Wozniak Praises 'Beautiful' Windows Phone 362
judgecorp writes "Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has praised the user interface of Microsoft's Windows Phone, saying that aspects of its user interface are more 'beautiful' than comparable sides to the iPhone. The comments, in a New Domain, follow on from a comment by Forrester boss George Colony who blogged that Apple would decline in the post-Jobs era. Both pieces have kicked off the kind of online argument you would expect."
Who is this Wozniak guy? (Score:5, Funny)
Probably some Anti-Apple shill.
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And.....? (Score:5, Insightful)
So what if Woz praised something a competitor produced? He's entitled to his own opinion, negative or positive, and it says nothing about the state of Apple. Is Apple going to decline without Jobs? Who know, but Woz having an opinion is hardly a sign one way or the other. The only thing it does is dispell any notion that he's an arrogant prat who couldn't possible even deign to glance at a competitor's product without vomiting.
Maybe this sort of thing gets to me too much, but I'm really fed up of this "you must be 100% for whichever brand-tribe you join!" guff. If he liked bits of another product then so what, that's competition for you.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And.....? (Score:4, Insightful)
he's not a fanboi of any particular technology despite his Apple connections.
Which I think is something which appearss to be missing in large chunks of the general population these days (at least, the population who actually care about technology). If you take a glance down the comments sections of many sites it's a perpetual argument-to-the-death for their own personal preference. I even know people who are like that in person when it comes to tech, but why? Why are people so obsessed with insisting that what they have is the absolute best ever and don't you dare disagree with me? At which point did people stop being consumers and start being believers?
Would you have written something similar, or considered it non-newsworthy, if the subject was Dave Haynie, Richard Stallman, Chuck Peddle, or James Gosling?
That depends on the context. Stallman has heavily criticised Apple for their ethics, which is something I'd be interested in hearing about. Would I think it's shocking and newsworthy if Stallman picked up an iPhone and said "You know, I really like the aluminium body they give these things"? No.
If Wozniak thinks the Microsoft phone is beautiful then fine. If someone wants to report "comments from a guy who knows about these things on #upcomingtech" then fine. But trying to tie that in to an article about someone claiming that Apple is in decline as if the two are somehow linked and therefore Steve must be about to jump ship? Come on.
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Re:And.....? (Score:4, Insightful)
I wonder what kind of phone he actually uses...
Re:And.....? (Score:5, Funny)
I wonder what kind of phone he actually uses...
Probably one cobbled together from parts he cannibalized from old radios, digital toasters, and Clinton-era computers, running a custom ROM he flashed to the BIOS chip and a barebones customized "GNU/Linux." He has to carry the motherboard and RAID in a hemp backpack (which doubles as his exercise regimen), it has a full QWERTY keyboard that he keeps in a side holster so he can run his EMACS-based SMS client, and the display is a naked LCD running on an ISA framebuffer card, connected by a ribbon cable coming out the side of the monitor. He suspends the monitor from a helmet so he can go "hands free."
It ain't purdy, but IT IS FREE!
Re:And.....? (Score:5, Interesting)
Woz has 2 iphones as his primary devices. He says that Windows Phone 7 has a better interface than Android and chooses it over that platform, but he always carries multiple devices with him and still says his two iPhones (ATT and Verizon) are his primaries. Despite this, he praises a lot of aspects of the WP7 OS as better than iOS.
Here is a link to a audio recording of an interview with Woz where he talks about all his devices and why he likes WP7 over Android:
http://soundcloud.com/kopoint/the-report-steve-wozniak-interview [soundcloud.com]
Go to 6:25 to hear him say that iPhone is still his primary.
BTW, I carry a Lumia 900 for personal bias warning.
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Its not surprising that Wozniak stuck to tech (Score:5, Insightful)
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Sad, too, he's assumed to be an Apple mouthpiece.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Just because Woz originally helped found Apple Computer in the 70's doesn't mean he's a shill for Apple 30 years later, long after having worked as one of their employees, and after the company changed names (simply "Apple" today -- with the "Computer" part purposely deleted).
I really do think the man speaks honestly about technology he uses, no matter which vendor it comes from. He often likes Apple's products, and when he does, he'll tell you so. But the media seems to assume he's "supposed to be saying that" and jumps to conclusions whenever he says something good about a competing product instead.
As a big fan of the iPhone myself, I'd agree with Woz about Windows Phone 7 too. It *does* have a refreshing and attractive-looking UI to it -- something I'm doubly impressed came out of Microsoft, after their LONG standing belief that everything they designed should have a START button in the corner. (Even their embedded systems for such things as vehicle navigation systems still required developers to purposely code the software to completely hide the OS's UI underneath, because nobody wanted a touchscreen in their car or truck to look like it was just another PC running a version of Windows, with icons to double-click.)
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While MS and the WinPhone proponents will jump all over this, it's not that big of a deal. Woz is a tech geek, his technical abilities are/were top notch. But I've used the UIs he designed/implemented. Frankly, his opinion on a UI doesn't carry much weight.
He has also praised things about Android in the past.
What does all that mean? Simply that the iPhone doesn't get every detail "perfect", other phones do some things better.
But rather than take my word for it, here are Woz' words (from TFA):
“The iPhone has a lot of beauty and simplicity, and you don’t get lost as much in it, but it is more awkward to use (than Windows Phone 7.5 Mango).
...
“iPhone is my favourite phone. I did give my opinion that the Windows Phone had superior visual appearance and operation cues that were also more attractive. In my opinion, it sets the mark for user interface. I would recommend it over my Android phones, given that it doesn’t yet have the breadth of apps,...”
Re:Its not surprising that Wozniak stuck to tech (Score:5, Insightful)
It's sad that Wozniak was always hindered by his inability to be a bullshit artist. It's just not in his nature to kiss ass or blow smoke. You ask his opinion and he gives it, without any regard as to whether or not it's what you want to hear.
Unfortunately this quality, which should be considered a virtue, is usually considered a handicap in the corporate world.
Monumental failure. (Score:5, Interesting)
The UI may be great and the development environment good, but Microsoft, in a misguided attempt to lock developers to the platform (that only works when you have them to begin with), made it impossible to use c++ and OpenGL on them meaning every part of an Android or iOS game/app has to be rewritten to work on Windows Phone 7.
When you make it too hard, developers will stick with the platforms where the customers are; Android and iOS
Re:Monumental failure. (Score:4, Interesting)
Except Microsoft will eventually have tons of developers on the platform, unless you are suggesting that no one is going to pick up development for Windows 8. Once you start making Windows 8 desktop apps, they should be easy to convert to Windows 8 mobile apps.
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I sure hope the apps won't be too easy to port. Keyboard and mouse interface do not translate well to touch. Nor does many open windows translate well to only one window open at full screen like on a phone.
These two environments are so different that trying to move applications over without at least replacing the entire user interface will only end in pain.
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Windows 8 will allow multiple open tiles, I thought. You can even run explorer in one then run apps for it in that. Is this not how most current applications will be supported on windows 8?
One application open at a time is not how most people use computers, and for good reason.
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Re:Monumental failure. (Score:5, Informative)
You meant "Java" and "Objective C", right?
No. I meant C++. iOS and Android requires a bit of Objective-C and Java respectively, but you can write all your heavy lifting code in C++. For instance, you can write a whole C++ library and reference it in your Objective-C code, through Objective-C++.
So you can essentially share quite a bit of code between iOS and Android. As an example, OpenSceneGraph (openscenegraph.org) runs on both iOS and Android, and that is a C++ based library. I wish I had specified this in my parent post so I didn't have to clarify this.
Also, I must admit to genuine confusion (I'm not saying you're wrong here, I'm asking...): If WP7 is .NET based, can't you use a C++ compiler that compiles to the CLR? Or have they prevented that in some way?
Only Phone Manufacturers [stackoverflow.com] are allowed to write unmanaged code for WP7 so that excludes native c++.
And even if you can run managed C++ in the CLR, most C++ codebases can not compile this way without major changes.
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Re:Monumental failure. (Score:5, Informative)
You can, but you don't. The point here is not that there's some hypothetical apps out there that might be easier to port if there was a C++ compiler for WP7, it's that there are, in practice, very, very, very few, because C++ is not the recommended language of development for either iOS or Android.
Look I really wish you would just speak for yourself because you lack the knowledge to speak for the rest of us. As someone who is actually writing a cross platform OpenGL game and knows how possible what I'm saying is, I'd like to ask you how you think all those cross platform blockbuster 3d games and classic game ports came along (I love all the classic point and click adventures)? Do you really think they rewrote everything in Objective C because it's the "recommended way" hen they could just slightly adapt their existing c++ code base and write a small Objective C fronted.
I sincerely don't think you know what you're talking about when you say "not many", "a small minority", etc unless you only talk about toy apps like third party alarm clocks or "flashlights". It's not like each app says which programming language it was written in and you have provided absolutely no evidence.
Re:Monumental failure. (Score:5, Informative)
Also, I must admit to genuine confusion (I'm not saying you're wrong here, I'm asking...): If WP7 is .NET based, can't you use a C++ compiler that compiles to the CLR? Or have they prevented that in some way?
Like Silverlight in the browser, WP7 only supports the subset of CIL that is verifiable (i.e. memory-safe) for third party apps. While VC++ can compile pretty much any C++ code to managed without changes to the source with /clr, the output is not verifiable (because C++ has things like pointer arithmetic), so it doesn't run on WP7. There is /clr:safe, which produces verifiable code, but it does so by restricting the use of all C++ constructs that cannot be compiled that way - which is most of the language. So it certainly won't help you take an existing C++ codebase and recompile it for WP7.
You meant "Java" and "Objective C", right? Because regular apps aren't programmed in C++ on either iOS or Android (although I believe the former supports it for regular apps, it's just most are Objective C anyway given the OPENSTEP API); yes, games on Android usually require a stub written in C++, but again, it's not the recommended way to write an app except for extreme circumstances.
Most Android games, especially 3D ones, are, in fact, written almost entirely in C++, with only a small Java stub to handle input & sound.
Portable regular apps are often programmed with Obj-C/Java for UI, and C++ on the background. This is because, right now, it's the only way to reuse code between iOS and Android, and both platforms are sufficiently popular that doing so is an explicit goal from the get go. Because WP7 does not support C++, it does not benefit from this arrangement; but if it did support it, then it would (because then porting an app to WP7 would mean only rewriting the UI in C#, not the whole thing).
In the end, I have to say I don't see what you're saying is a problem. I rather like the fact that Apple, Google, and Microsoft are doing their own thing. It's been a long time since we saw major tech companies implementing different visions of how computers should be - to me, personal computing died with the bankruptcy of Commodore, and we're finally, FINALLY, seeing a break in the idea that all platforms should be the same.
There is a big difference between platforms being the same, and code being portable between them. There's no good reason why platform-independent code (that does not use any platform-specific APIs) should not be portable.
Re:Monumental failure. (Score:5, Insightful)
With just a little bit of glue and abstraction over input devices a game could probably share 90% of the code between iOS, Android and even the Blackberry Tablet OS / Blackberry 10. If you utilised some 3rd party gaming API it's probably even more again. Microsoft really need that native support and preferably OpenGL ES, even if its through gritted teeth.
Buyer beware! (Score:5, Informative)
The one Windows Phone evangelist who claimed the current devices would be upgradable, quickly walked those statements back.
Source here [cnet.com] .
If you buy one of these "beta test" phones, you will soon be stuck in a multi-year contract with a device that will not be upgradable to the current version of the OS. There is nothing beautiful about that. Do not buy before Win Phone 8 is released!
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Microsoft had Windows 7 running on a phone weaker than all current WP7 devices in prior to 2010.
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Re:Buyer beware! (Score:4, Informative)
So, basically the same situation as Android then - no idea when, or even if, you will be upgraded? :)
Seriously, the Galaxy Note is getting a lot of ad time over here in the UK, enough to make me pick it up in a store and take a look at it (i find the form factor to be ... interesting, and I'd consider buying one for that - couldn't make a judgement on the OS as it was a dead display unit), but it struck me that it was still on Android 2.3 and I was sure that both Android 3 and 4 had been released (I know that 3 is tablet only).
Sure enough, Android 4 has been out since last November - and Samsung have yet to confirm an upgrade date for the Note. Thats just wrong.
Re:Buyer beware! (Score:4, Interesting)
For people who buy Microsoft/Nokia's current flagship phone, the word on the street is that they are going to be screwed over, and Microsoft refuses to address the issue even when the big hitter tech journalists directly ask.
That's a big difference.
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Or maybe they just use an virtual machine like everyone does these days?
no surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
Wozniak is a nerd's nerd. He isn't the general public, and what woz thinks is awesome is not likely to be what Joe average wants to use. That is not meant to be an insult by the way, the man is a genius. But he's a technical genius and not a genius with regards to what people want (that was Jobs).
I'd say that getting a glowing review by wozniak is just as likely to be the kiss of death as it is to be the harbinger of iphone doom...
Call me a grump... (Score:3)
When MS bought out the Chevron utility and built it as an option, it made the platform attractive -- no worrying about rooting or jailbreaking. A recent XDA article showed that that functionality is going away soon.
I wish it weren't the case, but I am tired of locked down platforms, and find Android the one that sucks the least. For example, if I want to block calls/texts with iOS [1], i'm forced to jailbreak. At least with Android, I can use Mr. Number or a root-level blacklist and be done with it.
What would be ideal would be a system similar to the one used for unlocking Nexus phone bootloaders -- an obstacle that will make Joe Sixpack go "hmm, maybe I shouldn't do this", but for someone who knows their stuff, would be trivial. That way, people who don't know what they are doing are protected by the phone's security and the gatekeeper at the app store, while people who are more interested in customization can do what they want.
[1]: Yes, there are apps that supposedly do blocking, but a lot of them do nothing except create a new contact entry with [Blocked] in it.
Since 1984... (Score:5, Insightful)
George Colony who blogged that Apple would decline in the post-Jobs era.
Since day one of the Macintosh, or you might say day one of the IBM PC, people have been predicting the demise of Apple. With every new model and every new OS, legions of entrenched industry analysts stood up and said with certainty..."whoa, this may be the end of Apple".
I guess if they just keep saying that, one day it will be true and they can pat themselves on the back for being so prescient.
it's been little more than a decade (Score:2)
Re:Since 1984... (Score:4, Insightful)
George Colony who blogged that Apple would decline in the post-Jobs era.
Since day one of the Macintosh, or you might say day one of the IBM PC, people have been predicting the demise of Apple. With every new model and every new OS, legions of entrenched industry analysts stood up and said with certainty..."whoa, this may be the end of Apple".
I guess if they just keep saying that, one day it will be true and they can pat themselves on the back for being so prescient.
Well, to be fair, the first post-Jobs era at Apple did almost sink the company. Microsoft, ironically enough, is a big part of the reason Apple made it out of the mid 90's in business. And if you talk to their shareholders now, most of them will tell you that, while the post-Jobs era now has been good from a stock value and revenue standpoint, its been pretty damn concerning from a mid-term to long-term innovation and investment standpoint. Look at the pace of "real" innovation that was happening at Apple for the ten years before Jobs' departure, and look at the pace now. That should have people worried. "Innovation" now is "hype up the technology developed by a company we're suing (Samsung's high-resolution panel)" and "we're in 150 markets". Software innovation is dried up -- they're rolling out largely features that came from Android and WP7, implemented in the jailbroken community, and absorbed much later by Apple.
Apple and MS have swapped roles now -- Apple is coasting on customer hype and its near monopoly, and Microsoft is the nimble innovator. And as someone who has a lot of stock in both, I have this lingering sense of dread that both companies are going to somehow screw this up.
Re:Since 1984... (Score:4, Informative)
Microsoft's role is somewhat overblown. The 150 million from MS was to settle a lawsuit and represented 7.5% of Apple's cash reserves at the time.
That's one of the things I like about Woz (Score:5, Insightful)
--
The mill's closed. There's no more work. We're destitute. I've got no option but to sell you all for scientific experiments.
Quality is irrelevant (Score:3, Interesting)
1. The intersection of MS fanboys and people with widespread credibility is exactly 0.
2. Nobody (apart from MS employees and shareholders) wants it to succeed. - Most people who care about tech gear want MS products to fail so the company will die and be replaced by several other, better companies.
3. We all want competition, good products, and good value, but nobody associates any of those things with microsoft. We all reasonably expect competitors products to be at least as good and better value.
4. We'll happily take an apple/google duopoly over another MS monopoly anyday.
So unless the phones are both outstanding compared to the competition, and much better value, nobody is going to care about them. This seems unlikely.
If MS wants people to care about it's brands and products, it needs to split itself up into it's various divisions. Smaller, independent businesses would be forced to compete and innovate instead of relying on marketing and monopoly to ensure success. If WP7 became a genuine underdog, it might actually get some credible supporters. But since this won't ever happen, it will simply die a long, painful and expensive death. So props to MS on the strategy so far.
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2. Nobody (apart from MS employees and shareholders) wants it to succeed.
I want it to succeed. Why? More options = better. If they open it up, I want it to succeed even more.
I don't like Microsoft, but as long as they are not overwhelmingly dominant, they are no worse than Apple or IBM.
"Kind of online argument you'd expect" (Score:3)
This is the kind of online argument I'd expect: ... you're a stinky poopy-face!
A: This is a superior product, because XYZ.
B: But it's inferior because other products have KLM, which is better than XYZ.
A: Whaddaya mean, XYZ rocks, KLM sucks!
B: Your product sucks!
A: Well, yeah
B: I'm not, but yo momma is!
A: B is totally like Hitler!
My 3 weeks with Lumia (Score:3, Informative)
I like Woz (Score:3)
Woz was the hardware guru who created the original Apple computers; Jobs was the marketing guy who got them in people's hands.
But as a true "geek", Woz has the decency to respect his competition, and no shame in giving them praise when it's due.
It's a shame so-called "businessmen" couldn't be as generous in their dealings with the competition.
Re:Windows Phone 7 (Score:4, Insightful)
I played with a Lumia 900. It's well thought out but execution is lacking. The thing wouldn't get on the in store AT&T wifi. So I go to toggle it off and see what LTE is all about and the soft toggle for wifi on/off gets stuck in the middle. Err. What? It's a UI element! Really?
Windows phone 7 is full of interesting and good ideas with poor execution and little polish.
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I have a WP7 phone (HTC). I've never seen those issues. I'm guessing they are hardware/driver issues. I'm guessing the UI toggle is tied to the processing state of the action - it stalled in the middle, so it died.
And you can't blame the phone OS if the store can't make their WiFi and phones work together. I've used my phone on my WiFi at work and the Sprint store, and had no issues whatsoever.
WP7 has it's flaws, particularly with the 3rd party dev API, but the issues you mentioned seem more likely to be AT
Re:Windows Phone 7 (Score:5, Insightful)
And you can't blame the phone OS if the store can't make their WiFi and phones work together
Umm.
Yes. You can. In almost all cases. If the store Wifi is working and everyone else can get on and that phone can not, What exactly is to blame?
Re:Windows Phone 7 (Score:5, Insightful)
You are assuming it is working with all of the others.
Also, you are assuming the issue isn't with the driver or hardware (which would be the manufacturer of the phone, and not the OS).
Re:Windows Phone 7 (Score:5, Funny)
Windows did it.
We all know it.
If Windows is anywhere near the scene of the crime, "Windows Did It."
Have we learned nothing?
The last good OS from Microsoft Was DOS 6.22. If you replaced command.com with 4dos.com.
Re:Windows Phone 7 (Score:5, Insightful)
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The issue I ran into using the windows mobile phones is that the one sprint offers doesn't support 4g, has a small screen, and is rather bad hardware all around. I'm waiting for one that is like my galaxy s2 then I will
Re:Windows Phone 7 (Score:5, Interesting)
Probably due to hidden SSID which the phones can't handle.
http://windowsphonesecrets.com/2010/08/04/windows-phone-missing-feature-of-the-week-connect-to-hidden-wireless-
networks/
Re:Windows Phone 7 (Score:5, Insightful)
If users are going to have to fight with drivers on their Windows phones, then Microsoft has already lost the race. Nobody wants to muck with drivers on their friggin' phone. What the hell does that even mean? It's not like someone swapped out the network adapter or anything -- so if they wifi doesn't work out of the box, the entire phone is suspect and isn't ready for consumers.
Well, then maybe the OS+phone combo, but people kind of expect wi-fi to be a well solved problem. Find the network, enter the password, and go. It's not like it's new or anything.
If I was testing out a phone, and I couldn't get it to use the wifi in the store, I'd simply move onto the next phone. That's some serious warning signals the phone is going to be problematic.
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Re:Windows Phone 7 (Score:5, Interesting)
Your complaint is hardly specific to Windows Phone 7 tho - I've not used it (consider that a caveat) so I can't comment on WP7, but I've had my fair share of UI glitches and software slide buttons sticking on both Android (HTC Desire, 2.1 iirc) and iPhone.
I've even had situations where the iPhone wont let me answer a call thats ringing, because the screen isnt responding to the slide - the call goes to voice mail, the screen reverts back to the lock screen, and suddenly everything works again.
I've had situations where I couldn't hang up the call on both the iPhone and Android. Now thats not a great situation to be in!
My iPhone also won't connect to my local pubs wifi, even when Im sat a couple of meters away from the router - won't see it, and if I try and connect manually it won't join the network.
So execution is really lacking all round.
Re:Windows Phone 7 (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, because anecdotal evidence tends to be more true.
I've found that to be true in my personal experience.
Re:Windows Phone 7 (Score:4, Funny)
"Yeah, I played with it too, and it did feel like an early release product."
You mean it came early? Eeewww.
Re:Windows Phone 7 (Score:5, Insightful)
OK, the hyper-coordination between articles praising the WinPhone and gushing first posts is getting annoying.... How about a 15 minute rule between article and first post? Or maybe restrict first post to accounts that have been around for more than 15 minutes?
Re:Windows Phone 7 (Score:4, Insightful)
Or you should visit the Firehose more often.
Re:Windows Phone 7 (Score:5, Informative)
Come on, that's not fair. The first poster, TechCar, has a long history of 8 posts dating all the way back to two days ago! :)
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In Internet time, two days ago is like two centuries! ...wait a minute, we didn't even have computers and internet two centuries ago!!
TechCar is an alien visiting from the future!!!
Re:Windows Phone 7 (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, to be more fair, he almost certainly has a shitload more posts than that going back for quite a bit longer, just spread between a few dozen accounts.
Re:Windows Phone 7 (Score:5, Informative)
And out of his eight posts, four are negative of Google, one is negative of Linux, and three are positive about Microsoft.
Re:Windows Phone 7 (Score:5, Interesting)
Look, just because his name is similar to other first-posting newly created account names accused of being MS shills (TechNY/TechLA), the account was created just yesterday and he only made pro-MS and anti-Google postings since then doesn't mean anything. Doesn't mean anything at all ...
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Look, just because his name is similar to other first-posting newly created account names accused of being MS shills (TechNY/TechLA), the account was created just yesterday and he only made pro-MS and anti-Google postings since then doesn't mean anything. Doesn't mean anything at all ...
The question is whether this behaviour is actually shilling, or just a troll wanting to wind people up by making them think he's shilling (badly). I suspect the latter.
Possible Fixes (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't allow posts from accounts less than a year old to appear as first post. Hold them in queue until a few dozen posts have been made. You could also slow them down a bit by requiring two mod-ups to raise their score one point.
AFAIK they already don't allow brand spankin' new accounts to moderate. The real challenge is dealing with established accounts that don't 'turf; but moderate up the turfers. It could be a political issue if you simply LART them.
I hypothesize that if a user's up-mods all go towards new accounts, that user is likely a shill. They certainly have a strange bias. There's not much reason to skew your mods towards new accounts. Yeah, sympathy for high ID numbers; wanting to make new users feel good; but that's not really productive. We can do without that.
There's still nothing to stop a determined bunch of 'turfers from gaining access. You should make them work for it though.
Re:Possible Fixes - not going to happen (Score:3)
Considering the posts have the same time stamp as the story it is obvious that /. is complicit in this and therefor unlikely to implement any changes.
Re:Windows Phone 7 (Score:5, Insightful)
TechCar is the latest iteration of a large group of astroturfing accounts. There's a bunch of high UID accounts with similar style names (two random words smashed together) that shill pro-Microsoft and anti-Google positions. Unsurprisingly, he was born yesterday to post in Bonch's story claiming Google management knew about the wifi harvesting. He shows up to defend a well-established anti-Google (and pro-Apple) shill and has since posted a series of anti-Linux, anti-Google, and pro-Microsoft comments.
Assuming he follows the same pattern as the rest, mods will catch on in a week or two and his karma will plummet. The account will get put to sleep and a new one will be created.
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The astroturfing and that song have a few things in common... one of which is irritation. It's pretty sad how Slashdot is getting "gamed" so easily by this group. (I seriously don't think it's just one person...)
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The main significance is WHO is praising the Windows phone, not that it is MS shilling. Unfortunately, the poster degenerated into Apple bashing, which I find annoying. If you want to bash, look at market share - iPhone and Android crush Windows phone, which has less market share than mac does. I don't know where Windows phone stands today, but it lacked numerous features when Windows Phone 7 was released and I was in the market for a phone almost 2 years ago (like multitasking, html5 support, threaded emai
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SEO/Reputation Management firms pay people to do this shit. I actually personally know someone who does this for a living ("Work from home" jobs) and I expressed my distaste for the acts to them several times. I eventually just stopped talking to them altogether.
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I'm pretty sure that the people doing the first post prepared in advance are just trolls stepping up their game.
Re:Windows Phone 7 (Score:4, Funny)
Wish I knew how to get my beak wet on this. I have a WP7 phone that I simply adore and I'd love to get paid to say nice things about it. Maybe Tech* can hook me up?
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However, that is about to change now that Nokia will be putting out quality WP7 smart phones.
'Nokia' and 'quality' should not be put in the same sentence.
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Hey! "Indestructible" is a quality.
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Hey! "Indestructible" is a quality.
Yes... and it's one Nokia phones lack.
Re:Windows Phone 7 (Score:4, Funny)
Current ones, maybe. You could cast one of the old Nokias (the old, phone-shaped ones) into Mt. Doom and it would still work (although I bet Mordor gets pretty bad reception).
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One doesn't just get four bars in Mordor.
Re:Windows Phone 7 (Score:5, Interesting)
I think your post misses one huge flaw with WP7
The developer API, it's too restrictive. No good way to get your apps to share data between each other. Only network connection allowed is HTTP. No single source of online storage (last I checked the SkyDrive API wasn't opened, so you can't use it, by the developer contract).
Yes, it has a clean and effective API, but in terms of functionality from 3rd party apps, it lacks, and would still lack, even if it had all the developers of iOS and Android combined.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Pretty much everything you just complained about is not true anymore. When they released Mango it allowed for more than just http requests and also the SkyDrive API is quit open. You should give it another gander because things have changed drastically in the last year.
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The SkyDrive and other Live APIs are indeed opened [microsoft.com] -- for Windows Phone, iOS, Android, and Windows.
Re:Windows Phone 7 (Score:5, Insightful)
HTTP is not a replacement for every other protocol. I am sick of the brain dead thinking it is. We have other protocols for a reason.
As a simple example, http sure is not enough for an ftp client, ssh client, etc, etc, etc. 7.5 of course will let you do all these things.
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No, it was a real response. You might like these kludges and braindead solutions, I don't. You might be able to hack HTTP into a replacement for all these things but that only means we don't get good replacements for those things.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
HTTP is not a replacement for every other protocol. I am sick of the brain dead thinking it is. We have other protocols for a reason
This didn't happen because people are idiots. Admins censored the other ports, and people routed around it. Of course there are network tools that can tell if you are trying to piggyback something else through port 80, so you might as well finagle your exchanges into legitimate HTTP traffic.
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It's true, too. Windows Phone 7 UI is beautiful and even better than iPhone's, not to mention Android. Microsoft really outdid themselves with that.
In the turbid angry seas of opinion, personal choice, and inclination, its always refreshing to finally find some cold hard incontrovertable, academically provable, undeniable truth in a slashdot comment, without all the irrelivant and superfluous mucky muck editorial.
Re: (Score:2)
Quality phones?
When are they going to get 720p displays? I upgraded from 800x480 and I would never go back.
Not that windows phone is for me anyway. I am not going to be locked into one market and no real ROM scene since there is no source available.
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I have to laugh at the fanboys who modded this down.
Re:Windows Phone 7 (Score:5, Funny)
Apple's co-founder Steve Wozniak
Sadly, most Apple fans these days don't consider Steve Wozniak the co-founder of Apple. They think Steve Jobs said "Let there be light" and then created everything Apple by himself. And I wish I were joking.
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I don't think the app count is the issue, there are a lot of apps.
The app usefulness is the issue - the API, is at bast, extremely lacking in a lot of areas. There are some modern things that are very useful for apps, that just can't be done effectively with it. Outside of single player games, and some trivial stuff, there's not much interesting, in a modern sense, that you can do effectively with it.
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Re:Windows Phone 7 (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Windows Phone 7 (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah, and they've been paying clueless morons to rave about their shit on the internet too.
Well I certainly never saw a dime of that money.
Re:Windows Phone 7 (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a reason, Woz has been an engineer and not a designer at Apple.
Yeah - he actually invented things instead of putting pretty packages and a neat UI on existing things and marketing the hell out of them. He had the audacity to put function over form.
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He had the audacity to put function over form.
Which is an equivalent mistake to putting form over function. A well balanced amount of both is what makes a good product great.
Re:Windows Phone 7 (Score:4, Informative)
That is your opinion, which you are entitled to, but with which I disagree. While I don't own any Apple products, I have used them before, and found their functionality and user interface to be lacking.
that was Steve Jobs fucking mantra.
Hate to burst your bubble but IMO your human Adonis, The Great and Powerful Jobs, was an abject failure in following his own mantra, then. If so, why do I hate their stuff? Oh, right - because locked down, proprietary bullshit that I pay for but technically do not own is the complete opposite of "functional" in my book. BTW, how long did it take Jobs to catch up to the PC industry, by realizing that having to click the mouse and hold a hotkey down is not the most functional way to access a context menu? 20 years?
It WHY they are successful, you git.
Negative, Ghost Rider - they are successful because they managed to turn being a douchebag hipster with more money than sense from a niche market to the mainstream... or maybe because douchebag hipsters became mainstream on their own...
Their image comes from having better products.
Again, this is a purely subjective topic, but what exactly makes their products "better," and what are they better than? Their OS is interesting but not spectacular, and kind of a pain-in-the-ass to use; their MP3 players are pretty, sure, but require locked-down, proprietary software; Their tablets are... well, as useful as any other tablet (which, to me, is not useful at all), but hardly anything to write home about.
Their products are "pretty," I will admit. Unfortunately, in this case, pretty doesn't make the sale.
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Maybe thats the gray market Chinese import version.
Channeling? (Score:3)