Jobs envisions, they just want things to work.

If you want to beat Apple, do what apple does, make things that do something, and sell the sizzle, not the steak.

Doesn't matter what Apple employees think

[OrangeTide]

People of Campbell and Los Gatos love Woz and the work he has done for the community.

engineering or marketing

[OrangeTide]

Unix is an operating system, made by engineers for engineers. It came about before Apple, and rose to great heights without Apple, and now Apple has adopted it as their platform. I firmly believe it will be around long after Apple.

You need a marketing genius to make a wildly successful business. You need a remarkable group of engineers to create enduring technology. I know which one I value more, do you?

(Unix has its faults, it's not perfect. But I think we can agree that it has proven to be a pretty useful OS over the decades)

Re:Never gonna happen

[EvilBudMan]

Bell labs no profit. You have to be kidding. They made their money, but as always, things get opened one way or another. In fact it goes in cycles between closed and open systems with the more open ones wining out in the end. I know people that have owned Apples devices that now like Android devices even better because they do the same thing at a cheaper price and then they win out, another closed system forms up. It kinda works like Moores Law but I don't what to call it.

So that is why I don't think Facebook will do so well in the end but I'm sure people will make a ton of money closing things back as Google is doing with their newer Android OS's. Like a phone that costs double to go from 8 gig to 16 gig that doesn't have memory card slot to save space (make a ton of money).

Inmates running the asylum

[KrazyDave]

So now that the wicked witch, Jobs, is dead, everyone is running amok. Unbelievable that after Jobs singularly (i.e., his direction) built the company into a powerhouse, EVERYONE now suddenly thinks that they "know better" and bad ideas such as this (licensing, open sourcing, etc.) - which Jobs specifically and integrally eliminated nearly two decades ago - get dragged out of the closet and trotted around like the greatest thing. Open source might work for Android, but that's because Google makes money on the back end. This is a bad idea. Shame on Woz.

This is what they really need to do...

[Richard_J_N]

Here are some things Apple could/should do to become (again) good citizens of the engineering community. They'd see a huge surge in developers and technical users if they do this. As it is, most techies cannot use or recommend Apple in good conscience.

1. Political. Join OIN, and pledge never to sue first for patent infringement. Also, stop trying to buy bad laws. Pledge not to sue any open source project for patent infringement (eg font hinting). Make its media codec patents available to HTML5 without royalty.

2. It's *my* hardware if I buy it. Guarantee the ability to Jailbreak all devices. This is a win for users, a win for tinkerers, a win for some customers who need to run their own arbitrary code, and a win for security (exploits get fixed, rather than hoarded for jailbreaking purposes). I'd be perfectly happy to accept a compromise where a jailbroken device loses some DRM features. Root shouldn't be available by default (most users rightly want it simple, and to trust Apple to look after them), but should be available on request to anyone who is competent enough to run a CLI program.

3. Support all open standards where possible. For example, the iPod still can't play Ogg files. There's NO good reason why not: the cost is zero, and the hardware is capable. Likewise, the newest iPods won't work on Linux: Apple could very easily give a couple of free devices and some documentation to the libgpod project each time they release a new model. (this would be far cheaper than supporting native iTunes). Likewise, support for NFS as a media repository.

4. End the misfeatures for the purposes of lock-in, I've so often experienced this: it's like buying a shiny new car, and finding someone has deliberately welded an upturned thumbtack to the driver's seat. Every product has a sting in the tail - not because it can't do something, but because it won't. I can't be the only one who finds this frustrating.

5. I'd love to see a bit of extra focus on hobbyist and educational development. Perhaps Apple could stock the Raspberry Pi / Arduino, and Apple stores might sell items for geeks (eg bare iPod connectors for DIY docks, USB-to-Relay adaptors, and the tools usually made by iFixit).

Re:This is what they really need to do...

[LDAPMAN]

Have you been to a major technical conference lately? The number of developers and highly technical folks using Macs is through the roof and it is continuing to increase. Pretty much the only ones I see not using Macs are those required to use a specific config. Many of those are carrying two laptops, a company issued machine and a Macbook Pro.

I just presented to a group of about 100 enterprise architects from Fortune 500 companies. I'd say 8 out of 10 were carrying MacBooks Pros.

Re:This is what they really need to do...

[Richard_J_N]

I think you're looking too late in the cycle. Enterprise devs in Fortune 500 made their choices 5 years ago; I'm talking about the people who are making their choices now. Consider at the moment that Android is rapidly overtaking iOS. Here's why:
  - Much greater ease of entry (Eclipse is a free download; for iOS, first I need a Mac computer, then I need to buy Xcode)
  - More powerful platform (some apps simply can't be written for iOS, because it is too locked down)
  - No Apple AppStore policy (OK, the app store is great for quality control, but why shouldn't I write an app that competes with an Apple native features, or that runs an interpreter, or that tethers without carrier-support, or that has my own payment method, or that supports unapproved content?)

Also, the Macbook hardware is pretty good (especially compared to some Windows offerings). But as Woz points out, just because Apple are doing well doesn't mean that they can't do better!

Apple's previous attempt to open up

[unixisc]

Problem is that Apple floundered under Sculley and his successors before Jobs returned to the company. And they did try opening up the Power Mac architecture along w/ IBM, and you had companies like Power Computing, Motorola and Umax take a stab at making macs. Only problem is that by this was that by this time, the RISC challenges to Wintel that were supposed to happen had all sputtered - NT on RISC was going nowhere, IBM failed to come up w/ Workplace OS or OS/2 for PPC, Pink - the OS from that Apple subsidiary Taligent - never materialized, Be Box was shortlived and within Apple itself, Copeland and Gershwin went nowhere. In short, all the non-Unix attempts to produce OSs for non-Wintel boxes went nowhere.

By getting NEXTSTEP on the Macs, Jobs got over that problem, and realizing that the Mac Clones were only canibalizing Apple's business, but not winning marketshare from the Wintel segment, he decided to pull the plug on that licensing. A microcosm of this problem was seen earlier - when Apple switched from the 68k to the Power Macs, it didn't help the PPC gain any marketshare over the x86 - all it did was replace one Motorola CPU w/ another, which was an ugly result for Motorola.

Given all that, if Apple did listen to Woz, it would risk going back to the state it was in the 90s, when it was haemorraging cash. No reason to jettison what works right now. What they might do is introduce something really low end to target that section of the computer market that would prefer alternatives to Microsoft.

Re:Apple's previous attempt to open up

[unixisc]

Seems to turn out that way - given Apple's track record w/ OSs until they acquired NEXT. Looks like they wanted to design a non-Unix successor to Mac OS, but ultimately, couldn't, and finally turned to NEXT. Actually, what made the Unixes acceptable was the tremendous increase in firepower of CPUs and memory becoming cheaper to the point that there was plenty for everything that was needed, whether the Unix in question was NEXTSTEP, FreeBSD, Linux or whatever else.

It's true that the clonemakers were cheaper and better than Apple, but the main problem was that they were only eroding Apple's marketshare, not Wintel's. Had they been eroding the marketshare of both Apple and Wintel and become a major player, Apple might have done what Be did and repositioned itself as a software company. But it made no sense to do it now, and also, by the time OS-X was complete, Wintel had won the race - Windows 2000 had succeeded Windows 98, and the NT and Windows 98 platforms were merged. That fact wouldn't have been changed by the likes of Power Computing or Motorola PCG.

In other news..Woz farts.

[Lashat]

Still sad and irrelevant.

Support old data

[pubwvj]

Apple needs to support old OS, software, programs and thus user data. Shame on them for abandoning Rosetta and Classic. At the very least if they won't support them then they should turn them over to the public domain with complete documentation so other people can support them, non-profit OR for-profit.

Re:Support old data

[smash]

Actually, if they'd just open up the license for Leopard (non server) to be able to be virtualized, modern machines are more than powerful enough to just run old apps in a copy of leopard. I've emailed them this, doubt it will happen though :D

The Apple ][ was open - how well did that work?

[a-zA-Z0-9$_. !*'(),x]

The Apple][ had an open architecture with 8 open slots. These got filled with memory, z80 processor cards, HD interfaces, and lots more. It spawned an industry. Now Apple is busy selling sizzle rather than protein, gloss rather than substance. But they do sell. There are more rich idiots than geeks.

Re:Never gonna happen

[careysub]

I could imagine an Apple under Woz turning out much the same way as the Bell Labs story: Lots of world-changing technology, very little profit.

...

Or more to the point - like Xerox PARC.

I notice at least one post (as usual) dissing Apple/Jobs for not inventing the GUI - but what was stopping Xerox from beating Apple to market with a killer consumer level computer with a GUI? Or from dominating the Ethernet networking market (routers, etc.)?

He could do it himself

[bgspence]

Apple would easily sell the Woz the rights to his Apple II. He could then open the OS and open lots of prototyping bussing, cabling, and networking hacks.

What's there to open?

[evanh]

The Mac has been completely PC hardware since the final step of using an x86 CPU in 2006. The same clone makers are pumping out the same equipment, architecturally wise, for Windoze and OSX.

Are we talking more about clearly unburdening and freeing up APIs/ABIs then?

not really new

[smash]

Woz wanted more slots on the apple 2 as well - originally management wanted 4 slots max, he pushed for 8 and refused to do any less. He's a geek. He's not a businessman.

Apple don't want to get into the commodity market - there's no point. They can sell media to PC users already anyway. There's plenty of money in apple hardware and plenty of people willing to pay a bit more to get something that runs OS X and is nice.

There IS however a gap in their lineup between the Mac Pro and the iMac, but realistically the market is only a very vocal minority and I doubt there's much money in it. Most users are fine with an iMac, and if they need more apple would likely rather push them to a Xeon. Those who will refuse to select either of those 2 machines are probably such a small number they're not worth chasing. From a business perspective...

Re:Good luck with that

[Anarchduke]

by vakuona (788200) Alter Relationship on Monday May 14, @12:51PM (#39997075) Without Jobs, there would be no company. Woz didn't even want to sell the damn computer he built. I hear Woz is worth $100m today. Well, he owes that to Jobs. Because Woz would still have to work today if it wasn't for Jobs. Woz was a clever engineer, but I think geekdom views him with rose tinted spectacles. He was not that great. The people making the microprocessors he used. Now those were the really great guys.

Wow my Mom was right

[Anarchduke]

assumptions really did make an ass out of both him and you.

Exactly what I have been always wanting to possess

[ibic00]

Sexy design that comes with no compromise in usage freedom.

Re:Never gonna happen

[EvilBudMan]

True but beside the point. Since you mentioned the government, well it all goes back to that and WWII for computing in general and the abacus before that.

Get real.

[NewYork]

Will Open Apple make more money or Closed Apple make more money?

Re:Jobs would have found someone else

[Aighearach]

Jobs might have left lumps of gold in the toilet every morning, and yet, it would not somehow be some sort of argument against Woz, his accomplishments, or his current ideas.

Why do Jobs fans feel so threatened by the idea of a Wozniak? Is it not enough to worship Jobs as a Dead God, is it really necessary to tear down the people who got him there in order to do it?