Woz Says Big Software Doesn't Work 483
chrizbot writes "A friend of mine studying journalism at Google's alma mater interviewed Steve Wozniak of Apple Computer fame. He chimes in on open source, DRM, record companies and how software from big companies suck so bad (including Apple's!). The part my friend doesn't include is how he guessed a trick was performed and won a necklace from him!" From the article: "Sometimes the engineers are true artists and really care what they're doing, doing a really great job. Although, I don't know how much I can even say that because the big companies, Microsoft, Apple and AOL, they tend to turn out the crappiest products, you know, software-wise. The ones that have the most bugs, the most items that are supposedly in there but don't work. The most things that are left out because they aren't finished. The most things that are inconsistent with the way they did their last program. I get the worst, worst software almost always from Apple."
GOOGLE WENT TO COLLEGE?! (Score:5, Funny)
Has it got a Master's? Or should we call it Doctor Google?
Re:GOOGLE WENT TO COLLEGE?! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:GOOGLE WENT TO COLLEGE?! (Score:3, Funny)
I, for one, and not a hater of bad grammar, but if I was I'm sure I could get all bent out of shape over people using "it's" when they mean "its" without any reduction of hatred towards people who don't signal lane changes, terrorists, or the Los Angeles Lakers.
Back to the topic at hand, the summary wasn't just guilty of making a few grammar mistakes; it was completely uninteligible. There are chunks of the slash code whi
Re:GOOGLE WENT TO COLLEGE?! (Score:3, Funny)
s/and/am
(sigh)
Something about discussing grammar which seems to bring out the worst writers in us all.
Gone (Score:5, Funny)
I get the worst, worst software almost always from Apple.
But I'm not bitter.
Re:Gone (Score:5, Informative)
I can tell you that in my experience, the best software by far comes from Apple, from OSX on down to products like Final Cut Pro and Motion. Compare the user interface of Motion with the mess that is Flash and you'll get the point. Or compare Final Cut with Premiere.
Apple's not perfect, and I think Woz is responding to that fact. He's frustrated that even with world-class perfectionist Steve [ubersoft.net] at the helm, software isn't perfect.
And of course this is true. But at least Steve's fighting for perfection - I fundementally agree with the cartoon I linked to - in an industry where most want to settle for "good enough for Government work."
D
Re:Gone (Score:5, Insightful)
In the early days, Apple used to follow their interface guidelines like they were gospel. Now they ignore them in nearly every app they make. No time to start listing all the violations, but for an example, try the minimize and maximize buttons in iTunes. Or try reading their guidelines on when to use brushed metal, and then try to see when they bother to follow their own nearly unintelligible guidelines.
I don't have time to enumerate all of them, but Apple constantly changes how things work for no apparent reason. Key Caps was around since the very early days of the Mac, c. 1986. With OSX, they change the name to Keyboard Viewer. OK, a minor change that makes more sense. Then with 10.3, this handy utility disappears. Did they get rid of it? No! But to find it, you have to dig around in system preferences and activate a special hidden flag-shaped "international" menu, that's always present at the top of your screen, and you can only access it from there.
This is, of course, only one of countless examples.
Apple is missing some user-interface design oversight committee that has the power to review every last change and stop individuals from messing stuff up like this. I shouldn't have to read a Macworld article and dig through the "international" system preferences pane to activate a hidden menu to continue to access a utility that had otherwise been fairly consistent on Macs for 18 years. Again, I'm not just complaining about their one big mistake, there are countless things on par with this.
Re:Gone (Score:4, Interesting)
In other words, I think what's going on is that Steve responds to the desires of the user, particularly the user who wants to upgrade and give him money.
But even I will admit, getting rid of key caps was just plain dumb. Nobody's perfect, not even Steve.
But at least he does care, and that's why I stick with him.
D
Re:Gone (Score:5, Informative)
I wouldn't be so quick to label Dashboard as a Konfabulator rip-off. At best, you could argue that Konfabulator caused someone at Apple to say, "Hey, remember those widgets we used to develop in NeXTstep [wikipedia.org]? See where these guys have taken the idea? Why did we ever get away from this?"
(Answer: because tons of widgets on the desktop were a huge pain in the butt, and it took a virtual container for them - the Dashboard - to make them non-irritating again.)
But generally I think you hit the nail on the head, and damn are you ever right about Spotlight. From the Ars Technica review of Tiger [arstechnica.com] (note that when he references Finder, he's referring to Spotlight-specific behavior) :
Creating a decent interface to the (really quite powerful) techology behind Spotlight could fuel a budding young shareware developer's career, if it weren't for the fact that you just know Apple is likely to change the whole thing again with 10.5.
Re:Gone (Score:4, Interesting)
It's worth noting in passing that Caffeine Software was basically one guy, who shut it down after he got a job at... Apple. Personally, I have trouble believing that the disappearance of TIFFany at Apple's behest and the appearance a couple years later of Aperture are completely unrelated, but I've never seen any evidence to confirm my theory.
Sherlock/Watson I think they did a pretty dirty thing with; I half wonder if it wasn't that Steve Jobs or someone else high up just got a bug up their ass about Watson's name, which could be taken as a slap in the face for the previous (useless) releases of Sherlock. Konfabulator versus Dashboard, though, I can't get too worked up about; to me, Dashboard is spiritually the return of desk accessories, and implementation-wise, Konfabulator done better.
This is always an interesting dilemma. When Microsoft Word and WordPerfect integrated spelling and grammar-checking into their applications, they knew there was a thriving market for "add-on" programs with those functions, and they had to be aware that their integration would pretty much snuff that market out of existence. Is that sufficient reason not to do that integration, though?
Re:Gone (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Gone (Score:5, Interesting)
That's extremely insightful, you don't work with the man, do you ?
My recollection of briefly working for Steve involves a meeting with a group of 8 engineers where he pretty well had everyone convinced that they could, in a few months' time, fully test an entire OS and extensive application suite, on new hardware, while writing a couple of never-before-imagined applications. In short, we were all going to pull off some miracles, pretty much because of a Steve pep talk. It's great to have inspired engineers, and sometimes people can pull of miracles, but that's a scary way to develop products on a schedule and a budget.
My biggest beef with OS X software ( aside from the Finder, which just needs a *complete* re-write ) is the recent lack of UI consistency. Try this : launch Safari, Mail, and iTunes ( most recent versions, in OS X 10.4 ). Check out the look of the windows... are any of them the same? Not really, they're all slightly different-looking... and iTunes looks like no other OS X app ever !
The difference between brushed metal and standard windows was annoying and unnecessary enough, but what is the rationalization for those three Apple-authored applications having such different looks ? Who needs 4 different styles of window dressing on a single machine? They're making Windows look like the platform with UI consistency, WTF is going on at Apple with these differing looks for different apps ?
Inconsistency (Score:3, Insightful)
The difference between brushed metal and standard windows was annoying and unnecessary enough, but what is the rationalization
Re:Gone (Score:5, Insightful)
Consider also that Apple always wanted icons to have unique color-schemes and shapes to make them instantly identifiable. But now people can more quickly discern an application by variations in window style... and that certainly works in favor of Expose.
That's not to say they haven't transgressed against consistency more than they should. All the old criticisms are still valid; just certain ones are much less important now.
Re:Gone (Score:3, Interesting)
I've been grasping for a *reason* for the difference between these applications... that's actually the main thing that bugs me. I'm not sure I so much mind applications having different basic looks so much as long as there is a *reason*. I've never heard a reason for these differences that made sense to me.
Safari is just plain ol' Brushed Metal, it's different from regular-loo
Re:Gone (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Gone (Score:3, Informative)
It became much harder to find things the more modern the MS operating system, which is not really what I like to see.
Since MacOS X never implemeneted a hierarchical control panel interface, it's never been 1/10th as much of a problem to track down lost control panel elements as it was in Windows.
D
Re:Gone (Score:3, Insightful)
Hmm... I'm quite sure we can dig things up on MS, too. Actually, their UI shifts are just as frequent as Apple's, but they just never proclaimed to follow one set of UI guidelines.
For instance, Office 2003 has a completely different UI than Office XP, and even that one is different from Office 2K. Visual Studio .NET departed from the norm in UI, if you ever compare it to VS 6. Visio has some rather annoying UI features, too.
Also, the consistency of the UI from OS to OS is unstable. Win2K and WinXP we
Re:Gone (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, everything important to system configuration will be moved to a new and arbitrary place with every Windows release, but at least I can keep the UI sane.
I don't get it, to be honest - to me, the UI is a tool, not a game, and I don't want it to look cute and differ
Re:Evil Progress (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Gone (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Gone (Score:3, Interesting)
I see better user interfaces in pc games than I do in other software. This is primarily because game designers realized years ago that everyone has their own prefered way of interacting with the input interfaces. This led to the ability for the end user to modify the input options (such as a keyboard mapper and joystick macros).
A better approach for all software would be to build an infinitely modifiable interface
Re:Gone (Score:3, Insightful)
When I was working in IT, I had to administrate a network of Windows machines. Outlook has a user interface which has all kinds of panels that can be dragged around.
Every once in a while, somebody - and it was often me - would do this by accident and find out that a crucial panel was missing from the program, with no clue at all how to get it back. I don't even remembe
Re:Gone (Score:3, Interesting)
The best software (IMO) comes from small groups or individuals with exceptional talent, never from a gigantic corporation. The problem with a large corporation is that quality tends to dilute as mediocre people are hired, rot sets in, projects atrophy, clueless managers cut funding, stupid ideas are pushed, brilliant ideas are ignored, problems are neglected and faults are left unfixed for years.
I can reel off dozens of
Re:How about iTunes for start? (Score:3, Interesting)
You can't please everyone.
Re:Gone (Score:5, Insightful)
Woz is no Apple basher. If he's bitching about their software, then he honestly does not like the direction they are taking.
That said, I can't help but wonder if he is looking at the same Apple software as me.
Garage Band 2 is my very life blood. I *love* that app!
X-Code is the bizz-omb.
Pages and Keynote are really neat.
iTunes is the only desktop music player worth getting excited over.
Safari is a pretty good browser.
All I can think is that he must be really, really down on Searchlight and the Dashboard, because those are the only two flubs I can think of to have come out of Cupertino lately... and Searchlight is actually growing on me.
As for the Dashboard... meh. I use it a little, because it's right there, waiting to show me the weather forcast and what-have-you, but I would not exactly weep if it were scrapped in 10.5.
WOZ is very smart (Score:3, Insightful)
The kind of stuff where once pointed it out, seems incredible obvious and will bug you everytime you use the software.
Re:Gone (Score:4, Interesting)
I like the OSX dock provided magnify is disabled. Resizing the icons makes it harder to move your mouse to the correct one. Its annoying.
I don't think I would agree that OSX is the worst operating system in terms of usability. Solaris comes to mind. CDE and the Java Desktop System are crap. There are so many things you can not do in the gui that require CLI interaction its not funny. I love CLI interfaces, but I can't ask my mom or even my boss (a novell guy) to use a unix terminal. They freak out. My favorite OS of all time is NEXTSTEP, but I wouldn't recommend it to everyone. It seemed so consistant compared to its modern counterpart (OSX).
Skinning apps is stupid. Not only does it lead to inconsistancy, but it also eats up memory like crazy. People who love it are the same people that complain about their computers being slow or talk about buying an extreme edition p4 just to run winamp, IE, and a few games.
I think most people are bad at UI design. Very few people at my university seem to understand basics and even worse most don't even think about usability when they write software. I know I'm a bad offender, but I try to improve. I think thats all we can ask from Apple, Microsoft, and the rest.
As a roadmap for OSX, I recommend the following:
1. Fix kernel/stability problems.
2. Consider standardizing OS components on one UI or at least limit it to two. Pinstripes, shinny metal, and now the worst of all.. plastic. Why do I want to look at plastic? Mail.app drives me nuts.
3. Ignore adding 200 features and work on getting the system consistant, fast and usable. Thats a feature in itself. With the intel switch coming up, I know we are going to have major stability problems in intel and ppc based macs.
Re:Gone (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Gone (Score:3, Interesting)
I called it "the only one worth getting excited over." From the heat of the debate which followed (to the extent that everything else I said was completely ignored), I would say my statement is pretty well supported. Who would ever spend this much time arguing over the UI decisions made by Media Monkey?
Lack of WMA & OGG support, and an "ugly" interface are both valid criticisms, if such things are important to you, but iTunes
Re:Gone (Score:3, Informative)
The first thing I noticed was that the only way iTunes didn't take up too much screen was when it wasn't on the screen.
The second thing I noticed was that it did I/O so badly that it took more than 1100% of the time to load and parse the tags from my collection a
Re:correction (Score:3, Insightful)
If we want open formats, we can't be saying that we want open formats unless (insert company of t
Re:Gone (Score:3, Insightful)
Sorry but iTunes doesn't auto-synch with MP3 players. Unless you bought one from Apple.
Any of the hundreds of other models are completely unsupported (such as the iRiver H320 I've had for a while now).
Or at least that's the way it is on OS X (iBook laptop), I don't know what it's like in Windows. On my Linux desktop I usually use Zinf and "auto-sync" with "cp -Ru".
Re:Gone (Score:4, Informative)
What's more, on some models of iPod these lists are dynamically generated on the fly in the iPod itself (well, they are on the nano) in response to changes you might make (eg. by playing or rating tracks).
Re:Gone (Score:5, Insightful)
Just because he said something negative about apple doesn't mean he hates them - he was almost certainly just being honest.
But of course, knock down someone who even slightly criticises Apple and immediately get modded to +5 by the fanboys.
Re:Gone-Wishy Washy. (Score:2)
*Just look at the "Apple moving to Intel" story for proof of that.
A few vocal proponents does not mean all or even most x86 fans are clamoring for OS X and many of the ones who are just want it to see what all the hype is about.
who? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:who? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:who? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:who? (Score:3, Funny)
Troll? (Score:5, Funny)
This Woz guy is obviously a MS$ fanboy troll!
Re:Troll? (Score:3, Insightful)
OR Maybe he's actually used the software and been unhappy with it and is in the fortunate position of being someone to whom people will listen. I've certainly seen enough of problems with Apple software:
1)
Re:Troll? (Score:3, Insightful)
Pull your nose out, man. The Foundation does many charitable things, true, and Bill has donated large chunks of cash here and there.
But when you look at his wealth to scale, with *orders of magnitude* more fortune than even necessary to still be fabulously rich, what he does amounts to tossing pennies into the crowd. That's not even considering the PR gained from it. In fact, I would wager that Bill has done more to *hurt* this nation than he has
Perhaps he's right (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Perhaps he's right (Score:3, Funny)
I'm going with 2. I bet Apple finds out where he is going to get his next apple software from and then sends him crap just to mess with him. He could get "the good stuff" if only he wore his tinfoil hat.
Refeshing change... (Score:3, Insightful)
Well at least he's honest about it. But don't be shocked if a lot of people refuse to purchase anything from your company because of it.
Obvious? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's a symptom of two things, from the standpoint of poor quality software produced by people who are capable of much better:
1) Nothing personal at stake for the people actually producing the software. It's a lot different when your livelihood directly and visibly depends on the quality of the product your employer produces. Whether it's because it's my own company, or I get fat stock options, I'll work harder when I'm trying to reach the cheese.
2) Diluted responsibility for the product. 2,000 people working on a product means that in all likelihood, my individual contreibution will go unnoticed, and therefore I have less incentive to perform well. Also, even if my contribution is perfect, it won't have that much effect on a huge project.
Re:Obvious? (Score:5, Insightful)
I personally am extremely motivated to create quality software. And at a startup, that's what I did. Here...I can't. It isn't my motivation that prevents me. It's the wildly changing requirements, stupid management decisions, inability to make decisions and design by committee.
The root problem is that in a small startup, you generally have one boss, and if that boss isn't already technically knowledgable, you can usually explain things to him. In a huge megacorp, the people making the decisions are usually pretty technically ignorant and are so high up that you have no opportunity to raise issues and so they end up making really stupid decisions.
One thing that I can't emphasise enough: a good developer cannot create good software without good management support. That kind of support is easy to get at startups and very hard to get at huge companies. This is because at a startup, everyone's in the same room and knows each other face to face, whereas at a huge megacorp, management is generally too far removed to have a clue.
Another thing that makes software from huge companies suck: When a company gets truly huge, many people in the chain of command get so caught up in internal power struggles that they lose sight of the customers. Here at the large company I work for, I've seen many good products killed, and other projects set up to fail merely because one upper-management type was trying to get the upper-hand over another. In a small company, everyone's in it together. In a large company, you will always find people who want the other guy to fail in order to better their own position.
Re:Obvious? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Obvious? (Score:3, Funny)
But it's a helluva way to go through college!
Re:Obvious? (Score:3, Funny)
Or in Microsoft's case because they created the poor quality crap tools themselves.
Re:Obvious? (Score:3, Funny)
I must have worked at the same place. Or are they all like that?
Re:Obvious? (Score:3, Interesting)
Clearly (Score:3, Funny)
Woz is from a different era (Score:5, Insightful)
Most folks I know from that era feel the same way about today's large programs whether they are from Apple or not.
Come on, give the old guy a break there was a hell of a lot more to the article than that one quote.
Anyone else RTFA?
Indeed (Score:3, Insightful)
You can tell this guy has "lost touch" when he starts recommending you use OS 9 over OS X; I'm glad those days are over personally, I kind of like bein
Re:Indeed (Score:5, Insightful)
If you review the article, this is actually a reference to user centric design, not a reference to anything technical about the underlying operating system. Woz was actually talking about the way the early Mac and Lisa were designed around what the user wanted/expected, not around making the user adjust to the workings of the system.
You might want to remember that user experience is (mostly) independent of technical underpinnings. You can have a crap UI on top of a modern OS (say AIX running only ksh) or a great UI on top of a really crappy OS (pre-X MacOS is a pretty good example).
Re:Indeed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Woz is from a different era (Score:3, Insightful)
WHEN CAN WE GO BACK. I am sick to fucking DEATH of multi-gig bloatware installs that try to impress 428 features I don't need and will never frigging USE on me. In fact, I still use old software for production use - Photoshop 5.5 - because the newer versions have nothing to offer me but a speed reduction and a slower interface.
Monkeys!
Re:Woz is from a different era (Score:3, Insightful)
The big difference today and before was that languages used to be much more diverse. Most languages today are compromise languages taking some of the features of the languages that were developed in the late 50's to late 70's and creating a mixture. Basically you get languages with the features of lisp written like fortran
What does he use? (Score:4, Funny)
I get the worst, worst software almost always from Apple.
He must not buy anything from Microsoft or Adobe then.
That's why I like "Classic" Unix (Score:5, Interesting)
(by the way, I know I'm being generous in those specs, I personally test all my software on a dog-slow Pentium II @ 233Mhz w. 64M RAM running various "older" OS versions (Win2000, Linux 2.2!, etc.)
Then, when you roll it out to your users and their running the latest 3GHz, 4GB RAM machine, they are happy.
Linux & GNU seem to be the latest (last five+ years) culprits in the bloatware regime. I remember actually compiling the full kernel on an 8MB machine (yes, it took four hours)...now you can't do in under 32MB
(although I guess that's more GCC bloat than anything)
Things are just too big and bloated now.
Give me an old "Classic" Unix with no X, just command line.
Let me pipe my various home-built tools together to create a final simple working FAST result.
TDz.
Re:That's why I like "Classic" Unix (Score:3, Interesting)
There's no reason why you can't still do that with Linux. The kernel's a bit bigger than it was in 1993, but you can either build your own custom one, or only put the modules on you actually use. GNOME isn't part of Linux, neither is KDE.
Re:That's why I like "Classic" Unix (Score:3, Interesting)
The software industry as a whole should ... (Score:2, Interesting)
1) offer customers a sincere apology for their negligence
(no court seems able to get a comprehensive conviction
against any of them anyway, so they should't have to worry
about liability), at the same time as
2) distribute a genuinely effective set of patches to those
customers as they wait for the company to develop a new
and a new geek fashion starts (Score:4, Funny)
Orange polo and dark dress slacks. Check.
Multi-thousand dollar watch [abouttime.com]. Well, maybe some other time.
just a guess at the model: (Score:2)
Sometimes it is the job, not the programmer (Score:4, Informative)
In my experience the lack, or opposite of those 10 things can often demotivate otherwise conscientious, talented programmers from doing the best job possible.
Big companies often do that, while doing other things that interfere with software quality.
Has Woz ever *tried* open source software? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sorry, I can't buy any of this crap. Apple and Microsoft might not be kings of software development, but I can tell you that all the software I've downloaded to try on my Mac, EVER (even including the stuff in Fink repositories) worked the first time I ran the software. It may not have done exactly what I wanted, and it may not have had the best GUI in the world, but it worked. That's far more than I can say for the majority of open source software I've tried.
I will say this, though. Apple's QA has gone WAAAY down hill. I'm not even positive they test software at all before shoving it out the door now. Safari just stole focus from this text field because I had the audacity to load a new tab. DVD Player steals focus twice every time you insert a DVD. Finder crashes or freezes at least once a day. And the GUI for Spotlight is almost comically bad, both in the menu bar and in Finder windows. My theory? Those programs are developed mostly by workers at NeXT who didn't have much experience with Classic MacOS. But to have the OS go from zero focus steals (in OS 9.2.2) to stealing focus every goddamned five minutes (OS X), that's just sad. Even Microsoft has gotten to the point where 90% of focus stealing bugs are solved.
(*) Go ahead, call me a moron for not being able to get it to work. I know you want to.
Re:Has Woz ever *tried* open source software? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Has Woz ever *tried* open source software? (Score:4, Interesting)
Not hardly. I've found OSS software has plenty of things/features that don't work, or don't work they way you'd think. Often, its because some package is still in early stages of development. People often install a linux distro with the impression that the *entire* distro is a finshed product, which isn't the case. Installing a linux distro is a different situation with respect to where various parts of the distro are at, and can be frustrating due the amount of information that needs to be assimilated to get a perspective that helps dispell the confusion.
That said, I installed Ubuntu 5.10 on a thinkpad A22m, and I've only had one thing fail to work, minicom which doesn't talk to the serial port, and epiphany crashes from time to time (although it works). A quick laundry list of things that pretty much worked fresh out the install without a hitch:
The following I just built from source, in the most thoughtless
I installed OSX 10.4 on an 800MHZ iLamp, and it crashes, and the mouse occasionally stops talking with the USB port - none of which ever happened on 10.3 - so its the software. Apple QA does seem to have taken a hit lately.
OSS 1
OSX 0
I have to say, I think WOZ is right.
Re:Has Woz ever *tried* open source software? (Score:5, Informative)
"Safari just stole focus from this text field because I had the audacity to load a new tab"
That's the way most of us like it, it's how it's supposed to work. If I open a new tab, it's usually because I want to go somewhere else in the same window. Why would you open a new tab otherwise? I'm not sure if it works (not near my Mac at the moment), but UNselecting "Select new tabs as they are created" in the tabs pref pane might work for you.
"And the GUI for Spotlight is almost comically bad, both in the menu bar and in Finder windows."
I like it. What alternative are there for the average use that finds files, folders, documents, messages in Mail, contacts in Address Book, iCal calendars, meta data (Photoshop files, Word docs, E-mails), System Preferences, applications, and even text "within" those files instantly? Your subjective criticism of the GUI not-withstanding, the tech is great. I love it.
"DVD Player steals focus twice every time you insert a DVD"
Again, most people want to watch the DVD they just put in (unless you are ripping them... ahem). And, if that's the case, then just change the preference in the preference pane to not launch DVD player when you put a DVD in! Done! This seems to be simply a usage issue as it takes 3 clicks to change that, from opening the pref panel to change.
Giants are clumsy... (Score:5, Insightful)
Both are generalizations that don't always fit the models that development teams are cast into.
Some software behemoths can make some pretty damn good software or at least have a pretty responsive team for fixing bugs that can (and will always) arise. But some open source software I've worked with has completely alienated me because the organization of it was so abyssmal that nothing ever really got done to crawl out of alpha 0.0.0.halfapercent.9 despite all the phenomenal talent pooled between the developers.
Stereotypes are dangerous so pick your poison, should you decide to follow that route.
The Wonderful Wizard of Woz (Score:4, Interesting)
-Apple is no longer what they were when they started out, and now their proprietary software sucks, the 3rd party Apple MAC software is great, and the Apple Macintosh software is great
-Proprietary software traps you
-Open source is good for companies that would like it, but Apple software is still better
-DRM is a necessary evil in the digital downloading world, since people share files and hurt the artists
-CDs and Itunes should be cheaper, artists should be able to set their own price
-Software is huge, complex, over-hyped and under-supported and it is only going to get worse
-Colleges should train people to design software with a humanist point of view
After reading this article, you could argue that the computer industry is quite depressing if you start to think about all the different things he has mentioned. If you want to build a better computer/OS/hardware/software, you should not put large corporations in charge of development, leave it up to those with a more humanist point of view. The only problem is, if by humanist you are saying it is for the greater good or some moral good, it is inherently against the profit model and the actions of greedy corporations who are always trying to increase profits or meet projected profit expectations and deadlines.
The Open Source community is the closest thing you can get to a 'humanist' point of view while computing. Since the profit motivation is taken out of the equation, everyone can benefit.
Re:The Wonderful Wizard of Woz (Score:3)
Open source is humanist in some sense, but not when it comes to the human-computer interface. People want consistency, but OS developers need the freedom to try different things. Also (speaking for myself anyway) programmers tend to devote more thought to the structure, or internal beauty, of a program than its interface. I think that almost any interface to a program that the author has either written or deeply understands will seem intuitive to them.
Re:The Wonderful Wizard of Woz (Score:3, Insightful)
By 'humanist' he's probably referring to the person-centrered approach, where you put the person in the middle, as it were, and affirm that the person is perfectly ok as they are, and rather than imposing some method or system onto them,
Hardware manufacturers (Score:5, Insightful)
I think some of the very worst software comes from hardware manufacturers. HP printers for instance come with the most appallingly crappy software, a lot of it just badly replicating things that the OS (Windows or Mac) does anyway.
Then I brought a Nikon camera recently, and the stupid software they shipped with it managed to screw up both a Mac and a Windows machine.
Death Star Syndrome (Score:3, Funny)
I'd like to nominate this phenomenon the "Death Star Syndrome," or DSS.
Worst, Worst Software from Apple? (Score:2)
What are the issues I don't know about?
Re:Worst, Worst Software from Apple? (Score:5, Insightful)
I work in tech support with hundreds of mac users going through our helpdesk a week, many of whom are professionals in every imaginable industry. I'd say around 1-3% of them use the terminal regularly, and less than actually have to.
"many applications available don't come with a graphical user interface" which is to say, with Mac OS X, there are lots of terminal based applications already installed and many more available to you. Quite impressive he's trying to spin the robustness of unix as a drawback. I've met some very nice linux developers at my job. I'd say without the combination of friendly GUI and powerful commandline, they probably wouldn't be using a mac to begin with.
Joe Sixpack is at fault (Score:3, Insightful)
Granted these moves are often made in the guise of software integration but the fact is that the more gizmos you pile on the more issues you're going to have. At one point most geeks were happy about software that did one thing well, now Joe comes in and he wants one package that does everything including wipes.
Look at the hardware market too; HP was a Godsend when they weren't trying to put out 85 different products that did everything. Now we get lousy equipment such as "all in one" devices. Sure, they have more function but the problems are out of hand.
I guess the question is are we ready for mammoth apps and devices that do everything or do we need to cool our heels and get what we have today working right first then tackle the issues of more functions in a tighter package?
It's no surprise (Score:3, Insightful)
It's kinda like expecting the very best food from somewhere like McDonalds. That'll never happen. Instead you have to go to the little corner bestro to get really good food.
Single Quote Headlines (Score:3, Interesting)
Woz Still Loyal Apple Zealot
From the article: "...I love every part of the Apple world. The whole world of Apple works together."
What are you talking about? (Score:4, Informative)
That was the most painful thing I've tried to read for a long time. Typos and minor errors I'll put up with (even though /. apparently has editors). But this reads like it was written by a retard.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Who cares? Should I? (Score:2)
Re:Who cares? Should I? (Score:3, Insightful)
a) Because he's a long-time industry insider who knows what is possible with software.
b) Because he's an end-user and knows what he'd like to see in software.
c) But why Woz and not someone else? Well, we do listen to those other guys too. You, me and a bunch of other people rant on a pretty regulare basis here on
Re:Who cares? Should I? (Score:3, Informative)
Company polotics (Score:2)
Re:He does have a point (Score:2)
I think that this is mostly because many developers don't care. Or sometimes they simply don't like to do what they are doing. In my company developers are often doing QA team's job (when "we need it by tomo
Re:Back in the day (Score:2)
Neither has Dvorak, Jobs, Gates, or Balmer, but that doesn't stop them.
Re:Back in the day (Score:3, Insightful)
Dvorak (John C. Dvorak) has never done any work in computers -- he's been a journalist his entire life. Frankly, I've never really understood why people paid attention to him. He's been around a long time, but his batting average on predictions is pretty miserable.
Jobs, Gates, and Balmer are all involved in the industry still -- sure, they're in management at this point, but being the top managers of two of the biggest and most influenti
Re:Back in the day (Score:5, Funny)
Because he designed that excellent keyboard, and composed music in his free time.
I refuse to let you make fun of such a multitalented individual.
Re:Back in the day (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Back in the day (Score:5, Insightful)
When the 6502 was a hot processor, Woz was a pretty fair hack electrical engineer. Running the video off the CPU was a cute trick. But he hasn't had anything relevant to say about computers in a very long, long time.
Are you trolling?
1986:
The
http://www.apple-history.com/?page=gallery&model=
2004:
Wheels of Zeus
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1734857,00.a
He knows more about modern technology than you do.
Enjoy,
Re:Back in the day (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Said like a true engineer (Score:2)
Re:My favorite line... (Score:2)
Re:More nonsense from slashdot (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I thought this guy was supposed to be cool (Score:5, Insightful)
Which country club would you be referring to?
Would that be the one where he teaches computing to underprivileged children, and provides them with free laptops?