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Woz Says iPhone Features Are 'Behind'
redletterdave writes "The iPhone may be one of the bestselling smartphones on the planet, but Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak believes Apple's flagship smartphone has fallen behind its competitors, namely those built by Samsung, when it comes to smartphone features. Speaking at Businessweek's Best Brand Awards on Thursday evening, Wozniak said he was proud of how loyal Apple fans were to the iPhone, but also said 'this loyalty is not given,' shortly before denouncing his own company's smartphone. 'Currently we are, in my opinion, somewhat behind with features in the smartphone business,' Wozniak said. 'Others have caught up. Samsung is a big competitor. But precisely because they are currently making great products.'" I prefer Android, but it seems hard to find iPhone users who aren't enthusiastic about it. Whatever kind of phone you prefer, are there features you envy the users of some other variety?
Patented by Apple (TM) 2013
my friends pay money for every little thing I download for free with my android phone. sucks to be them
Check me if I wrong, but hasn't the iPhone always been behind on features? I mean, how many years did it take just to get copy / paste.
The iPhone was never about features, it was about style and ease of use. The problem is that they set the standard and the other companies have finally caught up.
Slow Down Cowboy! It's been 1 hour, 47 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment
Get over it. Why are people so emotional about it?
If more Americans cared about the bigger issues in their lives we wouldn't be tax slaves living in a crumbling nation with an out-of-control government.
Am I the only person that feels this way?
I haven't used an iPhone since my 3gs, but I switched to Android because I felt attacked constantly for being a jail breaker. With android manufacturers they may not support rooting a device, but once it is done updates generally don't remove it and try and keep me from doing it again. With my iPhone I couldn't use anything like wifi analyzer, or titanium backup. I mean there was a good wifi tracking app, then apple banned it for some stupid reason.
Also turn by turn navigation is great, Google maps is great, groove IP is great (unsure if apple has that) , and with the newest updates the transcription and voice commands under android is amazing.
I have a Nexus 4, I envy nobody. I have a $30 a month plan and Wi-Fi almost everywhere I go, so lack of LTE is non-issue for me. I'm completely pleased with this phone, no disappointments.
That's great that Wozniak can look at competing products and recognize accurately their strengths and weaknesses. That kind of objective evaluation leads to better decisions and great products. Companies that mindlessly insist that their products are the 'best' and punish any who dare to say otherwise have a difficult time putting out high quality products that people want to use. Those are the kind of companies that try to force their products on the marketplace and only have success if there is no choice but to use their products.
Quick question... is good product design about packing in as many features as possible, whether they are something people will actually use, or actually good ideas, or actually implemented in a good way, or something someone will actually use?
No. There are countless products in every market where the company that makes them does exactly that. They shove in every bell and whistle, whether it makes sense or not, whether it can be used in reality or not, and they are mediocre-at-best products. Many of them are bad, and you spend money on those features you will never use, just to get the handful that you will.
Just because the iPhone has "less features" doesn't make it a bad product. Similarly, just because some other phone has "more features" doesn't necessarily make it a better product. If it has more useful features, then it probably is a better product; if those features are implemented in a useful way that isn't buried under a horrible unusable interface, or requires everyone you interact with to also have that product for the feature to be of any use.
(None of what I said above applies to any specific product or manufacturer unless explicitly stated. This post was not meant to be a critique of any particular device, rather a critique on the concept of "more features == better")
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
The health of an ecosystem can be measured by the abundance of parasites...
Good God... calling a "walled garden" an ecosystem!
If all the animals are fed from a single trough, that's not an ecosystem, that's a farm.
"...it seems hard to find iPhone users who aren't enthusiastic about it."
If I just spent $600 on a phone, I'd feel compelled to act like it was the greatest thing since sliced bread, too!
Until the Android ecosystem can handle an issue as basic as providing it's users with OS and security updates, Android is not ahead at all.
Over half of the Android devices out there are still running variants of version 2 of the OS and lower while the last three Android releases are version 4 and higher.
Android needs to be rearchitected so that carriers provide drivers for the hardware, while Google takes full responsibility for updates to the OS. This approach has been working with Windows for decades.
Amazing how the circle has turned when it comes to phones. The iPhone has gone from being the hip new boy breaking the rules to a member of the establishment that everyone else is slowly leaving behind.
It used to be that the iPhone was an inspirational device, a device that caused geek envy wherever you used it.
And now, well it's the device for the technical luddites who have more money than sense, or for those that Apple have managed to lock in to their closed-wall infrastructure and are now too wary of trying something else. In other words - it's the phone you recommend to your parents so you don't have to do tech support for them.
... other than battery life and better phone calls.
I've got a Galaxy Nexus, and the hardware is fine -- high-resolution screen, fast enough CPU, etc. The only real "lacking features" are software things, and since it's Android that's just my own fault for not finding a better app to do whatever it is.
What I seriously don't like, though, is its ability to MAKE PHONE CALLS. This is a device that people watch Netflix on, for fuck's sake. Why is it using a ~10kbps codec for voice calls with an acoustic bandpass of a few khz, and moreover one with some absolutely awful signal processing characteristics? For instance (and this is just one example), if I'm talking to someone in the wind, and there's a gust of wind on my end, the phone mutes the speaker so I can no longer hear what they're saying. Why should it do that, unless it's trying to squelch feedback, which is very much not the problem?
As for battery life, I appreciate them making the things slim, but if they'd make it another 5mm or even 8mm thicker with most of that extra volume given to battery, you'd get about four times as much life out of it. Does anyone make a phone like this?
Whatever kind of phone you prefer, are there features you envy the users of some other variety?
Small size. The flagship products from Apple and Samsung are too large bricks. Currently using HTC Wildfire S from couple of years ago. I guess Gingerbread is a bit aging already, but for my needs it's still a fantastic phone. I've seen mini models from SonyEricsson and Samsung too.
Stop spreading FUD, I dropped mine and it bounced down a flight of stairs. When I got to it expecting it to be trashed, it was perfectly fine.
Speaking of updates, nice to see iOS provides latest updates even to older phones like the 2009 3GS supports the latest iOS 6.1. Read an article about google patching a android vulnerability but only offered it for Andriod 4.2 Jelly Bean which came out November 2012. All older versions of android are still vulnerable. No one wants to offer android users updates to their phones, seems their mentality is "buy a new Android every 3 months when the new OS comes out". Who has time or money to buy new phones and tablets every 3 months? This problem is going to get worse before it gets better, google needs to offer a way to update all these older devices to the latest version of android.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
He's a smart man. I'm sure he meant to say exactly what he said. Who are you to say what he meant?
In many consumer electronics industries, it's normal for the lead manufacturers to be continually leap frogging each other. At any given point in time one is ahead, and on the next product cycle their main rival is ahead.
Examples of this are common. For example in cameras Nikon and Canon are changing lead position pretty much every year, and in home theater systems the same has been occurring between Yamaha and Denon for well over a decade. In smartphones and tablets it's currently a two-horse race between Apple and Samsung, and which company has its nose slightly in front should be expected to change often. And of course other companies regularly join in the fun too.
Any "lead" that a particular company might have is actually very minor, because all high tech companies chase each other closely so it's always only by a nose.
Not much of a story really. Continual leap frogging is entirely normal in the industry.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Apple has manged to convince the "unwashed masses" that their eco-system and devices are easier to use than the alternatives, and in fact their systems are pretty well thought out and easy to use and their control of the whole eco-system has made interoperability of software and hardware pretty seamless. Non-Apple sellers have the difficult job of convincing most buyers that their possibly better features are more valuable than Apple's "ease of use", even if the "ease of use" of their devices are as good or better than Apple's. The perception of Apple being the one source for hardware, software and content (through the single iTunes channel), as well as info-syncing (iCloud) is comforting to many. The competition has a number of places the consumer might feel they need to go for hardware support (Samsung perhaps), software support (Samsung, Google, and others?), content (Amazon, iTunes, etc), and services (Google and others?). Even if there is one vastly dominant company in each of these areas, they are still going to be perceived as more complicated than getting it all from Apple - even if it is not more complicated.
Tangentially, I think smart phones are approaching the same point that personal computers reached not that long ago - for the vast majority of customers the increased power and features of new devices are insufficient to justify upgrading their current device. When everyone in the world already has a decent smart phone the market for new phones is going to get much smaller.
I prefer Android, but it seems hard to find iPhone users who aren't enthusiastic about it.
There are a large number of people out there who think the iPhone is the only smartphone. So when they buy a smartphone, they buy an iPhone and love it, because the only thing they compare it too is their old clamshell phone. So naturally, they are very enthusiastic about it.
Actually, on a larger level my hypothesis is that Apple products work great for anyone who does not question the arbitrary limitations put on the software by Apple in the name of "ease of use". They just assume that "phones can't do that" or "computers don't do that" and are happy; whereas if you know a little bit about how much effort it would be to have that feature, and that it's omitted solely to simplify (i.e. dumb things down), it is immensely frustrating (although it seems once one reaches Apple Guru level, all the workarounds are second nature and these things are once again painless). In short, a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing. I say this at someone who uses Linux/Android at home, but OSX/iOS at work.
Yes, because it is very hard to flick a hardware switch on the side of the phone to put it on silent/vibrate.
my friends pay money for every little thing I download for free with my android phone. sucks to be them
He gets for free everything he downloads with his Android phone thanks to his friends paying money in his stead. Honestly, that's not what was meant, and that's easy enough to see. However, the statement can be interpreted in both ways. English language, how I loathe thee.
I have been a captive in America my entire life. Everybody and everything uses customary units instead of metric.
Android has malware because Google is lax in screening software in their store and because Chinese stores (where most of the malware is) don't screen at all. Code signing doesn't, fundamentally, protect you unless there's some enforcement. And in the end, malware doesn't just "appear" on your phone, you have to put it there.
But hey, at least Apple simply gives you no choice.
Face it all modern smartphones with their large glass screens are fragile. Older iPhones with their steel cases and smaller screens can take a little more abuse, but nothing like a rugged dumb phone. It not rocket science, you have to invest in a decent case and screen protector.
Yes, because it is very hard
In one sense it's not hard, but in another sense it is. It's hard for humans to remember things 100% consistently. It's just a slightly better world when you don't have to remember and (a) your phone never rings during those meeting times, and (b) you never forget to turn the ringer back on after the meeting, which can result in missing important calls later.
As a programmer myself, I am annoyed when software could easily provide a very helpful feature that prevents its users embarrassment and makes their lives easier, but prevents such functionality, for no obvious reason (except that they simply goofed when locking themselves in with that hardware design).
People who love their iPhones usually bought them. There are two things going on there. Firstly, it's a self-selecting group. They bought into the idea of the ads they saw for the phone. Secondly, they spent money on it. When you make a purchase, you tend to self-justify. You think what you bought was the best, because otherwise you got suckered. No one likes that, so we tell ourselves we won. What we have is the best.
I was handed an iPhone by my company. It's really nice to have a free phone and I appreciate it hugely. Yes, it's a ball and chain to the company, but if they hadn't given me the phone, they'd be calling me on my personal phone anyhow.
But I hate the iPhone. Hate it. My antipathy for it was nonexistent when I got it. It was way better (in some ways) than the crappy blackberry it replaced. But over time, I've grown more and more frustrated with the potential of the thing which is squandered. Every little thing about it annoys me.
My wife has an android phone. I am so envious. There's still much to hate there, but not nearly as much, and there seems to be progress on Android. Something which annoys you might actually get fixed. On the iPhone, you must learn to love it, for it will never change.
I would be very interested if an iPhone user put forth one feature that the iPhone has, and Android is incapable of doing. I have not found a single thing an Android user would have to envy iPhone users for. This is partly because the iPhone is a phone, and Android is an operating system that comes installed on phones that run the whole gamut from cheap and flimsily-built knockoffs to high-end cutting edge powerhouses.
There is always an Android phone out there that fits your bill. There is however, only one iPhone.
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.
Walled gardens, DRM, Flash exploits...don't you know the world is going to end if you don't switch to open source everything RIGHT THIS MINUTE!? You must be new here.
for me and my use of a mobile device.
I don't tweet or use FB and any other social network.
I have a tablet for reading books.
If I want to take video or stills, I have a decent POS camera with me most of the time or if I want to get really serious, I'll use my D800.
Plus many of the places I in work won't allow Camera Phones as well.
So FOR ME and ONLY ME, a device that makes calls, send/received texts and has an alarm clock is just about all I need.
This race for 'features' on smartphones is IMHO much like about 50% of the 'features' MS puts into Office. Great headlines but very few people really used them
Convert that to phones, great to brag to your mates, 'my phone can do this' but then quickly gets forgotten and pur into the 'Oh yeah, I used that once...'
category
I'd rather be riding my '63 Triumph T120.
I've just purchased a couple of of iPads, and frankly, the "walled garden" apple thing is FUCKING annoying.
Jesus motherfucking CHRIST, but the inability to easily share documents among "apps" on a single device is fucking retarted. I don't care what the motivation was for this, but it's stupid and gets in the way.
From "app" 1, save your document in the "iBooks" thing, the iCloud, "iTunes" (lol) - then it's, oh sorry, but "app" 2 can't open said document from any of those. oh, oh, wait, app2 saves it's documents in it's own little shit hole garden, where nothing else can access it...
I wish I'd known before I bought these devices that there is no simple, easy to use, way of sharing documents among apps. Windows/linux/osx/* users will have no idea what the fuck I'm on about.
I tried to upload a simple pdf doc to a website using safari... oh no, can't do that. The fucking document can't be found anywhere. It's in appN's walled garden. Solution? Pay for iCabSomething-or-other, which is really a hacked browser which "allows" you to upload any document you want to a simple html fucking form on a website... but only after you've downloaded the document using the SAME browser so you can access it from the same shit hole garden.
It's no wonder the other executives in my team have had their fucking iPads for MONTHS but have yet to use them productively... oh wait, one of them uses it to browse and email. That's it.
FUCK apple, I thought you were better than this.
You read that article wrong. It doesn't say that it offered the fix only for Jellybean. It says, "Google’s security officials replied in minutes, confirming the flaw and promising to correct it. Within days they had incorporated a fix into the latest version of the Android operating system, Jelly Bean 4.2, and made available a security update for earlier versions."
The real problem, the article goes on to say, is that those security updates aren't pushed automatically by Google, they're up to the manufacturer and/or carrier to implement, which is where the monolithic approach of Apple has its advantages, although I still prefer my Android overall.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
android has better privacy controls than iOS. every android app must declare permissions for the services it can use BEFORE it is installed.
The problem is that is a horrifically stupid idea.
No user can POSSIBLY know before they run the app if all of the permissions make sense. Contacts is a great example, at some point it might benefit to look something up from a contact. So you just agree.
Meanwhile on iOS the user is not asked if the app should access contacts until they are using the app and whatever they are doing triggers the request. So they know what the app does, and know EXACTLY what they did to make the app ask for contacts, so they can decide if it makes sense to have them.
Also, if you don't agree on Android generally you just can't use the app because you have to agree to everything (yes I know there are ways around that, not standard though). On iOS I can keep using the app that I've just told has no access to location or contacts, without having to pre-select access teh app should have.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I agree, most of my iPhone using friends love their gadgets, they are good, but then for every one of those I probably know someone who's switched to a Android now. Including myself going from a iPhone 4 to a Galaxy S2. The most surprising thing is they point out a better GUI, say it's just as easy to use, and absolutely love the ability to personalise your phone. Remember it wasn't even possible to set the iOS homescreen wallpaper until iOS 4 was released!
So when you press the shift/caps key on an Android on-screen keyboard, the letters on the keys change - which is a delightful feature. iOS, they are always capitals.
Woz understates the problem. Apple has been copying features pioneered on Android for some time now, and anything Apple original is coming out a little half-baked. Note that Siri wasn't an Apple original but a company they bought. Copy and paste, multi-tasking, the notification drawer, it's all better on Android and has been for some time. You couldn't even set a homescreen wallpaper until iOS 4. iOS stopped being good when Apple chases ever more revenue and half-baked sidetracks like Siri and their own maps. They are pouring a lot of effort in to hardware too but perhaps not pushing iOS ahead.
iOS still has it's good points for some users, but generally speaking it's so far behind it's not funny.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
...unless they work right.
Agreed on file system issue. Dropbox makes this much better though
I agree. I wanted to replace my old smartphone and had to enter a 2 year contract to get something better. I read reviews and watched videos, etc. Certain phones have larger flaws than others. No one review pointed out all the flaws so you had to keep reading. At some point it wasn't worth my time. I knew that IOS would be updated and would work. Carriers do hate updates. Whey do they want to give you something for nothing when they already have you in a contract?
I am geeky enough to deal with the technical challenges but at some point I just want it to work. (I spend all day fixing other peoples software problems on the PC platform)
I have used "smartphones" for years including Windows CE and Windows Mobile devices from HTC. One executive at my company said something amazingly true about one of those devices. (blue angel) He said it was a great PDA with a poorly thought out phone app added as an afterthought. Three way calling and even normal calling was painful. It wanted to dial people that you didn't intent to call.
Maybe I've been brainwashed or something but I spend almost no time trying to get stuff to work right with my iPhone. That is really convenient when you have lots of things going on in your life.
I am really impressed by the Android OS. It has come a long way. I just don't want to get a device that I'm stuck with for another 2 years that may have a major flaw or get stuck with an old OS. Standardization would help a lot. Make the phones the same size and shape, maybe make 2 or 3 form factors. Make it so it can be docked and work with your car radio or alarm clock. Make them durable with long battery life and make upgrading OS versions easy and appealling to the carriers.
I may be a little older than the average reader here but I'm technically savvy. I just choose to use my skills on other things than my phone. All the hacking Windows phones and older smartphones has made me realize that I don't care for it. (not enough payoff for the time involved)
I like that Apple puts the upgrades out and the carriers don't have to do anything. I'm not an Apple fanboy and never even owned an Apple product until a couple of years ago. One of my biggest things is resale value. I will probably get what I paid for my iPhone 4s when I'm done with it and I like cars that hold their value as well. My old Windows phones were worth less than 10% of what I paid for them when I was done and my Palm Pre was work about 25% of what I paid after subsidies.
Also, do Android phones have to dial to get voicemail? The iPhone gets the voicemessage sent to it and you can listen without calling. (instantly) I thought that Android phones have to 'call' to get voicemail but I'm not sure.
Whatever kind of phone you prefer, are there features you envy the users of some other variety?
I'm an iPhone user but I envy the BlackBerry Balance feature. The ability to completely cordon off work from home is a terrific feature. Far too often I end up accidentally sending work related emails, calendar invites... from my home email.
The FSF says the licenses are incompatible and any GPL apps in the app store are in violation:
https://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/more-about-the-app-store-gpl-enforcement
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Whenever I use my wife's iPhone or iPad the thing I wish for most is a back button. I get so used to it when using my Android phone (Samsung Galaxy II) and Nexus 7 that I get confused when I need to figure out how to go back in iPhone apps. It's done slightly differently in every app and every part of every app and in some places there doesn't seem to be a way to go back at all.
OTOH, I have always loved the hardware design of the iPhones. I love phones which have a metal feel. Even the plastic on the iPhone feels better than the cheap plastic of my own phone. I chose my Android phone based on features rather than look and feel. I've never liked that it's entirely plastic.
I loved my Nexus One because it was a great Android phone (at the time) with a metal feel, but when I upgraded I couldn't find a similar phone.
Cow Cube