Woz misquoted 'Almost every app that I have is better on the iPhone' | Hacker News Reader

Woz misquoted 'Almost every app that I have is better on the iPhone'

engadget.com

87 pointslotusleaf198735 comments

It's amazing how commonly you can be misquoted by anyone, let alone a reporter. You say something to someone, they'll interpret and internalize what you say according to their beliefs and they could possibly construct something entirely new when they "quote" what you say to another person.

Actually in this case it sounds like the reporter wasn't to blame at all. Woz is simply saying "What I really meant was..."

Personally I don't get why his thoughts on things are given such importance. Each Apple release he appears at some fan line to go "Hey, everyone remember me! I'm the guy who was involved with Apple for a short period!". Not trying to be cynical, but seriously I suspect he's a major irritation for Jobs.

He was involved with Apple for a short period? He co-founded the company and was there for 12 years.

Ending 23 years ago (and saying "12 years" is grossly overgenerous). Of zero relevance to the modern Apple computers (edit: Sorry, it isn't even called Apple Computers anymore)

"Short period" is still objectively false.

No it isn't. 23 years ago Woz was a "motivational factor" at Apple for the preceding 4 years. The prior two+ years he was off after an accident. Before that he worked with Jobs for 4 years.

His real contribution to Apple was for four years of the company's 34 year history.

Ok, you win.

I have a feeling that those were by far the four most formative years for the company, and that his impact on the company's identity and so on was probably comparable to anyone other than Jobs's.

If nothing else, he created the expectation that superhuman technical feats would be performed on a daily basis, which exists to this day, and might well have stayed true to some degree even during the between-Jobs years, even if said feats were not in particularly productive directions.

> His real contribution to Apple was for four years of the company's 34 year history.

...during which he did things that no one else on the planet was capable of doing.

Wow you dismiss Woz as non important when he not only made the product that placed Apple in the spotlight in 1976, but also made the first mass manufactured personal computer that could be attached to a display with no modifications. You could very well say he's the raison d'être of Apple as we know it.

You call his involvement (12 years as a company, and I believe 5 before Apple Comps was incorporated) 'short' and his dismiss his opinion on a piece of tech when he's probably part of the elite who's opinion actually matter. Hell Steve Jobs was never a 'techy' so to speak, so if I had to take anyone's opinion seriously (regardless I agree or not) about a piece of technology such as this is Steve Wozniak.

This is the soppy romanticized garbage that is so boring to debate with.

Yes, if you want to talk to someone about 1970s era personal computer innovations, the Woz is almost certainly the goto guy. Granted.

Is he important? Sure, he is important to a certain era in Apple's history. The part before the company would have dissolved as an ongoing enterprise if it wasn't for some strategic rescuing by Microsoft.

Are his comments about pretty much anything in the modern era even insightful or of particular relevance, beyond "this guy worked on the Apple I" colour commentary? I don't think so. I suspect that the Woz's primary reason for appearing in Apple lines and giving "grate on Steve Jobs" quotes is so the reporter can bring up that he works for FusionIO.

But yeah, your Dyed in the Wool Woz fanclub membership card is in the mail.

So you think that the opinion (whatever it is) of a man that actually built a personal computer in a time they were none and influenced what has become today's commodity computer hardware has no value when discussing a piece of technology?

I'm actually not a fan of Woz, far from it actually, but I give credit where credit is due. The man deserves respect, and let's be honest, if he gets coverage it's because people want to know what he has to say.

I'm sorry but I'd rather take Woz opinion (which I a lot of time disagree with) and give it the weight it deserves because of what he's done, as opposed to giving some .NET wunderkind more credibility than he should have.

But yeah whatever you have a bone to pick with Woz and that is your choice; however I'm not going to waste any more of my time trying to explain to you why Woz deserves respect and the fact that people want to hear his opinion, which means people see value in it, regardless of what dislike you might have with the man's persona.

I'm sorry but I'd rather take Woz opinion...

That's nice, but a false dichotomy. I questioned the relevance of the Woz's opinion, but that doesn't in any way come at the benefit of someone else's opinion, much less some arbitrary ".NET wunderkind".

In this case, after Android has already taken a pretty strong sales lead, the Woz tells us that Android is probably going to take the lead some day. Prophetic.

But yeah whatever you have a bone to pick with Woz...regardless of what dislike you might have with the man's persona.

Lame.

<i>You could very well say he's the raison d'être of Apple as we know it.</i>

No. That has to be Jobs. Even back in the days of Apple I and Apple II, it seems like Jobs made Apple the company, even if it was Woz spearheading Apple the computer. Did Woz even work on anything at Apple beyond the Apple II series? (I don't know, but I don't think so)

However, I don't know if this makes Woz any less qualified than anyone else on the planet to comment on cell phones. He certainly strikes me as more qualified than most.

"misquoted" != "mistakenly quoted". People intentionally misquote people to further their agenda or to drive readership.

"according to Dutch paper De Telegraaf, Woz said that "Android phones have more features," which would help Google's OS become the dominant smartphone platform."

Not exactly the most reliable source. De Telegraaf is the Dutch equivalent to the National Enquirer.

A typical front page: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_76-4lWOs7m4/S8WXr8eFQNI/AAAAAAAACA...

The National Enquirer is by far the most accurate newspaper in the US when it comes to strictly reporting facts and never misquoting anybody. That's because they are right-wing muckrackers, so every time they screw up, they get sued for defamation, and lose.

They get sued for defamation all the time. They almost never lose.

A person I know has to deal with press interviews on a relatively regular basis. Every time he reads an article for which he was interviewed, he says, he finds misquotes in the article. Except the one time it was the Enquirer.

Well, in that respect De Telegraaf isn't like the National Enquirer at all.

What is De Telegraaf like then? It puts an emphasis on gossip, fear mongering, photos of barely clad women, fringe science, the national pastime (soccer), political scandal, the Dutch royal family, murder and sexual abuse cases, and immigrants suspected of crimes.

I doubt that Woz knew what he was getting himself into when he was interviewed by De Telegraaf.

The Sun?

>"Wozniak called into Engadget to say that Apple would eventually catch up to some of the features Android has that Apple’s iPhone are currently missing"

The ease with which people have come to accept the idea that the iPhone is playing catchup in important areas shows how radically Android has altered the marketplace.

Edit: If Wozniak actually said "eventually" that's not exactly high praise for the iPhone roadmap.

He still says he expects Android to be the dominant mobile OS. What exactly was he misquoted on?

Well, that's not all he's said:

http://venturebeat.com/2010/11/18/apples-wozniak-calls-the-w...

Paraphrase: Android will be like Windows, lots of marketshare - Still crappy

He did say:

> Eventually, he thinks that Android quality, consistency, and user satisfaction will match iOS.

Did he deny that part? It's not really clear. I see no reason why this couldn't happen though.

Except that Windows 7 seems as polished to me as OS X. The knock on Windows is that it's all closed down and proprietary, which can't really be said about Android. OS X has less baggage than Windows, because it's newer, but in this case Android is the newer OS. I think if Android gets hardware acceleration and polishes a bunch of other little things up, it's going to be very competitive.

I know this question in itself is off-topic, but exactly how is Windows 7 as polished as OS X?!

Because, as a Mac user, when I use Windows 7, I'm not bothered by it. That's my test.

And who's fault is this? It's not hard to make a good app. I could implement XMPP messaging in the Facebook app given a few hours and given a few days for a couple other missing bits, I could get the feature parity down to nothing between the Android and iOS Facebook app. Why this hasn't happened, despite the explosive growth of Android, despite the fact that Zuckerberg is now an Android-user, etc, I don't know...

but the unintelligent comments here and on Engadget are frustrating. Blame the app developers, not the platform. That's just silly.

It's not hard to make an app, but it's very hard to make a great app. Most devs obsess about design the same way designers do and most designers can't code very well.

Right, I didn't mean to imply otherwise. But when Facebook decides to give the iOS app more attention than the Android app... well, I can't really blame that on the platform.

Really? Someone drive by downvoting both posts without any discussion? Come on, man up and have a discussion. I'm sorry that I don't accept "Android sucks lol" as a reason for why the Facebook app is so much better on iOS devices.

It's the same darned reason that the design studio projects my class is working on this year are all based on iOS devices for limited use-cases that would be more easily deployed, serviced and cheaper with an Android solution.

iOS is more polished and has more room for actual design. Android is a drastic improvement on what was running on smartphones before, but the built-in UI doesn't have the same fit and finish as the iPhone UI.

For example, look at the iPhone status bar (the bar at the top of the screen that shows the battery, signal, and time). Now look at the default android status bar. The iPhone one just looks better because all of the icons are the same height. The android icons' goofy roundedness only almost fits with the other standard UI elements. Designers/Developers on a polished platform will make more polished apps. Designers/Developers on a rougher platform will tend to make rougher apps. Note that there are exceptions, but this represents the overall trend.

iOS is more polished and has more room for actual design.

And this affects integration of an XMPP library how?

Designers/Developers on a rougher platform will tend to make rougher apps.

So is this why you can't maximize any apps on OS X?

Before you say "I could do this in a day these guys suck" I suggest you reread this article: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/07/code-its-trivial.ht...

The devil is always in the details, and you probably could get the first 90% done in a couple days and then you'd have to do the other 90%, make sure the design is perfect, and test it thoroughly. It's a lot of work, and I'm sure the team (which is probably smaller than you think) is working crazy hard on keeping the app up to date with all the changes at Facebook. I'm pretty sure they're going to be working hard to add the "seamless messaging" feature they announced to the app, not just writing a simple xmpp client.

I've done application development for both. The comments here mock Android in the typical fashion that I'm used to. The delicious part is that there is no one responding to anyone of my commentary in asking, is there something magical about iOS that makes the apps just more amazing. (The Android app has been out for 3 years and probably at least a year and a half before their seamless messaging was even being considered. It's no excuse for why the iOS FB app got messaging and Android didn't. I called out XMPP... you know... because that's the protocol that FB Chat uses. Additionally, the entire point of the seamless messaging is that it doesn't matter which protocol the communication goes over, it's all aggregated to the same place.)

Does the Facebook's app presence on an iOS device magically give it photo album support and chat support? No, that's silly.

So, all of you that continue to downvote me and aren't bothering to respond to my actual contention, I'll ask again. Why are we making fun of Android as a platform rather than indicting the developers that don't bake in the same features.

I've seen the code for a simple XMPP client in Android, and I know that it would not be hard to implement in the Facebook app. Yet it isn't. And Android gets blamed for it. The comments here are unintelligent, but then again they usually are on anything iOS/Android related.

Finally, I never ever said they suck. I'm sure their priorities are elsewhere, I just don't understand why.

Absolutely none of the replies have addressed the fact that there is such a huge feature and quality disparity between iOS apps and Android apps that are clearly the result of resources alloted to each app.

And then commenters here, indict the platform because of it. This is illogical and I don't understand it. And people keep down voting me without any discussion. It's the pathetic fanboyism I expect elsewhere.

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