
Woz: Microsoft might be more creative than Apple - aynlaplant
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-57550839-71/woz-microsoft-might-be-more-creative-than-apple/
======
jacquesm
Imagine if Bill Gates were to give interviews like this commenting on
Microsoft. Woz is one of my heroes, but I can easily see that the Apple PR
department cringes every time he gives an interview.

And they can't do anything about it either, they're damned if they're quiet
and they're even more damned if they would speak up because they could never
meet him at his level, straight to the point and with an honesty that is
probably disturbing them greatly, and responding would likely result in
something akin to the Streisand effect, further increasing the visibility of
his words.

For those that wish to belittle Steve Wozniaks' contribution to computing: you
likely would not be on this forum right now if not for him, the IBM pc only
happened after early Apple validated the market.

Steve Wozniak is more of a tinkerer and an engineer, which makes him one of
the hacker crowd, something that most business guys have very little empathy
with (engineers are tools in their toolbox). As such I listen to what he says
because he speaks my language more than the marketing and sales guys and I'm
happy I don't have to parse it, all the meaning is there in plain sight, no
hidden agendas.

Such transparency, even a sense of naivety is quite rare in the business
world, where spindoctors will twist words until they have a meaning far
removed from what I would normally get out of them.

~~~
WalterBright
> you likely would not be on this forum right now if not for him, the IBM pc
> only happened after early Apple validated the market.

Years before the IBM PC came out, I had a Heathkit H11 (a version of the
PDP-11) and was writing and selling software for it. I'm fairly confident that
the PC revolution would have happened with or without Woz. I had been working
with 11's, 6502's and 6800's for years before that, and it was pretty clear
that there was a revolution in the works.

The students at Caltech (75-79) I was with were all excited about
microcomputers and quite a few designed and built their own systems from
scratch (it wasn't very hard, the chips pretty much just plugged together).
Hell even I made one around a 6800. None had an Apple II, mainly because a
PDP-11 was the preferred system used to dev the software for the microcomputer
boards.

Woz certainly made enormous contributions, and nobody can say what the shape
of it would have been without him, but it would have happened anyway.

~~~
jacquesm
The H11 was released a year after the Apple I.

I had a KIM-1 at the time and the Apple was lightyears ahead of it, even
though they shared the same processor.

Most other 'personal computers' were still stuck in hexadecimal keyboard
territory.

I've rolled my own (6800, '09 and 6502 based boards) and learned a lot doing
that but the Apple I and later the Apple II (neither of which I ever owned but
an uncle of mine had an Apple II that I played a lot with) was a _real_
computer rather than something more akin to a large embedded system,
programmed with paper tape and terminal interface using current loop. The
Apple stuff rocked the world of personal computing.

The difference was huge, and I'm pretty sure that the design elements present
in the Apple II raised the bar considerably for the competition and had a
direct effect on the PC lineage.

It would be nice to interview the designers of the original IBM PC to ask them
where they got their input.

~~~
WalterBright
The H11 was just a repackaging of the PDP-11 which had been around for years,
at steadily dropping prices. It was far, far more powerful than the Apple II.

Apple had many firsts, but it's an awful stretch to say the PC revolution
wouldn't have happened without them. It's like saying we wouldn't have
airliners today if the Wrights never existed.

~~~
jacquesm
You'd have airliners today. But likely they'd be the airliners of a decade or
two ago.

The Wrights are an excellent example because they did what they did when they
did it, and there were still people talking about whether powered flight was
even possible. Kitty Hawk was a milestone for exactly the same reasons the
Apple I was a milestone: huge improvement over the status quo, accelerating
development and validating a market.

That's worth a lot in my opinion, it moves the needle with a large jump rather
than a tiny increment.

~~~
rickdangerous1
There's is quite a list of inventors from around the world who independently
invented powered flight at about the same time as the Wright brothers. Flight
being invented in 1903 actually has more to do with the evolution of petrol
motor power to weight ratios than it did discovering the principles of flight.
It would have happened within 1 year of 1903 with or without the Wright bros.

~~~
shasta
And even if it had taken a decade, that almost certainly wouldn't have set us
back a decade today.

------
bravura
Serious question: I know he's the Woz, but is there any other reason that we
care about his opinion?

He hasn't been involved with Apple since 1987.

Has Woz ever demonstrated any expertise in design or UX?

[edit: For anyone that has accused me of bias or fanboi-ism, let me disclose
where I stand. I have run Linux on PC hardware almost exclusively from roughly
1996 through October 2012. I bought my first Mac computer a few weeks ago,
being frustrated by occasional hardware compatibility issues running Linux on
laptops. I think Apple has good design, but would be happy with a slim Linux
laptop that works without issues.]

~~~
lutze
Are you fucking kidding?

Woz CREATED Apple... Job's single defining contribution to the Apple I was
"hey we should sell this!", he did literally NOTHING else.

~~~
SquareWheel
Let's turn down the hyperbole. Jobs still marketed the company, even if Woz
was the technical genius. Selling your product is just as essential as having
a product.

~~~
lutze
In the context of the question being asked, I think a little indignation is
entirely in order.

Has Woz ever shown any expertise in design? I mean really, it's like asking if
Michelangelo knew his way around a fucking paint brush.

~~~
larrys
You are talking about hardware and/or engineering design. Important for sure
but only one part of "design" and of a product having success in the
marketplace. Without that appeal all the engineering genius in the world means
nothing (and vice versa of course..)

------
jammur
Saying that "Improving is not Apple-style innovation," seems kinda wrong. Yes,
they've had a few brand new product launches, but most of their time has been
spent improving existing products. The progression from the original iPod to
the current version has been a series of incremental improvements over the
course of the last 11 years. Same goes for all the Mac computers. If anything
I think the opposite is true, that Apple-style innovation tends to be
improvement, with a few big leaps once in a while.

Also, new isn't necessarily better. I think Microsoft is in a position right
now where they have the choice of duplicating the iOS/Android experience, or
trying something completely different. Since they've shown a willingness to
spend tons of money on new projects and play the long game, I think their
strategy of trying new things is good for them. Products don't generally start
out great, but rather get there over time and over multiple incremental
iterations. I think Microsoft is essentially still searching for v1. Apple on
the other hand already has a product that people love and buy in huge numbers.
They have their good v1 and are now trying to make it great through
incremental improvements.

~~~
tsahyt
> they've had a few brand new product launches

They haven't really done anything truly new for decades now. The iPod was what
made their comeback. It was an MP3 player. Those have been around for a while
at that time. Then there was the iPhone which was a really good effort but
didn't really invent the smartphone. It evolved what we already had (Nokia and
Sony Ericcson had Smartphones on Symbian that did most things the iPhone did,
only worse. They played MP3s, you could use them to browse the web and you
could install Apps on them). Don't get me wrong, the iPhone was like a
catalyst to the smartphone world, accelerating the development of mobile
platforms, but it was not a true innovation. In fact, Android was already in
development for quite a while at the time the iPhone was released. And to me,
the iPad is basically a big smartphone that can't make phone calls. I don't
really see much innovation there either. Did it create markets? Yes. Was it
really innovative? No.

On the software side there's not really any innovation either. OSX is really a
polished BSD. Sure, Apple seems to know what they're doing in terms of UX but
again, no real innovation - just one of the few companies that knows how to do
it properly.

So yes, I agree with the Woz quote in the title. Microsoft Research has some
pretty staggering projects going (both for developers as well as consumers)
and Apple seems to be milking tried and tested cows lately. It works for them
but it's neither creative nor innovative. This is exactly where Microsoft
_has_ to shine these days because people got incredibly bored with MS. Windows
8 is pretty much a disaster on the desktop and the Surface tablet seems to be
too slow to handle proper loads. I hope some of those research projects make
it into applications even if just for the sake of competition.

~~~
ricardobeat
> Then there was the iPhone which was a really good effort but didn't really
> invent the smartphone

There was _nothing_ like the iPhone in the market. Not even close. It was like
alien technology at the time. You must be joking about Symbian. My brother's
Palm from 2003 could play MP3s, 'browse the web' and install apps too, yet it
looks as sophisticated as a wristwatch today.

The development version of Android before iOS still had physical keyboards and
a trackwheel, running on 240x160 screens. I'm not even going to comment on OSX
or iPad because that's starting to sound like a troll.

By your standards, Tesla isn't doing any innovation either. Batteries and cars
have been around for centuries, in fact the first cars at the beginning of the
20th century were battery-powered. It's just a really polished electric car.

------
netcan
If you take a step back in perspective I think you find that both companies
are _incredibly_ innovative... compared to other big companies or by any fair
standard.

Microsoft sat on huge market influence and a captive market for 15 years with
Windows. Even with the recent changes in the consumer OS market, they still
have a incredible market power. Yet, You can't really honestly say that they
haven't advanced the product with innovation. Apart from Windows they also
went into new product categories. They've been developing genuinely futuristic
technologies.

Compare the innovation at MS to the innovation at Sony or Panosnic, IBM or
SAP. There is (was?) a lot of hype around companies of more recent
generations. Take Salesforce. They were applauded for being innovative and
pioneering SAAS for enterprise. Forbes most innovative company. They _are_
innovative, but not more that Microsoft. Nt over the long term.

Compare MS (or Apple) to companies considered creative _outside_ of the tech
industry and it's Mike Tyson vs a skinny 14 year old. Ikea? Toyota? The Prius
is creative and innovative. Toyotas quality system is one of the big
innovations in manufacturing. Ikea really has had a cultural impact with their
designs. Their way of setting up stores is innovative and creative. But these
companies do not compare to MS or Apple. If you take 3-5 year blocks
individually you will find big-to-huge innovations from Apple or MS in every
block. If you look at Ikea or Toyota, you won't.

------
JuDue
This guy knows how to seed his interviews with one liners that will rate in
the press.

"Even hardware from Apple is a subscription, in a couple of years it isn't
going to work with the newer stuff".

Well... duh, but goodluck finding a company with a much better record on this
front.

And how is Apple non-innovative for "pumping out the iPhone" compared the
Android world with hundreds of failed models, or Windows with its reluctant
shape shifting on what constitutes a good smart phone.

I like Woz, and he did a good job fielding some very biased wording in the
questions - but really, it's been a long time since he was at Apple.

~~~
stcredzero
_> Even hardware from Apple is a subscription, in a couple of years it isn't
going to work with the newer stuff_

Historically, Apple hardware has kept its value very well. I could just as
well still be using my 2008 Unibody Macbook. Equipped with an SSD, it's still
plenty fast enough for my work.

~~~
beloch
Try putting a bigger SSD in your Air sometime. It's possible, but far from
easy. Even the Macbook Pro's are becoming more difficult to upgrade with each
new generation. The Retina Pro is rather similar to the Air in terms of
ability (or lack thereof) to upgrade.

Also, your 2008 macbook probably isn't worth as much as you think it is. Over
the last few years Apple has done an excellent job of driving their prices
down. A typical macbook pro from 2012 is more than 25% cheaper than one from
2008, if you're okay with a smaller screen an Air would be lighter, faster,
and even cheaper.

What is true is that hardware requirements, in general for all OS's and
software, have been stuck in neutral for the last few years. Whether your
computer is a desktop Dell, a home-brew gaming rig, or a Mac, you probably
haven't _really_ needed to upgrade for a period of more than twice as long as
you would have even just five years ago. That's why your 2008 Macbook doesn't
seem like a hunk of junk, not because it's particularly powerful. While other
manufacturers are being bitten by the slowing obsolescence cycle of computer
hardware, Apple is very deliberately speeding the obsolescence cycle of their
hardware up with a combination of marketing, reduced ability to upgrade, and
price reduction.

~~~
stcredzero
_> Try putting a bigger SSD in your Air sometime_

There are aftermarket Air SSDs.

<http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/OWC/>

Note that they even sell IDE drive upgrades.

------
nicholassmith
Last time Woz did an interview I said pretty much the same thing, and I say it
pretty much any time he pontificates on Apple (good or bad), his opinion on
Apple is the same as anyone with the history in the industry he has. Useful,
but not as relevant as it gets turned out to be. His involvement with Apple
ended decades ago, so he's an observer from the sidelines.

He makes an interesting point about Microsoft's creative development for sure,
but because it's 'Apple cofounder disses Apple for Microsoft!' it has column
inches galore thrown at it. Plus it ignores the fact that Apple's development
cycle for it's products (release, iterate, 5 years in, release new product,
iterate, repeat) has been ongoing for at least 10 years. Apple does innovate,
they just do it on a much slower cycle than we'd all like, but it's good for
business.

I mostly like Woz because of his honesty and straightforward manner, but it's
telling from the article: " _He seemed to almost decry the iPad as something
that's easy, for normal people, but not for the true nerdy geek._ ". Apple
shouldn't be building products for the true nerdy geek, we're a small
percentage of a small percentage. It'd be lovely if they made an Apple Macbook
Pro developer edition with all sorts of random additional tools and ports and
so on, but it'd sell poorly and be waste of time. We're not their core market.
That's okay.

------
tluyben2
If it's your taste the WP8 interface might be more pretty; I find it annoying
to work with and the jury is out on 'normal people' (non tech crowd); I still
know zero non-tech people in my vicinity who actually like metro (or whatever
it's called now). And as far as the phones go; non-tech people downright
_hate_ them. Not sure if it's the interface, but in the local pub it's clear;
people get passionate about their hate for the devices. And these are people
who never heard of HN, so they are not just trolling. I'm talking about
lawyers, builders etc; most brought them back and have S2/S3s now.

MS has the one of the best (or the best when it comes to language research)
R&D department; there are too many brilliant people doing brilliant stuff
there. And they are only just starting to use that power. That should give
them their edge (besides a monopoly on the desktop and billions in the bank
ofcourse), about their design skills i'm not so sure.

~~~
potatolicious
I'm convinced that Microsoft is an amazing _technology_ company that's utterly
and truly terrible at _product_. They have a tremendous amount of impressive
R&D and capability that seem to fall flat every time they try to ship it for,
well, actual users.

I'll believe Woz when he says MS is more innovative than Apple, but I think
Woz makes the classical geek fallacy that more innovation is the end goal. The
end goal is innovation that people actually benefit from, and that involves
more than paying a lot of people a lot of money to conjure up new amazing
technology and then ship them in boring, poorly implemented products.

I believe that at some level MS realizes what it needs to do, but corporately
it has trouble getting there. The core problem here is that the company simply
doesn't sweat the details, and continually, severely underestimates how
critical details are in today's market. They developed a no-frills, cheap-plan
device that taps directly into our social network addictions, and then failed
to actually ship the "cheap plan" part.

They released a new, innovative smartphone OS where performance was a critical
differentiator from the competition (Android 2.x), and then failed to ensure
that 3rd party apps had access to the same performance abilities.

And now they've released an innovative new desktop OS that bets the farm on
touch interactions being the wave of the future - and their own first-party
apps are in many places poorly designed for touch interaction. Major parts of
the core OS are also not touch-ready.

The details matter, and MS never, ever gets the details right.

~~~
stcredzero
_> MS never, ever gets the details right._

What about Windows 7?

~~~
nxn
Isn't Windows 7 in a large way a refinement of Vista where they did get the
"details" right? It's probably overkill to say that Microsoft never gets the
details right, but I do agree that their first version product which
introduces their inovations is generally rough and unpolished to say the
least.

I loved metro when I first saw the build videos in 2011, but that's because I
looked at the demo apps as early and unfinished examples of the direction they
were taking. Now over a year later I see almost nothing has changed and the
same level of quality I saw back then is what is being released now. A lot of
things are unintuitive, apps have awkward layouts, the icons are downright
awful, etc.

There was a lot of promise for Windows 8 back then, and to some extent I still
expect them to refine the UI and make it into a better user experience by the
next version of Windows -- but by then the feeling of "innovation" will be
gone and they will have missed their chance to make the big impact that they
needed and would have otherwise gotten.

------
bitcartel
Woz:

"I don't believe Steve [Jobs] had to be as much of a real rugged bastard, put
people down and make them feel demeaned."

"I don't think that was necessary for Apple to have great products"

~~~
zalzane
I had no idea that delivering a great product and not being a shithead to your
employees was mutually exclusive.

~~~
tluyben2
Can we have a list? Delivering something 'great' should be subjective here; it
means that someone sustained a profitable multi-billion company with products
for many (>10) years. Not if YOU like the product. I see a lot of bastards
(Gates, Ellison, Jobs); where are the _nice_ guys?

Edit: Google? I don't know if he is?

~~~
Apocryphon
Zuckerberg, too. And this isn't even limited to tech companies, but any
business.

------
Tloewald
Sounds like what actually happened is Woz had a long friendly open far-
reaching conversation with a guy from Tech Crunch and then got quoted out of
context.

I would imagine that any intelligent Apple exec (presumably a tautology) would
also worry about Microsoft, they just wouldn't chat amiably about it with
someone from TechChrunch.

------
heymishy
Without hating on apple, Woz does make an interesting point (regardless of
whether or not you think he's relevant). Sure apple have been innovative and
have released some really ground-breaking advances in product design and
standards, but he's commenting on the fact they have been stagnate of late.

I'm not suggesting that what Microsoft is putting up is any good (I'm really
not), they have been experimenting releasing a more varied range of products
than apple has lately. That's the point Woz is making..

~~~
pretoriusB
> _Sure apple have been innovative and have released some really ground-
> breaking advances in product design and standards, but he's commenting on
> the fact they have been stagnate of late._

The iPhone was released 5 years ago. The iPad, 2 years ago.

It actually took _more time_ to go from the first iPod to the iPhone, than the
whole period the iPhone exists.

What exactly has the competition (MS, Google) produced at the same time that
is innovating (not in some "groundbreaking tech" sense -- in the "a new
product category/market" sense)?

Nothing at all. Google's innovating thing was search and maybe mail. Android
is a me-too, first sold one whole year after the iPhone. MS innovating was
mostly Windows and Office and the .NET ecosystem. Surface is a me-too going
after the iPad and Metro is just a UI (and not a very good at that). So what's
the point of comparison here? Vaporware like the Google glasses thing?

Plus, Apple brought to mass market (or, more precisely, brought to market,
because only like 10 guys had those before) stuff like hi-dpi displays,
unibody construction, and thunderbolt. And that "ultraportable" thing (as
opposed to the dying netbooks), mostly inspired by Air? Introduced merely 4
years ago, again by Apple.

~~~
wutbrodo
That's an extremely narrow (and imo incorrect) definition of "innovation".
Ignoring things (for the purposes of measuring innovation) from the last 5
years like Google Chrome, self-driving cars, street view, knowledge graph,
instant search, public transit directions (for which a whole standard for
encoding transit directions was created and implemented) etc, simply because
they're not new product categories (with the exception of the cars) just seems
silly, especially since that measure implies that Apple did one thing 5 years
ago and one thing 2 years ago and has spent the rest of their time since doing
nothing innovative whatsoever. Choosing a measure that arbitrarily narrow not
only undersells Google's achievements, but also Apple's (and Microsoft's), by
ignoring all the improvements to products (or new products in existing
categories) that are technical and product feats in and of themselves. The
parent post was talking about the fact that (in his opinion) Apple has
stagnated recently by coasting on the success of their initial product, rather
than constantly striving to improve everything they do and come up with new
things.

Note that your definition (and even my response) ignores a massive amount of
innovation that goes on under the hood; If Google Search (e.g.) used the same
algorithm and had the same performance as it did ten years ago, it would be
_horrible_ by today's standards, and that's precisely because we've been
spoiled (in a good way) by the fact that the algorithm and the infrastructure
is constantly improving, not only through small iterative improvements but
also through occasional leaps which undeniably fit under the definition of
innovation.

I've largely left Microsoft out of my counterexample, but that's only because
saying "Google hasn't innovated at all in the last 5 years" is just such
incredibly low-hanging fruit. Most of what I said applies to Microsoft as
well, albeit perhaps a little less so, given that they were on the tail end of
their "lost decade".

~~~
pretoriusB
> _That's an extremely narrow (and imo incorrect) definition of "innovation".
> Ignoring things (for the purposes of measuring innovation) from the last 5
> years like Google Chrome, self-driving cars, street view, knowledge graph,
> instant search, public transit directions (for which a whole standard for
> encoding transit directions was created and implemented) etc, simply because
> they're not new product categories (with the exception of the cars) just
> seems silly_

Well, true I have to count Maps (Earth/Street View) to Google's innovations.
It's an important thing that millions use everyday, and that rules it's field.

Chrome, OTOH, is just Apple's webkit work with a sandbox. Not substantially
better than either Firefox or Safari. If we count that as innovation, then
sure, Apple put out 2 versions of it's OS and several iOS versions with
hundreds of new features, the new iMac, etc etc.

As for the glasses and the self-driving cars, when we actually see them in the
market I'll count them as innovations. Heck, I'll count them as innovations
for Google even if someone else brings them to the market. As it is, they
don't amount to much better than vapor(hard)ware. Plus, we know that behind
the secrecy veil Apple also has dozens of prototypes and testing products most
of which will never see the light of day. If they did a Google or Microsoft,
they would have saturated the media with vaporware too.

------
agumonkey
The interesting thing in Microsoft slight awakening is that we all know they
have loads of 'hidden' resources R&D wise. For years they used almost none,
let's see what happens when they do.

------
dakrisht
Hmmm. This is an interesting one here.

On the one hand, we simply can't dismiss Woz by stating nonsense such as "he
hasn't designed UI", "hasn't been involved with Apple since 1987", and "Jobs
is the reason for Apple's success." Because that's all simply bullshit. UI,
UX, Steve Jobs, him not being involved with Apple since the plane crash - has
zero to do with this post and our discussion of it. So some of you need to cut
out the Apple fanboy bullshit.

Now, to his thoughts. But first, let's define "creative" because reading some
posts in here, I'm alerted to many of you not knowing what that even means.

"Creative" is defined as "Relating to or involving the imagination or original
ideas, esp. in the production of an artistic work"

Does Apple have any more original ideas? Of course it does. Perhaps there are
some still left in the pipeline from the Jobs era (these companies have long
roadmaps). Jony Ive is still there and he's quite creative unless I'm
mistaken. So creativity will flow. Albeit from different sources and no, Tim
Cook is not creative. He's simply the supply chain guru. Are these "original
ideas" good? Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe they'll fail. They can still, however, be
creative.

Has Apple released any "original ideas" in the past 3-4 years - I'd say no,
they haven't. The iPad might have been the last really "original" concept (if
you can even call it that, but hell with it, they can have it). The iPod, the
iPhone - what else? The GUI, no. They didn't inven the laptop. See - not much
originality here. I digress.

Microsoft. They might be considered more "creative" (by Woz) because of their
departure from the desktop with Windows 8 - so in essence, they're being more
"creative" because the ideas are more original than iOS4>5>6, iPhone
2>3>4>5>5S and iPad 1>2>3>4 (all refreshes). We also have the new voice
recognition initiative which, if successful, will be a big game changer for
Microsoft. WAY more "creative" than Siri or anything from Cupertino. Can
Microsoft's "creative" ideas fail? Of course. And from what I've been reading
and personally have experienced, Windows 8 RT is not that good, and confusing.

So, yeah, seems Woz is right so far, doesn't it?

It's a multi-dimensional issue here of creativity and innovation. Apple simply
isn't innovating, whether you want to admit it or not. They appeal to the
consumer, they're a solid company, huge margins, and that's fine. I've owned
most every product they've ever made from XServes to Mac Pro's to Newtons to
Powerbooks to the IIe and Peformas, list goes on. I love the company. I wrote
my first program in BASIC on a IIe.

Will a flat-screen TV from Apple be considered "innovative" or "creative"
maybe a little creative but it's certainly NOT what Woz is talking about.

Remember, Woz is an engineer, so he's not here to market consumer products and
sell 5 million of them in a quarter. He's speaking purely on innovation and
creativity in technology. He loves technology. You can tell. From the CL9
remote to devices and what not - he loves the craft. So he's right, Apple
isn't being creative, they're just constantly refreshing products to stay
competitive in an insanely competitive market. They sort of have to. The
iPhone 5S is already slated for June! What in the hell will be different about
than the current 5?! An A6X and... Unless that phone charges wirelessly, is
1mm thin, and has a new cutting-edge battery for 40 hours of talk time -
there's NOTHING creative or innovative about it.

So, maybe Woz is right. Microsoft is taking bolder steps, they're breaking
from the norm of Windows desktops, getting into a different space, taking
risks, trying innovative concepts such as voice translation. To me and
apparently Woz, that's more innovative than "the new iPad"

~~~
tareqak
Once I looked up the word "innovation" it made sense. I understood "invention"
and "improvement", but "innovation" always sounded like marketing-speak to me,
so I turned off my brain on that one.

The page at <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innovation> compares all three.

------
mcpie
Woz: Strawberry is more banana than apple

