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.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Read?
Wasn't it a video?
Re:Do RTFA (Score:5, Informative)
Full interview video you can find here (or I'm sure elsewhere)
http://www.neowin.net/news/steve-wozniak-microsoft-might-be-more-innovative-than-apple
Re:Do RTFA (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Do RTFA (Score:5, Funny)
Is it just me, or has Steve Wozniak become the practical version of Richard Stallman?
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Oh wait ... I see your point
Whoah whoah whoah.. that's really harsh man.
It did make me laugh I'll admit, but emacs and gcc are both pretty cool.
Re:Do RTFA (Score:5, Insightful)
In what ways is he wrong, and what ways is he crazy?
(If you're going to make such a bold statement, at least provide some evidence to support your hypothesis please.)
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This is why I rarely read Slashdot these days. All the posts are bold one liners without content or evidence that make +5 insightful.
Re:Do RTFA (Score:5, Funny)
Crazy in the most fabulous of ways, parent surely means.
Also many occasions if you say his name three times, he shows up in threads... you know, if he's not too busy dancing or playing tetris or receiving awards or inventing something...
Woz...
Woz...
Woz...
Re:Do RTFA (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow- your nuts too I see.
He works at Apple!
He doesn't work at Apple and hasn't done so since 1987, which is probably before you were born.
Re:Do RTFA (Score:5, Funny)
Wow- your nuts too I see.
Yoda! Stop looking at my nuts!
Woz's unbiased reviews (Score:5, Insightful)
That's refreshing to hear instead of the typical /. preconceived garbage they carry around, calling people as Apple fanbois or Micro$oft; and predicting doom and gloom for every corresponding company's new product launch. /.'ers ability to predict product success is about as good as predicting the stock market.
Re:Woz's unbiased reviews (Score:5, Insightful)
he treats all new hardware as something new to learn from and does not approach it with any preconception
The Woz is a very rational guy, and is just enjoying the coolness that his world provides. If you WTFV then you can perceive that he is hyper-aware of the misuse of data by less ethical entities and is somewhat dismayed by this as well. He appreciates the bleeding edge, so an interview is always valuable for that POV. Great to see he's still surfing that wave.
Re:Woz's unbiased reviews (Score:5, Insightful)
he treats all new hardware as something new to learn from and does not approach it with any preconception
The Woz is a very rational guy, and is just enjoying the coolness that his world provides. If you WTFV then you can perceive that he is hyper-aware of the misuse of data by less ethical entities and is somewhat dismayed by this as well. He appreciates the bleeding edge, so an interview is always valuable for that POV. Great to see he's still surfing that wave.
He is also rich. Not all of use can try out the flavour of the month hardware. We have to pick and choose our platforms carefully.
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This.
I'm still using an Android 2.3 phone, and it feels brand new, well, because it actually is only a couple of years old.
Re:Woz's unbiased reviews (Score:4, Funny)
What about the ability to predict products failure?
Re:Woz's unbiased reviews (Score:5, Insightful)
this is the guy that thought the greatest thing he could do for an internet connection was move to Australia. The guy is a bit of a muppet.
He's wanted to be Australian even before the NBN. The faster internet connection would just be icing on the cake for him.
Wozniak said: “I intend to call myself an Australian and feel an Australian, and study the history and become as much of a real citizen here as I can,” adding: “For 30 years I’ve had a desire to live in Australia. I’m going to live and die as an Australian.
His desire to become Australian is just another example of how sane, sensible and grounded the man is.
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His desire to become Australian is just another example of how sane, sensible and grounded the man is.
IIRC, didn't he want to live in Queensland? Not an example of sane, sensible and grounded.
this is the guy that thought the greatest thing he could do for an internet connection was move to Australia. The guy is a bit of a muppet.
He's wanted to be Australian even before the NBN. The faster internet connection would just be icing on the cake for him.
Even before the NBN our internet service provision was better than the US. You could live in any major city and chose your ISP.
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IIRC, didn't he want to live in Queensland? Not an example of sane, sensible and grounded.
Almost as bad. "I am underway to become an Australian citizen. That’s a little known fact. Probably Melbourne."
I can understand that - even if Vic doesn't have WA climate and beaches, at least they play real football there.
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My mate can only get telstra (unless he uses the mobile phone network) and he isn't very far out of Brisbane.
Probably on a property that's not in a township. BTW, he can get plans from other ISP's but due to some provisions in USO Telstra are allowed to charge extra for lines that are in rural or semi rural areas that are not in townships so other ISP's have to pass on this cost (Telstra also fight tooth and nail to prevent other ISP's from installing DSLAM's in smaller exchanges).
But in the US, telco's are given monopolies over certain areas, so you could be in the middle a major city and your only choice is A
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I wont even begin to say how short sighted this is. Let me see, a technologist wanting to be close to the infrastructure which will be considered TO BECOME THE BEST/FASTEST IN THE WORLD.
Read up on the NBN and understand what it represents as technology as a whole. Know that it puts every other form of current infrastructure to shame and also know that it will be a precursor to the development as technology as a whole.
Things to consider.
- Removal of old style media broadcasting, which includes the retrenchme
Re:Woz's unbiased reviews (Score:5, Insightful)
The list of failed predictions is pretty long and substantial. Slashdotters have predicted the following:
iPod would never be popular.
IE was dead
Java would actually be relevant to anything more than Enterprise and a tiny niche market of consumers.
No floppy drive and no connectivity other than USB! WTF?
Transmeta, woot! Linus works for them, woot!
iPad? Will never catch on because they lack so many features of desktops/laptops/netbooks. Linux making serious inroads in to MS dominance on the desktop?
In summary, we see a lot of the following happening here:
Product a is shit because it lacks feature b, and anyway I can just buy product c, on to which I can install software d via a simple process of fucking hideously over complicated process e.
Although Vista and ME were indeed shit, did they lose money for MS? In general on Slashdot we see reasoned predictions buried in a mass of anger, wishful thinking and/or based on the assumption that a big chunk of the market thinks the same way as the manchild acting as a cheerleader for his favourite companies. Pathetic!
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You could say that about most of the Internet. Heck, you could say that about most of humanity.
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Slashdotters hate everything. Even a broken clock (of the analog variety) is right twice a day. And really, you think Windows is a flop?! It is only the most successful piece of software in history!
When it comes to Microsoft, and especially Windows and Office, the normal slashdot drooling worship of monetary success goes out of the window, so that it doesn't matter how much money Microsoft ever made or will ever make, they're a flop because their products are shit.
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If this were true, everyone would be running 4 copies of Linux and iPads would never have gotten a chance to exist.
Face it: the consensus on Slashdot is only good at predicting what techy, power-users like, and only within the next few months. After that, as often as not, some creative hacker out there figures out a way to repurpose the tech for something cool.
The idea that surveying a bunch of tech-saavy people will give you a good measure of how well a product will do in the general, non-techie population
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.
(1) router, (2) cell phone, (3) camera, (4) DVD player. Sounds about right.
Why should he be worried? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Why should he be worried? Innovation benefits everybody, no matter who does it!
Also, if he gets worried, he can ask Machete [theverge.com] for help!
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:Why should he be worried? (Score:5, Insightful)
But hang on there. Germans made huge leaps forwards with rocketry with their V2. This in turn led to the space race, and the miniaturisation of electronics which led to the microprocessor which led to Apple being able to create products.
So yes, everyone did benefit. Even the Apple haters.
Except for the ones who are dead. (apologies to Glados there).
Re:Why should he be worried? (Score:5, Funny)
Germans made huge leaps forwards with rocketry with their V2. This in turn led to the space race, and the miniaturisation of electronics which led to the microprocessor which led to Apple being able to create products.
I know the Nazis dis some bad things, but blaming them for Apple is going too far.
Re:Why should he be worried? (Score:5, Funny)
Just goes to show, the only way the Nazi's could have been more evil was if they had patented their wartime tech.
patents: More evil than Hitler.
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If the Nazis had published patents, it would have been farcical, because the Allies would have just used them as a recipe book. [businessinsider.com]
(You know we would have.)
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Let's get ranty and overly technical over a minor point of my previous post, almost unrelated to the whole discussion, shall we? It's fun for ages 12 to Alzheimer's:
You can say that we're counting only living people as "everyone", since everyone that died prior to a particular event has little chance of benefitting from it if we consider what we perceive as the normal, front-facing flow of time. Again, if we count only the living, then people who died in the process are no longer part of the group "everyone
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When the germans innovated warfare, not everybody ended up benefitting.
In a very cruel way everybody actually benefited. Hitler's well documented lunacy is the macabre fruit of the 2nd WW. Atrocities must happen before we collectively acknowledge their possibility. As individuals we may seem highly intelligent. Collectively we're barbarians. Yesterday's game theory article illustrated this very clearly.
Collective learning will make the difference. Luckily we're improving on that every day. Slowly but gradually.
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Maybe because he co-founded Apple and wants to see it succeed? How is there anything wrong with that?
And if that's not good enough he also owns a bunch of Apple stock, which would be plenty of reason to be worried about stagnation, as well...
Re:Why should he be worried? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why should he be worried? Innovation benefits everybody, no matter who does it!
Exactly, if Apple likes the innovation, they'll just patent it "on a smartphone" and claim they invented it.
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you mean this product
http://www.apple.com/appletv/ [apple.com]
that has been out for several years with multiple hardware generations?
Unless you've been living in a cave, you know perfectly well what he means.
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.
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.
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I'm a little worried (Score:5, Insightful)
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He said he can see Microsoft being more innovative than Apple. That is all. He isn't saying Apple is doomed and Microsoft is the new king.
Oh so now we're being nuanced? Two days ago when Sinofsky left Microsoft this site was ablaze with predictions of doom for Microsoft, including this [slashdot.org] sensationalist front page article entitled "The Empire in Decline. Now that a respected technologist and geek has something positive to say about Microsoft, all the "Well hold on a second, let's take a moment and be reasonable here..." comments get modded +5.
Typical Slashdot.
Re:I'm a little worried (Score:5, Funny)
It's almost like there are differing opinions or something.
Anyway you're being a little bit hypocritical here Anonymous Coward - your posts are all over the place! You can't make your mind up about anything!
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Some of us have been consistently nuanced.
Sinofsky leaving Microsoft is different than say, Forstall leaving Apple.
I can look at Apple's C level executives and "Leadership", point to half of them and find someone who could make reasonable taste decisions. Particularly guys like Edy Cue, Bob Mansfield and Jony Ive.
Besides J. Allard and Ray Ozzie, I can't seem to think of anyone at Microsoft who had taste. J. Allard's taste is questionable since he's the one who signed off on the "blades" UI for the origin
What are you worried about? (Score:2)
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.
More about ownership and lack of control (Score:5, Insightful)
The start of the interview eerily echos the likes of RMS talking more about fear of the cloud; Ownership [Device and Data] and Subscription services, which I personally believe is a more interesting topic that this pissing contest topic.
The question about innovation has troll written all over it. The answer was not as the summary suggest "Microsoft is more innovative than Apple [or Google]", but that Microsoft seemed to be looking for revolutionary innovation as opposed to [Apples] post Jobs evolutionary innovation. Woz explains what he means; Apple is simply producing improved versions of its own products rather than creating new markets [post Steve Jobs]. To be honest I think the word innovation is stretched very heavily to mean something completely different, from what I would say it meant.
The discussion of whether innovative[sic] people [Scott Forstall] are being pushed out for being like Jobs[Innovative but not nice], Woz and I paraphrase a little basically says Apple creating great products despite Jobs [uses words like dis-admire?; rough; not friendly; real rugged bastard; put people down; make them feel demeaned].
Woz handled what seemed to be a interviewer with an agenda, with honest answers [or at least came across as such] that unfortunately are hidden behind a summery that does the same.
Re:More about ownership and lack of control (Score:5, Insightful)
Woz explains what he means; Apple is simply producing improved versions of its own products rather than creating new markets [post Steve Jobs].
Steve Jobs died now just over a year ago. Some will call it "ages in the computer world", but that depends on your perspective. Indeed many types of devices (particularly mobile phones) have a complete new generation every half year or so. Over the past year Apple introduced the iPhone 4S, iPhone 5 and iPad mini, amongst many other accessories and whatnot. That's not too bad. The 4S was shortly after Jobs' death, so is a Jobs-era product, the other two are much newer.
Indeed they did not introduce anything revolutionary, but then how often did Steve Jobs do that? Not too often I'd wager. Major releases were of course the Apple II back in it's day, and more recently the iPod, later the iPhone and iPad. These shook up the market, but other than the iPod which was totally new they're not that magnificently different. The iPod evolved to have a touch screen, then got a phone component added and it became the iPhone. The iPhone was then upscaled, the phone part removed, and one has the iPad. The underlying OS, and I see the iOS as a major key to their success, is the same for all, making it relatively straightforward.
OK I highly simplify it, but the point is: this are not totally new devices, they are rather logical evolutions, albeit with significant steps in between. And the iPod was 2001, the iPhone 2007, and the iPad 2010. So maybe in a year or two we could expect something revolutionary by Apple. Not every year, that's too much to ask.
Re:More about ownership and lack of control (Score:4, Informative)
other than the iPod which was totally
No it wasn't. HD based MP3 players existed before the iPod. The wheel was invented by Synaptics. The 1.8" drives were invented by Hitachi for other purposes.
You can argue Apple does things well, but they rarely if ever actually invent anything. Jobs himself was quite up front about that.
Re:More about ownership and lack of control (Score:4, Funny)
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Innovate & Sell vs Innovate & Stagnate (Score:3)
It is easy to come up with lots of "new" products.
It is NOT easy to come up with a single new better product that people want to grab out of your hands.
Re:Innovate & Sell vs Innovate & Stagnate (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed. Moreover, companies that try to enter too many markets have a tendency to spread themselves thin and lose the focus that made them great to begin with. Suggesting that Apple isn't innovating by not creating new markets and revolutionizing with each iteration seems to be a rather short-sighted statement, even though it may be true.
And I do agree with his general idea that Microsoft is currently trying to find the next revolution, whereas Apple is pursuing evolution, but that is largely due to their relative positions at the moment, and it doesn't speak to their levels of success. Microsoft has fallen behind with their slow pace of evolution, so it needs to steal back attention and open up wallets by introducing something revolutionary, which is exactly what they've been trying to do. In contrast, Apple's formula has been to introduce revolutionary products and then iterate on them for several generations while attempting to invent the next revolution. Not every generation of every device should be revolutionary for the simple reason that it's actually harmful to the customer's ability to use their own devices, since revolutions come with a learning curve.
Truth be told, I think it's better for innovation when we have companies making revolutionary innovations that leapfrog each other, with evolutionary improvements coming in between. Not only do we retain a rapid pace of overall innovation in the industry, but the products are also given time to mature and grow, allowing their role in our lives to grow at the same time as we find new uses and ways to integrate them into the things we do. Constantly upgrading to the newest revolution is fun for some people, but it limits your ability to actually use the device, since you're having to waste time learning it, setting it up, and working it into your life. Those costs to the user are far lower with evolutionary improvements, but, as I hinted at earlier, those evolutionary improvements must still be significant enough, otherwise their slow pace will cause the company harm.
Wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
What made Sony once great is that the manager never stopped his engineers from trying anything and everything and it gave them a great range of products and a name for quality (Yes I know it popular to hate on Sony now but the company used to be very different when it was still a pure Japanese company). And gosh isn't that "do whatever you want and we see what comes out of it" just like Googles 20% idea except Sony had it at 100% (and because engineers are engineers, got 140%)?
Focussing on one product, one the core business is a great way to die slowly. It is something managers just don't get, which is why management should be restricted to bean counting, and stopped from running companies. The lower engineers should run the company, the CEO should just make sure that the money is accounted for and try not to steal to much of it.
MS is indeed an innovative company, they have a LOT of ideas. It just never materializes into products people can buy because MS keeps trying to maximize profits. Take gaming. Halo 4 was actually named in the same list of earners for MS as Windows and Office... that is quite a lot for single game. And is Halo 4 available for that Windows? No it is not. Because MS decided to maximize its profits by focussing on its console instead it is hurting its own OS by starving it of games. (If I don't need a PC for gaming I can run OSX just as easily, gaming is the one lockin remaining).
There is absolutely no reason for MS not to produce games that run on both Windows and its console and even encourage it. Instead it spends hard cash discouraging this. It is one manager trying to focus on one product and not the business as a whole.
It is the approach of trying to maximize everything in terms of profit that actually hurts MS badly. When it launched the Zune it launched it with a new DRM scheme and shop incompatible with what they had been selling to MP3 player makers before. Gosh... that is a HELL of a way to get them to buy into your stuff again. First you force them to adopt your scheme, then you launch a new one for your own player.
The Surface is another example. Google can do it because the Nexus are nice phones but bare ones. But the Surface is a full blown competitor except MS can afford to subsidize the hell out of it. OEM's can't and are already on razor thin margins to begin with. And in order to maximize MS sales, the expensive Surface doesn't even come with a full Office license, with Office being the only selling point the device has. It is understandable they want the extra cash but it is no way to market a product already perceived as behind before launch. Of course, if they did include a full office for "free" the OEM's would be even more upset, but you already upset them so why not go the whole way? (Remember that if you have office on your PC and on your tablet, you now have two licenses to pay for despite only using one at a time)
Windows 8 is another example. The simple fact is that Phones, Tablets, Consoles, PC's, Laptops are different devices. Trying to get people to use them all the same way is stupid. It would like fitting your bicycle with a steering wheel because well, your car has one? Why not a unified interface for all vehicles? It has been said time and time again, holding up your hand at above heart height is tiring. And for large desktop spaces, some of my monitors are actually out of reach.
Enabling touch for every interface means Fisher Pricing it to hell and back and desktops have always been about putting as much information as possible on it. I don't WANT huge buttons on my NON-touchscreen monitor just in case I might one day spend extra money just so I can have fingermarks on my screens.
But MS wants to focus on one product, one interface to rule them all and in darkness bind them... gosh and how did that end in Mordor? Oh yeah, but tying all your power into one focus point, you die along with it.
The Kinect is another great example. It is a very interesting product but NOT because MS wanted it to be. They jus
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.
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"It just works" (Score:3)
You know, this makes me wonder...
Apple (Steve Jobs) was known for telling customers that it "just works" and for having limited options because the way it works is--obviously--the "best" way.
I wonder if Jobs ran his company that way too...just telling his people what to do, rather than teaching them how to arrive at good decisions or good designs on their own. If so, then they really wouldn't have a clue what to do now that he's gone.
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There is truth to this.... I think Jobs knew what he liked, and his 'vision' of things is what people bought. Now that he's gone, how can you teach the skill of "know what people will like" to anybody else? Forstall might have been one of the few people to kind of get it; it's embued in the personality of a self righteous asshole. Tim Cook certainly doesn't have it, though he might be able to save a lot of cash on the assembly line and through suppliers, ultimately that doesn't help Apple innovate anything.
They just need to bring Jobs back again (Score:2)
After all that's the only tme they're actually not going down the toilet.
Oh yeah that's right - they can't.
*flush*
The swinging pendulum (Score:2)
It reminds me of the days when data was stored on main-frames, mini's, etc. with distributed green-screens... it went to PC's (stored locally), and now the cloud, then...
It's the pendulum.
How shall we word this? (Score:2)
My takeaway is that Apple is now innovating less than Microsoft, moreso than Microsoft is now innovating more than Apple. Microsoft's weird experiments, and the forcing of it down the throat of the market, isn't much of a deviation for them.
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Windoes 8 Phone (Score:5, Interesting)
Wrong Summary (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh please. Woz didn't say that he believes that Microsoft is more innovative than Apple. He said he has seen Microsoft do some things that seem more innovative than what he has seen from Apple in the last few years. ... they don't.
But he admits that he doesn't even know the people currently in charge at Apple all that well, so how is he supposed to know what Apple is developing right now?
I mean, we all know how secretive Apple is. It's also no secret that Microsoft does do a lot of basic research; they frequently show promising tech demos. The original surface anyone? But it's Apple who creates actually successful products while Microsoft largely seems to be content making new versions of Windows and Office every now and then. It's just now with their latest tablet efforts that they are trying something new for a change. And that means new for Microsoft. There's not all that much new for the market in that product.
Or to take it from another perspective: I believe Microsoft *does* have the resources to produce a really innovative and compelling product. It's just that
Also, I have to comment on this sentence of the original article:
"if Tim Cook should stumble, Apple might consider bringing [Woz] back as their CEO."
That's just ridiculous. Look, I like Woz. He's obviously a really nice guy. And he's very smart; I mean, he built the original Apple-II almost on his own. But let's be honest: He's not a very good business man. He would make a *very* bad replacement for Tim Cook. And you know it.
Auntie Em! (Score:5, Funny)
We hear he is a whiz of a wiz, if ever a wiz there was
If ever, oh ever a wiz there was, The Wizard of Woz is one because
Because, because, because, because, because
Because of the wonderful things he does
We're off to see the wizard, the wonderful Wizard of Woz
Woz is misinformed (Score:2)
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Apple is the leader, yes. It's just in the wrong direction.
So Apple is the wrong leadership...
Relevant (funny) Video (Score:5, Funny)
iPad Mini Commercial (Jimmy Kimmel) [youtube.com]
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Yes, and ... we'll see (Score:2)
That's true, and it's pretty much guaranteed. When you're winning, you don't innovate. Innovation, after all, is nothing but risk judged over time as successful.
Microsoft didn't innovate for years. They didn't have to -- they could copy the better things being done by other companies, deliver incremental improvements and changes, and keep their empire pretty much intact. They stumbled on Vista, badly... that was the start of their fall from being "The Most Valueable Tech Company On the Planet". Vista was st
This just shows how out of touch he is. (Score:3)
This is precisely why quad core Android phones with 1GB of memory were having their arses handed to them by iPhones with supposedly "slower" processors and less memory. It is really the "software" that makes all of the difference and it is why even the superphones have laggy UIs compared to iOS devices.
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Re:Really? Woz? (Score:4, Insightful)
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?
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With windows 7, you just anchored the app to the taskbar and ran it with one click. Or you just could make a desktop icon. Much faster than the menu itself.
Metro just hides everything and makes things confusing. Two IE versions?
Re:Really? Woz? (Score:5, Informative)
My gripe: I run remote desktops. Sometimes from an iPad, sometimes from an android tablet, sometimes in windowed mode from a windows PC. Nearly everything does not work with remote desktop. There's no start button to click. There's no way to run an app w/o getting to start. There's no way to simulate gestures when you don't use a mouse. Productivity is way down with this thing.
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Try Start8: it does away with the Start screen, and returns the Win XP/7-style Start Menu, and plus other adjustments to the GUI.
A much better experience if you're not using Win8 from a touch device. When I get one, I look forward to Metro - it just doesn't help me on a desktop with a mouse and big monitors.
Re:Really? Woz? (Score:5, Informative)
I've used Windows 8 for weeks as well, at work (the nature of my job) stretching back to the summer previews.
The start menu that is now full screen (that you seem so enamored with), doesn't really do it for me. On Windows 7 I could hit the windows key, and start typing to search installed apps. Now the windows key flips screens, and desktop -> metro, does not focus the search feature. No, I get to hover in the corner with the mouse, in order to pull the search "charm" from the side, to click it and search.
As for specific gripes, have you actually tried using any of the metro apps? Like to view pictures for example? The "Photo" app only lets you see ones your Pictures folder (Library->Pictures). I've got games and apps that don't happen to use that as the default directory. As a result, I need to copy or move all my pics into this ONE place that is usable, or hunt them down in the explorer for desktop mode, then double click (causes a "flip" to metro mode) to view each one. This blows chunks and my compromise (for now) is to enable the small preview mode (lower right toggle).
Fundamentally, the whole grafting together of desktop and metro interfaces isn't as smooth as it could be. Novice users are going to be totally mystified why one half of their system sees files and the other one doesn't, and they aren't really going to care much about the metro app directory sandboxing.
I can't help but notice you posted anon, and then have the balls to accuse somebody of being a karma whore. Seems like you are a major shill that doesn't want to be outed or attached to a real user account.
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OK fair enough. But as for the flip, try this: double click an image file (jpg, PNG, etc) in desktop mode, On my win 8 system, which is essentially bare as all I've installed besides chrome are some games, the default image viewer is the photo metro app. So when you go to preview a pic from desktop mode, the only way I can find them, you should see a little flip animation as the system sends you to metro and starts the photo viewer. Then it takes me another three or four clicks to get back to desktop (dismi
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Re:Really? Woz? (Score:4, Informative)
I've used Windows 8 for weeks as well, at work (the nature of my job) stretching back to the summer previews.
The start menu that is now full screen (that you seem so enamored with), doesn't really do it for me. On Windows 7 I could hit the windows key, and start typing to search installed apps. Now the windows key flips screens, and desktop -> metro, does not focus the search feature. No, I get to hover in the corner with the mouse, in order to pull the search "charm" from the side, to click it and search.
Actually, you don't have to pull the search charm up to search. Just start typing whenever you're on the start screen and it'll assume you're doing a search. It's definitely annoying that type-to-search isn't obvious -- it seems like discoverability is not so great with Metro, but hey, if you're still reading, at least you have a solution to one problem that sounds like it was annoying as hell. For what it's worth, I preferred the start menu from before because I could still see my desktop while I was searching.
Disclaimer: Yes, I am a Microsoft Employee. No, I do not work on any of the teams designing the modern UI. There are parts that I think are awesome, and parts that I think are poor. We'll see how users end up handling it and (I hope) our designers will push through good improvements based on the usage patterns and frustrations that occur, but only time will tell.
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The start menu that is now full screen (that you seem so enamored with), doesn't really do it for me. On Windows 7 I could hit the windows key, and start typing to search installed apps. Now the windows key flips screens, and desktop -> metro, does not focus the search feature. No, I get to hover in the corner with the mouse, in order to pull the search "charm" from the side, to click it and search.
you can just start typing when you see the start screen. no need to click the search button from the charms bar.
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Opinions differ here, as well as use cases, but I actually enjoy the fact that user applications and configuration settings are separated in search. Once I have everything set up, I rarely need to go into the config panes, so it's nice that it defaults to app search. However, there's a quick keyboard shortcut if you want to search settings: Win+W. Win+F shows files, I believe (on my Mac now, so I can't check at the moment). The search is also a bit snappier on 8 than 7 (though I'm fully prepared to beli
Re: (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 t
Re:Really? Woz? (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, Word was a contemporary of WordPerfect, not a copy. Lots of us used Microsoft Word for DOS. It went through 6 major versions before the Windows version.
Re:Really? Woz? (Score:5, Informative)
Excel was actually always an in-house Microsoft thing. Originally it was called Multiplan and was actually very popular for a while. Like the poster mentioning Word, it's a contemporary of its main competition, not a copy.
IE was originally a licensed and rebranded version of one of the old mosaic browsers. I'm sure the name is on the wiki somewhere, but it was definitely not attempting to clone what would be the Gecko engine.
The fact is, Microsoft has always tried to compete, not copy. They've tried to do things better than the competition and not exactly like it. Like any company, they've had their share of failures and successes, but it's DEFINITELY not fair to say Microsoft has been riding the coattails of anybody - especially not in the modern day where its success was mostly through buyouts of very successful, good pieces of software. Every large company does this.
None of this, however, hides the fact that the Metro interface is awful for desktops and trying to force it on the desktop in order to force users to use their app store is and already has sewn some seeds of contempt. Microsoft is definitely making a HUGE gamble on this and arguably a mistake as well.
Re:Really? Woz? (Score:5, Informative)
MS typically makes shitty clones of popular products.
That oversimplifies the situation to the point of not being a useful statement.
Windows 3.11 was an ugly clone and copy of the Mac.
No, both the Mac and Windows were attempts to make something similar to the Xerox GUI system (that both Jobs and Gates had seen). And in those wild and woolly early days there was a lot of cross-pollination between the Windows and Mac worlds.
At the time, the Mac was hands-down more beautiful, more elegant, and more polished. Windows 3.x was partially burdened by a bunch of GUI conventions invented by IBM called "CUA" (Common User Access); this is why the shortcut for "save file" was not Ctrl+S, but rather Shift+F12 or something like that.
I'm sure there is stuff in Windows that was on the Mac first, but it is hardly accurate to say that Windows 3.x was a "clone" of the Mac. Heck, I think it was 1987 before Mac OS could even do color, and Windows was full color all along. Windows always had menus on each window, Mac always had a top-of-screen menu bar. All sorts of differences.
Netbios was their poor attempt of copying VMS networking technologies.
I don't know anything about this so I will take your word for it.
Word was a copy of Wordperfect.
Good grief, no! Where are you getting this? Word was originally released with the so-called "multitool" interface, a weird sort of menu system. WordPerfect was designed to be used mostly via the function keys (and everyone had little function key overlays to remind them what Shift+Control+Alt+F9 did and all the others). WordPerfect used embedded codes and had a "reveal codes" command; Word used properties that were attached to characters, paragraphs, sections, or styles.
Here's a primary reference: My mission: write the world's first wordprocessor with a spreadsheet user-interface. It took five years to repair the damage. [memecentral.com]
Word for Windows was available before there ever was a WordPerfect for Windows, so I don't think your claim makes sense in the GUI world either.
Excel was bought and was a cheap clone of Lotus.
Just as Word evolved from the "multitool" version of Word, Excel evolved from Multiplan, Microsoft's first spreadsheet. Per Wikipedia, Multiplan was first sold in 1982, and Lotus 1-2-3 came out in 1983. Excel was not bought; you are mistaken on that point.
Multiplan and Excel were nothing like Lotus 1-2-3; Borland tried making a menu-compatible spreadsheet that actually was like 1-2-3, and got sued.
IE a buggy clone of Netscape etc.
Microsoft licensed a browser called Spyglass Mosaic and customized that into IE 1.0. Spyglass Mosaic was sort of based on NCSA Mosaic, the first popular web browser ever. In no sense can either Mosaic be considered a clone of Netscape, given that Netscape 1.0 was also based upon NCSA Mosaic!
Probably as IE evolved, it copied stuff from other browsers. That happens. IE also pioneered stuff, a lot of stuff we don't really want (remember ActiveX?).
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But also some stuff we do: XMLHTTP requests (now AJAX) and iframes.
I'm not a MSFT fanboi, but credit where it's due... in tune with the rest of your post.
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Windows 3.11 was an ugly clone and copy of the Mac.
Not really anything alike unless you think having a GUI makes it a clone.
Netbios was their poor attempt of copying VMS networking technologies
Wrong on all accounts. Microsoft did not even invent netbios.
Word was a copy of Wordperfect.
They were nothing alike outside of both being word processors.
Excel was bought and was a cheap clone of Lotus
Oh please all of the concepts and shit came from visicalc which lotus, quattro..etc ripped off.
IE a buggy clone of Netscape etc.
IE started from the Mosaic codebase.
Windows 8, Surface, and Windows Phone, are innovative and new
They copied Apple in all the crappy ways that matter... app store, absurd vendor control over software environment, no customization options, dumbed down, skyhook crowdsourcing without
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Have you seen Windows 8?
Yes, he probably has. A large part of innovating is coming up with new ideas.
Metro in Windows 8 is certainly a new idea in terms of trying to come up with a user interface that is interchangeable between phone and desktop. It might be the MS have made an utter hash of it, but learning to innovate well takes time and MS has probably forgotten how. The fact that they are trying to find a new user interface (Metro) that is a radical departure from Windows7 is very gutsy though.
I am not entirely convinced Metr
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That's too bad. It's the first time I've heard of it happening to anyone. It worked perfectly for me, and took less than 20 minutes to do a clean install.
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Entropy means there is no way out, regardless of the -ism you go with.
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We have geniuses do that all the time.
Then the rest of the humanity hammers them down.
Re:Please Stop (Score:5, Insightful)
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A little bold statement - but not exactly inaccurate.
Apple didn't invented or innovated absolutely a single product that make success under his grisp - aside the Apple II.
Apple Phone, Newton et all - Apple's innovations, but utter failures.
iPod, Mac OSX, Intel Macs - commodities established by someone else that Apple adopted, improved and then re-released under his brand.
I would not claim "perfectness", but they did a God damned good job on all these.