Apple Co-Founder Talks Android Superiority vs iOS
[Updated at end of post] Apple co-founder Steve 'the Woz' Wozniak speaks out about the Android versus iPhone debate.
Oh Woz, between Dancing with the Stars and the Segway that seems to have been surgically attached to your feet, we just don't know what to make of you. Still, it's good to know you're not shy when it comes to talking about mobile phone platforms, even if it means backing Google's Android over the smartphone from the company you helped found.
Steve Wozniak hasn't been at Apple for a long time. In fact, the co-founder left the company completely in 1987, and, with more than 20 years worth of water under the bridge, it seems Woz is more than happy to talk up a competitor's product. In an interview with Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf, Mr. Wozniak said he expected Android to beat out the iPhone eventually. However, Woz isn't writing off the iPhone just yet. Though he admitted that "Android phones have more features" and offer customers more options, he also said the felt the iPhone was still number one in terms of quality.
"The Apple phone has very few weaknesses," Woz said. "When it comes to quality, the iPhone is leading."
Interestingly, Woz also revealed that Apple had a smartphone developed in 2004 (three years before the launch of the first iPhone in June 2007) but that the company never launched it because they wanted something that could "surprise the world."
"If Apple comes [out] with a new product, it must have a real breakthrough," Wozniak said.
[Update] Uh oh! Steve is now claiming that he was misquoted in the De Telegraaf article. Woz says he would "never" say that Android was better than iOS, and that "almost every app I have is better on the iPhone." So what did Steve say to De Telegraaf? Well, the gadget god spoke to Engadget via phone and said that he gave the newspaper a detailed demo of voice commands on both iOS and Android, pointing out that Android offered the ability to say "Navigate to Joe's Diner." However, Woz says he also suggested that Apple would catch up through its purchases of Siri and Poly9. Click through to Engadget to read more on Woz's response to the De Telegraaf article.
Source: De Telegraaf via CNet
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no backsies !!
More crappy journaling courtesy of jane
Strange, I feel the opposite way about my Xperia X10, & hear lot's of angry Android users complain about the software too. But the quality makes me NOT envy iPhone owners. ;-)
So basically, this article is like, "hey check THIS out...oh wait nevermind."
Sorry with all the problems with the iphone 4 and Apple essentially bricking its old 3G with its new iOS software I fail to see a "quality" device. I mean, come on, a phone that is made out of glass on both front and back, and a company that can't change a phone color from black to white has some quality issues.
If I had to choose the two, I'd still take Android.
But I prefer speed, so Symbian is where it's at...
Read the title. Yep, Sums up pretty much everything.
dont bother reading the update. ^_^
I just wasted 2 minutes of my life reading this article.
Dejavu?Is it just me or hasn't this happened in the past with Woz? (changing the story and being misquoted?)
No, Woz DID say all those things, then received a polite phone call (iCall?) from Uncle Jobs (probably insisting Woz received the call on his iPhone) and subsequently retracted everything he said.
Apple haters fail.
I have owned both devices to date. The iPhone is a better overall unit than an Android device. There are too many variables when it comes to Android and the marketplace.
Now I will say, having played with a Windows 7 phone for a short period of time, I felt very comfortable using it and navigating the screens. Microsoft has done an excellent job with their product.
Yeah, but what does he know? He's only the co-founder....
Oh, wait.
Given his background, he might be given the honor of being terminated by Jobs himself.
i can tell you from experience that android is not better...i can't stand the android OS...so bloated and way too much crap running in the background, yes even after you tell the freaking apps to shut down. for some reason they restart...is google that desperate to steal my info?
Android is better. Woz has dementia, and who gives a crap about what he has to say anyways.
Apple has to "catch up" with these features. This means 2 things: that Android has these features that iOS doesn't, and that Apple isn't even making these features themselves, they're just buying them and throwing them in.
I've failed to find something the iPhone can do that the Android can't.
Google had my data long before Android existed... it's convenient for me to let Google automatically sync that data to my phone. If there's one technological concept that will win these days, it's integration. It makes my phone a 'lite' version extension of my computer, which I practically live on.
@nebun
might want to take a look at iOS too, all phone OS behave similarly, closing an app does not purge it from the memory, it goes into a sort of hibernation mode, it ensures when the app is relaunched it starts up quicker, humans are habitual people, the majority of peeps will only ever use a handful of apps, the app is only really purged when the memory is full and needs more room for a new app launch, and you have actually no control over the prioritization of which is purged and which is not, well anyways thats how the developers saw it....
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2010/11/di [...] enemi.html
After reading this story....it seems Google dropped the ball big time chasing market share.
@nebunmight want to take a look at iOS too, all phone OS behave similarly, closing an app does not purge it from the memory, it goes into a sort of hibernation mode, it ensures when the app is relaunched it starts up quicker, humans are habitual people, the majority of peeps will only ever use a handful of apps, the app is only really purged when the memory is full and needs more room for a new app launch, and you have actually no control over the prioritization of which is purged and which is not, well anyways thats how the developers saw it....
wither way i don't like it
This drama has played itself out before. It was many years ago and the PC market place was divided with multiple competing standards in play. This company called Apple launched this personal computer known as the Apple Macintosh IIC, about the same time IBM launched its own Personal Computer known as the IBM PS/2. The Apple platform was closed and required "Apple only" components, even the Keyboard / Mouse / Video connectors were proprietary. You needed a license for anything / everything. And while IBM made its own HW for the PS/2, it also made it an open standard that other 3rd party manufacturers got in the game with. IBM chose MS DOS and later Windows as its OS of choice. And while the OS itself was closed, the standards it worked on where open and anyone could write a driver for their particular piece of HW.
And we all see what happened over time. The Apple IIC and later IIE were better PC's hands down but the IBM PS/2 was a more open standard. Over time more and more applications were developed on the PS/2 and eventually it became the gold standard for HW and its OS "MS Windows" became the standard for the world. The only difference is that now Apple has quite a bit of money and is throwing as much as possible at "hip" advertising hoping to prevent any other open competitor from becoming a standard.
This looks like it was a case of "Yeah, I'll admit what I really think. Wait, was that to be PUBLIC? Let's pretend I never said that!"
The Apple IIC and later IIE were better PC's hands down but the IBM PS/2 was a more open standard.
Not QUITE how it was... Really, the PS/2 was far, far ahead of its time. Back in 1987, this was the time when you had the Commodore Amiga and Atari ST crowing over "affordable gaming PCs with superior graphics" and the PS/2, in capabilities, blew away any console that would be made until perhaps the Sony Playstation.
But yes, the Macintosh was a very closed standard; while IBM DID try to clamp down on the PS/2 for fear of other makers pushing in their market, (as was going on with the PC, with makers like HP and Compaq making inroads) many of the actual elements were definitely more open... AND superior.
So while the PS/2 itself wound up being a commercial failure, and IBM went from industry dominance to a backseat behind HP, Compaq, and later Dell, everyone took and used the ideas and standards pioneered in the PS/2, which was almost certainly history's most revolutionary personal computing device: even putting the first PC to shame. I mean, it brought us all these ideas:
- The mini-DIN "PS/2 connector." This small, durable plug allowed for keyboards and mice to be handled with much more ease and less mess, helping pave the way for anyone to easily plug in their components; it's still the main standard today, 23 years later.
- The 1.44MB 3.5" floppy drive: At a time when those fragile 5.25" disks were common, the PS/2 brought about the death knell of them, replacing them with the exact floppy disk design that would endure countless superior replacements (LS-120, ZIP, CD-RW) until USB flash finally started displacing it almost 20 years later.
- The VGA connector: the idea of a single, flexible monitor port that could change which monitor and resolution it put out. (both of which changes were largely impossible before)
- The VGA standard itself: a programmable GPU that could support arbitrary resolutions for reasons other than backwards compatibility, and brought in ideas like double-buffering, effects which were lacking on things like the Amiga and both 8-bit and 16-bit consoles, but modern gaming basically RELIES upon.
- Dedicated RAM modules: With the IBM PC and other systems, there was a base set of RAM soldered to the motherboard, and further expansions ate up precious ISA (think 80s PCI-express) slots, that were slow and high-latency. The PS/2 replaced this mixed system with a bank of RAM-only slots on the motherboard, a standard we still see today.
All told, the PS/2's architecture succeeded both for being open enough for others to scavenge it, and also for being incredibly revolutionary.
Well I was more referring to the Apple II systems using a PPC CPU which was superior to the Intel 8088/8086 / 80286 in use at the time. Also Apple's OS has a much better GUI and interface then DOS / early Windows. As a platform the Apple II was better then the PS/2, but as a set of standards the PS/2 won easily. In the same sense I see it as iPhone vs Android / everyone else. Apple's iOS is superior as a platform then the Android (currently) but its closeness will prevent its evolution. As more and more applications get ported to the Android platform, as more and more phones are designed with Android and as the OS itself evolves, the platform will start to resemble what happened to the PS/2 platform.