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Wozniak praising Android over iPhone limitations
Likes Android for its openness to dev, better software. iPhone is still better UX.
- pgbovine 15y agoI don't see why anyone expects Woz to be a die-hard rabid fanboy of all of Apple's products ... he hasn't been involved in Apple's product development for almost 30 years, and he's obviously not someone to blindly evangelize based on marketing hype. Now if s/Woz/JonyIve/g then this article would be more noteworthy.
- orenmazor 15y agoI came in here to post this. after reading Woz's biography and now Jobs', its clearer than ever that this type of article is totally pointless.
- drhowarddrfine 15y agoAbsolutely. Apparently, Wozniak was not one you wanted to get advice from.
- drhowarddrfine 15y agoHeh. Obviously some of us read the books and at least four have not.
- corin_ 15y agoSimply put, it's because plenty of people don't know much about him, and so "Apple founder prefers <rival> to <Apple product>" makes not just good link bait, but good content for those people as well.
- purplefruit 15y agoThe title is a bit misleading. It ends with him saying that he thinks the Iphone is best for most people. He really just praised Android for a few features but maintained that the Iphone is a better product in his mind.
- thetrendycyborg 15y agofor those "scared of complexity" or "scared of computers altogether."
- agscala 15y agoRight. And considering the overwhelming majority of consumers are exactly those types of people, the iPhone is a better product since it is more appropriate for most people.
- raganwald 15y agoI’m no scared of complexity, I’m scared of yak-shaving. That’s why I personally use OS X and iOS. YMMV...
- MrScruff 15y agoWhat a great term! I, too, am scared of yak-shaving although I recently switched to Vim which you could argue is the mother of all yak-shaving exercises (I don't regret it though).
- tikhonj 15y agoI think implying that Linux leads to "yak-shaving" is disingenuous. I've found the standard Ubunutu and KDE distros are completely usable as is; there is no need to change anything. Just because you can fiddle all you want does not mean you have to. Moreover, my relatively tech-unsophisticated roommate recently switched to Ubunutu; he has had no problems running the completely standard setup (I think he hasn't even changed the background). On the other hand, on OS X, if something genuinely annoys you (like the menu-bar at the top) you would find it very difficult to fix.
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- thoughtsimple 15y agoWoz is a hacker at heart. He is always going to find Apple's limitations on iOS apps annoying. People read too much into his statements. He is a very straightforward guy. If he really believed that an Android phone was superior, he would say that without dissembling. He complains about being misquoted all the time. I wouldn't be surprised if that happens again.
- danso 15y agoIn this Lifehacker interview, Woz says he's not a Linux user: http://lifehacker.com/5222989/how-apple-co+founder-steve-wozniak-gets-things-done http://lifehacker.com/5222989/how-apple-co+founder-steve-woz... > I never got into Linux. I swear to God, it's only lack of time. I'm past the years of my life where I can really dig into something like running a Linux system. I'm very sympathetic to the whole idea; Linux people always think the way I want to think. In another article, I read that he was dismissive of the whole specs race...this is not necessarily at odds with people who build their own computers, but a recognizance that simplicity has its own advantages for a hacker who wants to operate on a different level.
- Terretta 15y agoIf your job is "doing" technology, there's something to be said for things that let you just "use" it without having to "do" it. The iPhone or iPad let you just be a user with very little cognitive load. If you want to tinker with your handset even while you're spending your day or maybe even weekend tinkering with servers, that's a different story. Android's definitely the tinker's tartare.
- babarock 15y agoThe tinker's tartare would at least come with root access. That "thing" I have running on my Samsung is anything but hacker-friendly. Instead it does a perfect job of feeding Google's advertisements as well as the crap both the manufacturer and my data provider independently installed. If that "thing" wants to be the hacker's tartare, maybe it would give me access to its bootloader, show open drivers and not call me a "pirate" for circumventing their laughable restrictions. It would also allow me to manipulate the Linux it claims to deliver the way I want it, the way 40 years of Unix culture taught me. Apple's gadgets may be a hacker's nightmare, but Androids are far from being the answer.
- juliano_q 15y agoI disagree. Samsung is being very sympathetic with hackers tinkering with their devices. They never locked the bootloader like HTC and Motorola did, and they are always in touch with relevant members of the android community, like cyanogen and supercurio. If you are not even willing to root a samsung device, that is a dead simple thing to do, you are not really into tinkering for the device. Is unrealistic to expect that anyone will give rooted devices to every single user, a "regular" non-geek user can destroy the device in minutes granting root access to the wrong apps or deleting system resources.
- babarock 15y agoLet's define what root access means. It's not a fancy "feature" that only "advanced" users will know how to use. You don't really "own" a device unless you have root access. The way I see it, "non-root" users are the feature preventing harm, not the other way around. How would you feel if Toshiba didn't grant you root access on your laptop/mac/machine? It is as destructive, isn't it?
- sjs 15y agoThe way this article is written and the way they use the word "fanboy" highlights their bias much more than anyone else's. They have the makings of an interesting article, but instead of writing an interesting story or adding any insight they decided to make it a versus thing. Yay, just what the web needs. :/
- sbuk 15y agoThat's The Register; the National Enquirer of IT news reporting, which is not fair on the Enquirer.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- kruhft 15y agoA non-rooted android is pretty useless. I was trying to find a way to disable the volume buttons on my GF's Nexus S, only to find that I with my rooted phone, could just edit a configuration file, but was completely unable to do it on her non-rooted phone. This is just one example, but I've run into many other hurdles trying to do simple tasks due to the 'security' design they've put into Android. Not having a root account by default on a device is handcuffs, whether it's Android or IOS.
- untog 15y agoRiiight, but disabling the volume buttons on a phone is an extreme edge case in the functionality one might expect from their phone. Non-rooted Android still has 99.9% of the functionality the average user expects. but I've run into many other hurdles trying to do simple tasks due to the 'security' design they've put into Android Maybe I'm cynical, but I think that the average user absolutely needs this security design. They'd probably turn off the volume buttons by mistake then think their phone is broken.
- kruhft 15y agoIf you keep treating average users as average users they will always be...average users.
- VMG 15y agoIf you start treating them as system administrators and software engineers they will be frustrated users. After that they will be users of a competing product.
- kruhft 15y agoGiving the ability to do system administration tasks on a device you own is not treating people like system administrators. It's giving someone the ability to work on, modify and learn about (and break (and fix)) their device if they so choose.
- tvon 15y agoThis seems to be an even shittier re-hashing of the Dan Lyons article (which is itself pretty trollish): http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/01/14/even-woz-thinks-the-android-bests-the-iphone.html http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/01/14/even-woz-th... I tend to agree with Woz, but his comments are painted with a very childish brush in these articles.
- saturdaysaint 15y agoIt's hard to say much when Woz is so vague. I think it's fair to say that his opinion of Android Voice Commands vs Siri is far from universal. Nuance's voice recognition is widely regarded as state-of-the-art, but of course this can vary depending on one's accent. There's a pretty fair shootout on the "commands" features here, and Siri generally comes ahead - http://searchengineland.com/head-to-head-siri-vs-google-voice-actions-96998 http://searchengineland.com/head-to-head-siri-vs-google-voic...
- hack_edu 15y agoThe article you cite is from October, which I assume means it compares the 4S to Android 3.x. Judging by the screenshots, its also on a non-Nexus phone, for what its worth. The voice command functions and interface were completely overhauled in Ice Cream Sandwich.
- saturdaysaint 15y agoWhere do you see that? I saw that Google's speech-to-text now updates the text inline, definitely a nice feature, but no changes to the voice actions (it still operates on static, specific commands) or anything in the ballpark of Siri's interface.
- 2muchcoffeeman 15y agoNot just accent. The amount of sample data they have seems to matter a lot too. Google voice works much better now than it did when it was first released. But it's still fairly easy to find a phrase that it will mess up. For example the names of craft beer breweries and the names of their beers. The individual words it will recognise fine. Put them together and it just fails.
- antirez 15y agoYou should be a non native English speaker with a strong accent as I'm to see the big difference in speech recognition between the two. Android voice recognition works 99% of times, Siri 50% or less. Maybe with native speakers the difference is less radical.