Woz Dumps on MacBook Air, iPhone, AppleTV 360
AcidAUS writes "Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak heaped less than lavish praise on the company's iPhone, MacBook Air and Apple TV products when visiting Sydney this morning. Wozniak said he was puzzled by the lack of 3G support on the iPhone and that he didn't believe the MacBook Air would be a hit."
Hum (Score:5, Interesting)
On another note no one can say that the iPhone did not change the face of the cell phone market. I can't say if the new Air will do the same thing for the notebook market or not.
Sounds like he's been reading slashdot... (Score:4, Interesting)
Personally I think the Macbook Air may sell well, because Apple's proven they can get users to suffer through all kinds of hardware deficiencies to get their software.
Re:I'm glad SOMEONE is saying it... (Score:5, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Hum (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Sounds like he's been reading slashdot... (Score:2, Interesting)
The problem with the Air is that I don't know how I'd install XP on it, and I need XP for proper MS Office utils.
Re:No questions (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:No questions (Score:3, Interesting)
really? it doesn't seem to suck that much, or at all when I use my iphone. Its pretty damn fast.
I do happen to live in the most densely populated, and cell signal covered area in the USA though.
I am using T Mobile service also. YMMV.
lack of touchscreen... (Score:5, Interesting)
They should call it the Breeze or something. And put a low power mode for writing notes. The battery needs to squeeze out 8 hours for the device. It can be slower, that doesn't matter, it just needs to be a replacement for a clipboard.
There needs to be a mode on it called "scribble" or something, where the screen fills with a blank, lined or graph paper-like background, colour selection bar at the top, maybe a clear-screen quick button, a snap-to function for making quick hand drawn graphs, and IM support so you can reply with handwritten IMs, send notes, etc. It makes IM more personalized, and reduces the easily intercept-able plain text messages.
Make a version that's reasonably cheaper, maybe a low-colour display, flash memory storage, slower processor... but again, it's designed for taking notes. Maybe some web surfing as well. The advantage needs to be long battery life to get through an entire day of work or school without having to recharge it or plug it in.
Now I've shared the angst I've had pent up over electronics for the past 5 years. Somebody do something with this. Otherwise I'm just going to make it myself.
3G (well-implemented) takes LESS energy... (Score:4, Interesting)
Air Sold Out (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:3G (well-implemented) takes LESS energy... (Score:5, Interesting)
When in a 3G service area, battery life is affected significantly compared to in a GSM service area, even if all the phone does is idle nearly the entire time.
My AT&T Tilt seems to eat through battery at least twice as fast in standby if it is in a UMTS service area than it does when in a 2G GSM-only area, or when I force it into GSM mode for improved battery life.
The iPhone is an extremely thin device - there is no way they could have implemented 3G with the current crop of 3G chipsets without either making the device much thicker or reducing battery life significantly, both more "non-Appley" traits than slower data service.
Disclaimer: This applies to 3G GSM, aka UMTS. 3G CDMA2000 (aka 1xEV-DO) doesn't carry the same battery life penalty in comparison to 2G/2.5G cdmaOne/CDMA2000 - Partly because the base modulation scheme has not changed significantly. If Woz is a Verizon or Sprint customer he won't see much battery penalty for an EV-DO phone. Something about UMTS makes it very hard to optimize for power efficiency compared to CDMA2000, even for the CDMA experts at Qualcomm. (UMTS uses a CDMA modulation scheme, but with different parameters and a completely different protocol suite than CDMA2000.) UMTS is notorious for bad battery life/handset heat generation, even when implemented in a Qualcomm chipset such as the MSM7k series.
Re:lack of touchscreen... (Score:-1, Interesting)
Woz... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I'm glad SOMEONE is saying it... (Score:3, Interesting)
And to the grandparent poster: I've still upgraded the RAM and HDD in my MacBook, but it's nice to have a system where everything works so brilliantly. And for that 5% of the time when I'm not letting OS X do things for me, there's a great CLI and certified Unix nerd-points. Not that I really know what I'm doing with it all that much, but it's fun to learn. (And I haven't broken things too badly yet.)
Why is this a 5? (Score:3, Interesting)
You may not agree with the reasons given and believe it is for marketing reasons, but this means you think Mr. Jobs is directly and purposefully trying to deceive the buying public when he said they were waiting for more efficient 3g chipsets. Why would he lie about such a thing if it were so easily disproved? He would risk his entire "believability capital" on such a silly thing? This is highly unlikely as it is such a trivial thing for one to risk their reputation on, yet your "feeling" over rides any attempt at being logical about the real reason.
BTW there have been a few new 3g chipsets "released" recently that are much more power efficient, hence the newest rumours of a 3g iphone coming soon. There wasn't really a push to lower power requirements in 3g chipsets until Apple made a stink about it, notice how they stayed pretty close in power requirements over the previous three years until this event.
Re: Would you pay twice as much for better UI ? (Score:5, Interesting)
The iPhone is only a success in markets where mobile phones are treated as single-function devices. In the US market, this is the case. In the rest of the world, it isn't. The iPhone is like OS X: It does 70% of what I want it to do, and it does it very well. Unlike OS X, I can't add the remaining 30%. In contrast, the iPod does 100% of what I want it to do - it plays music. As someone who owns two Mac laptops and an iPod, I am not interested in the iPhone until it is available in an unlocked form.
Re:I'm glad SOMEONE is saying it... (Score:2, Interesting)
The fact is, I don't use my PC anymore because as much as like messing with things, I'd rather they work 99% of the time and I'm willing to sacrifice the nerdiness and wasted time getting things to work in order to successfully use my comp when I need to.
Here here!
After my wife bought her Macbook, I would always prefer firing it up instead of fumbling around with my Windows laptop from work. Having to start up my Windows laptop is a chore -- god knows what will break this time and how many times I will have to reboot to get the thing to fly right.
The Macbook would just work... open the lid and hit the shift key and Voila! No worrying whether the wireless stack will go MIA again or not or whether I'll have to wait 5 minutes while the PC laptop mulls over some network event.
It just works.
I bought a Macbook Air yesterday as a result. It is exactly what I've been looking for -- a computer that I can carry along with me to work along with my work PC laptop (that weighs a ton) without breaking my back. I don't care if it's missing features -- my purpose with it is to have a non-company-own presence on the internet while I'm at work and this fits that bill perfectly.
bad headline (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Why is this a 5? (Score:4, Interesting)
Jobs does this so often there is a name [wikipedia.org] for it. He knows that he has a fairly large fan base that will believe anything he says, even when it screws them over. Look at the fiasco with the AEBS and TM or the keyboard issues on the MBP that they have finally attempted to fix after nearly a year. It will be a bad day for Apple if people are ever logical about most anything they sell.
Re:tag: omgtreason (Score:3, Interesting)
But hey, I totally get his reasoning. The Macbook Air was a disappointment for me, too. It belongs in Ripley's Believe it or Not moreso than a computer museum, what with such a small hard drive, etc... It was totally premature, imo - if they waited five more years, the MacBook Air might have replaced Apple's current line or laptops altogether. The iPod Touch seems like a bigger jump for Apple, but it barely gained the attention of the press. It uses uses Wi-Fi, and the iPhone uses cellphone networks. if the iPod Touch could be used to make phone calls, couldn't it just replace the iPhone? Other than needing a good signal...
Re:lack of touchscreen... (Score:2, Interesting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMate_300 [wikipedia.org]
One of the first products Jobs killed when he returned to Apple in 1998.
I still have a prototype.
Re:I dont get it (Score:3, Interesting)
The fact is that Wozniak is rightfully credited as having made some of the most significant engineering achievements in the history of computing is entirely justifiable. When it comes to electronics the man is a bona fide genius. But when it comes to his views on business, he's no more qualified to speak than anyone else. Apple isn't the same company it was when he was there. He might as well give his views on Walmart.
All that said, I actually agree with him on this one. The iPhone isn't 3G right now, because it means Apple will be able to sell the drones another one when they released it (planned obsolescence anyone?) and the Air is overpriced crap that stretches the limits of style over substance even by Apple's standards.