Woz Worries Microsoft Is Now More Innovative Than Apple 333
First time accepted submitter yvajj writes "According to a techcrunch interview, Woz believes that Microsoft is now more innovative than Apple. Per the interview, it seems as though Apple is now just doing newer versions of the iPhone, and are potentially headed into a rut. Another gem from Woz is the fact that he treats all new hardware as something new to learn from and does not approach it with any preconceptions (irrespective of who the manufacturer is / what OS etc.). A great short interview from Woz."
Do RTFA (Score:2, Interesting)
Interesting interview.
At this point... (Score:5, Interesting)
Woz should probably be cheering for Apple's demise at this point...
Just imagine if IBM had been as good at shifting shiny cyrptographic lockboxes and patent litigation back when Apple was getting started. They would have sued his hacker ass back into the garage for good and we'd all still be speaking EBCDIC.
woz: the boy who lived (Score:5, Interesting)
seems like one of the few people in the valley who've managed to retain their techno-weenie spirit despite enormous corporate success.
Re:Really? Woz? (Score:2, Interesting)
Give Microsoft some credit? MS typically makes shitty clones of popular products. Windows 3.11 was an ugly clone and copy of the Mac. Nothing innovative. Netbios was their poor attempt of copying VMS networking technologies. Word was a copy of Wordperfect. Excel was bought and was a cheap clone of Lotus. IE a buggy clone of Netscape etc.
Windows 8, Surface, and Windows Phone, are innovative and new. Metro may suck on the desktop but I could use it on a phone or tablet. It is the first time in recent memory that MS is actually trying something new and different.
Maybe non power users and hipsters will like it? We are just old and set in our ways, but for most uses a tiny tablet that has a keyboard attachment and a tile UI is innovative.
MS is no longer the monster riding on IBMs monopoly. MS has never faced competition like this before. It was their nightmare of the internet multiplied over by apps and devices that use the internet as their platform which has the inertia to compete. What does MS have to gain by making poor knockoffs? Nothing.
Re:At this point... (Score:4, Interesting)
Things haven't changed that much. At the time of the first Apple computer, IBM had a patent on the way characters were displayed on a CRT. They enforced it, too. I know a guy at Xerox PARC that found a way around it.
Re:Why should he be worried? (Score:5, Interesting)
Fuck it, I'm godwinning this shit right now! When the germans innovated warfare, not everybody ended up benefitting.
Now, back to our normal programming, the current patent system also discourages your way of thinking. There are open initiatives, that really benefit the whole, if not exactly everyone, and closed initiatives that raise barriers to entry in a market, so every consumer and competing company is a little bit more fucked over so the patent holder can pocket more bucks.
Re:Really? Woz? (Score:1, Interesting)
I've been using Windows 8 for weeks. The start menu is now full screen instead of a button, which makes it easier for me to start my programs and the tiles provide information without having to open anything. My email, news, calendar, weather, and stocks all display what I want to know with no effort on my part. I think it is an improvement. I used to have to go to Start -> programs -> and search for my program's folder and try to click on the executable without clicking on the Help, Order, Uninstaller, or Read Me. Now, unless I click on All Apps, the start screen hides all that for me and I need only a single click to get what I need. Administration is easier with just a single right click in the lower left. Holy shit, why didn't someone do this sooner. The start menu is a giant pile of shit that I had to scroll though and search through. With Windows 7 I always created a new toolbar because the start menu sucked. Now I just click. What is your specific grip about it? How long have you used it? Are you a just karma whore?
It was done sooner! That was WIndows Vista that had all of that. The only reason I stuck through it rather than go back to XP ... other than the school semester already started.
Windows 7 instant search is much better than 8's, as it does not require you to use the arrow keys to differentiate which is a file, program, or setting, and to top it off doesn't take the whole screen! If you had to add a second toolbar to your Windows 7 installation then you are doing it wrong and still thinking like it was XP.
Apple's pace of innovation is slowing down (Score:5, Interesting)
Unlike many people who posted here, I actually saw the entire video. I am not a Steve Jobs fan or an apple fanboi.
I do admire Steve Wozniak, though. ( though am not his spokesperson - this is my interpretation )
IMO, what he's saying is that
- Small, incremental evolutions by Apple in their products will not help Apple in the long run.
- The delta between Apple and it's competitors is reducing.
- Apple needs to create newer product lines AND/OR create bring out more 'revolutionary products'
He probably means that we're not seeing the kind of 'jumps' that we saw from iPhone 3GS to the iPhone 4
or the creation of the iPad.
To conclude, he does not think that apple is doomed per se.
He is just worried that the pace of innovation might be slowing down at apple. Like all geeks, Woz believes in catching problems earlier rather than later.
Windoes 8 Phone (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Really? Woz? (Score:2, Interesting)
Netbios was their poor attempt of copying VMS networking technologies
You know that David Cutler was brought in from DEC to be the lead for the NT team while it was being designed, right? Cutler himself had said that WNT -> VMS+1. The whole system is modeled after VMS, except more modern, the people who designed VMS designed it, after all.
IE was never a clone of Netscape (IE didn't suck, compared to NEtscape at least, for one).
Word was a contemporary of Word Perfect, not a clone.
Excel wasn't bought, but if you're going to argue it to be a clone of Lotus, one could argue Lotus was a clone of Visicalc.
MS is no longer the monster riding on IBMs monopoly.
What monopoly? Are you from the bizarro universe where there was no Commodore/Amigia, Atari or Apple?