Wozniak misquoted, iOS still rules

By on Nov 18, 2010 at 8:34 PM
mobile November 18, 2010

Dutch newspaper De Telegraph ran an interview with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak Thursday morning, in which he had some very, very nice things to say about Android. Too nice, it seems. Word has come down from the Woz himself and it looks like the Dutch paper took a few liberties with some quotes. Wozniak basically said that he praised Android’s voice command capabilities while speaking with De Telegraph, but said Apple would soon catch up in that area. He then clarified that iOS is still the superior OS. Android might be more popular, Wozniak said, but that doesn’t make it the better OS. “It can get [a] greater market share and still be crappy.”

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  • Anonymous

    ah…translation issues

  • Matt

    how about androids superior multitasking capability, and endless open minded customization capability, as a former iphone user android is the better choice.

    • Anonymous

      and sh*tty UI…

      • Anonymous

        Don’t forget the crappy bloatware coming out of the ying yang and sporadic updates from some of the carriers. Whoever heard of buying a brand new handset still running Android 1.6???? You don’t believe me check out the X10.

      • KCRic

        Yeah because we know the iPhone isn’t locked down like Ft. Knox. The bloatware has nothing to do with Android, that’s the carriers putting that crap on there and guess what? You can delete it. Let’s not bring up rooting/jail breaking, I can do so much more with an Android phone once it’s rooted than any iPhone owner could dream of. So you can put a custom, pretty UI on it, oh and can download stuff AT&T doesn’t want you to – an Android phone can do that with ‘jail breaking’.

      • KCRic

        *without (on the last line)

    • Anonymous

      as a former iPhone user doesn’t give you anymore credibility.

    • Anonymous

      people like to say android has True Multiasking (whatever that means) but on my iPhone can play pandora in the background, games pause it self if i leave it, i can switch to another app without leaving the app im in, I can record a voice memo while doing everything anything else i can talk on the phone and check my email, browse web, go into a app at the same time without killing my battery. Sorry dude that is multitasking

    • Mgl323

      Superior multitasking capability? You sure about that? Ever heard of WebOS?
      open minded customization capability? Gotta root it in order to obtain full openness.

  • Anonymous

    Apple fanboys rejoice in 3..2…1…

  • http://www.flickr.com/photos/PACMan3000/ Paul A. Chapel

    This misquote stuff was breaking news like 8 hours ago.

    I said this before and I’lll say it again, who the heck cares what Woz thinks. Seriously, the guy hasn’t done anything noteworthy since the Apple ][. When he left Apple he started a company that made universal remotes for televisions . When Steve Jobs left Apple, he started another computer company called NeXT and bought George Lucas’s computer effects division, which he turned into a little company called Pixar.

    Tim Berners-Lee used a NeXT computer to create the World Wide Web and NextStep later became the basis for Mac OS X. Pixar made the first computer animated movie in history. Woz’s company, on the other hand, quickly tanked. So why are we listening to him again?

    Woz plays Segway polo for Christ’s sake. Enough said.

    • Anonymous

      How can you hate the Woz? The dude looked so damn adorable on dancing with the stars in a pink top.

  • http://twitter.com/mistercarter7 Mike Gonzalez

    well said Woz!
    he spoke the truth
    i cant wait for those new voice capabilities iOS will feature in the future, im sure it’ll be nice

    • Mgl323

      iOS 4.5/5 maybe?

      • Alan

        same time android gets decent multi-touch and battery life over 3 hours :)

  • sirpaul

    I’d like to see the full transcript.

    He is right in saying that the better OS will not necessarily have the better sales, though. Although Android is an amazing OS, it is not solely sold with high-end smart phones. A large portion of the Android user base owns cheaper smart phones that do not compare to the likes of the iPhone.

    Here is an analogy someone still doesn’t get it: We can all agree that a Ferrari is better than the Honda Civic, right? If it’s so much better, how come the Honda Civic is one of the most popular cars of all time, while to see a Ferrari on the road is a miracle? The answer is obvious :)

    Same goes with OSs – it’s easy to have a large market share in the OS market when you are giving phones away practically for free. Although the OS may not be the best, people want it because it does what they need and it is within their price point.

    • Superz95

      your analogy sucks because a ferrari is not in the same price range as a honda, but an android is in the same price range as an iphone. better analogy may have been a ferrari to a really nice porsche. Think about it.

      • sirpaul

        There are plenty of Android devices cheaper than the iPhone. And the point of an analogy isn’t to create a ‘model’ of the situation. I don’t really care about the price ratio of the Honda to the Ferrari. My point is: price matters! People weight the benefits of whatever they are buying to the premium they pay for those benefits. This is commonly called “getting the biggest bang for your buck”. For some people that bang doesn’t need to be very large, and Apple doesn’t really cater to those people. That’s why iOS isn’t as popular as it could be.

      • Anonymous

        Agreed. I’m sure if everyone could afford a car that cost six or figures all those Honda’s would lying in the dealerships rusting.

  • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiQmQhA-OrM Walter Sobchak

    Voice actions are ridiculously sweet. I could never again do without having that little search button.
    That being said, iOS is buttah.
    So to make the perfect phone either iOS needs a dedicated search button, with a whole suite of voice actions with voice to text, or android needs to clean up and unify the experience a little. Hopefully hiring the UX dude from palm will bring great changes In honeycomb.

    • Mgl323

      “So to make the perfect phone either iOS needs a dedicated search button..”
      Search button?
      Yeah, that’s not gonna happen.

      • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiQmQhA-OrM Walter Sobchak

        Yeah, one more button. It would be that bad, they could put it on the side.
        Its awesome to have…..
        Navigate to sushi
        Send text to dave… android rules
        Map of gas stations
        Set alarm for noon
        Go to engadget
        Of course just voice search
        Send email to bill….
        Listen to (works with pandora)
        I don’t have to scroll through 6 pages of apps and click 10 buttons to execute a simple often used command.
        Don’t get me wrong, ios works great, but I will take a hiccup here and there for voice actions alone.

  • Norm

    Wozniak is an idiot. He clearly doesn’t get that DROID DOES. CrApple’s iphone needs iduct tape and can’t even multitask. Iphone doesn’t even have Google Voice, which is a total fail, but guess what, DROID DOES! IOS just force closes all of the time and is a fragmented mess. GO DROID!

    • numetheus

      I can use a navigation software while it gives me directions as I browse the web or run any other app. I can use pandora in the background to stream music as I use navigation software. I can do lots of things in the background with iOS. The difference is that when the app is done giving me directions or playing music or downloading stuff, the small portion doing those things stops and goes away. With other systems the entire app remains in memory taking resources and draining battery as it constantly uses the radio or gps. Why does the ENTIRE program need to remain in memory if its not doing anything? Especially when it starts instantly and saves state so it loads to exactly where you were. This is how it works on iOS. I don’t have to close apps because I’m running out of memory or to save battery. Push notification tells me what’s going on without anything extra running. I like this better than the other systems. This isn’t a desktop, I don’t want to manage programs like it was one. I want to do things and go without thinking about what’s running in the background. You can keep Android.

      • Mgl323

        Well said, but you also got trolled by Norm.

      • Jarret

        Evidently there are a lot of new people flooding into this site. As noted by the responses Glansburg is receiving from his Norm bit.

      • sirpaul

        I wrote the same thing, but i got the stupid “admin has to check this post first” message :(

      • numetheus

        Pardon me if this seems like a stupid question. But what does it mean to be “trolled” by Norm?

      • KCRic

        Umm, that’s what android does also. The apps stay in memory but are idle, meaning it’s not using processor or battery resources. It’s not affected by low ram, when it needs more it will kill the programs that have been idle for the longest time and continue on without interruption. Even those apps that are killed load their previous state unless the cache is cleared. As far as push, android has that also. Gmail, google voice, they use push. Besides, the best implementation of push is on a blackberry. Not ios and not android.

      • numetheus

        I don’t want my apps to stay in memory when they aren’t actively being used. This makes no sense. Navigation software running in the background will take the same amount of memory as if it were in the foreground. And when you have reached your destination, the GPS is still in use eating your battery updating map location. If the app needs to tell you directions in the background that is ALL it needs to do. When it’s done it should quit that portion and return full resource back to the OS WITHOUT your intervention. I should just be able to get out of my car and go about my day without looking at my phone. This is how it works in iOS. This is not the way it works in Android. Again … it is my phone, not my desktop. I don’t want to manage it.

    • numetheus

      Now, I’m not saying that Android is inferior to iOS by any means. I think Android is superior to iOS in a LOT of ways. Okay … as a phone it kills iPhone IMHO. The notification system is amazing for one thing. But I will disagree with this because as a phone Apple does multitasking right. My phone is not a desktop computer and I don’t want to use it as such. It is a quick, take anywhere, use on a whim mobile device and I should not have to manage background processes. What someone NEEDS to do is create a system combining the efficiency of iOS multitasking APIs, instant on and save states … and the visual interface that WebOS has with its cards system. THAT would be perfect IMHO.

      • Anonymous

        QUOTE
        Pardon me if this seems like a stupid question. But what does it mean to be “trolled” by Norm?

        It means you just got taken in by the king troll of BGR. Norm never makes any sense when he posts. I shouldn’t talk though every time Norm calls Android Droid I want to scream.

    • Anonymous

      Errr just recently Google voice was made available in the app store and the iPhone does a form of multitasking. Norm for the love of God please stop calling the OS Droid and start calling it by the proper name which is Android. Every time I read Droid me and half the people on here want to beat you to death with your handset.

      • KCRic

        I do agree about the OS name, I love android but dear god stop calling it droid. The droid line up is good but my overclocked mytouch slide, the really old nexus 1, and the laggy galaxy s series can stomp any droid model any time. So stop with the droid crap, you make all of us look bad. I do love the fact that the iPhone does a ‘form’ of multitasking and is just now getting google voice – that’s laughable.

  • Derail Doax

    “It can get [a] greater market share and still be crappy.” Sounds like Apple Elitist PR.

    • Anonymous

      “It can get [a] greater market share and still be crappy.” Sounds like Apple Elitist PR.

      Maybe and maybe not, still doesn’t change the simple fact that it is an accurate statement.

      • http://www.google.com/profiles/Ambrous.0 Aerilus

        Android is free (unless your htc) for phone developers to use and they can lock it down/ customize it to their hearts content, plus you don’t have to deal with jobs and while I am ready to give jobs credit for what he has done for apple and his impeccable aesthetic taste I feel sorry for the ceo of at&t having to deal with him on a regular bases, if i recall correctly he required regular status meeting from at&t requiring them to tell him what they were doing to improve their network so as not to make his phone look bad.

    • Jeffcoud

      Uhhh, you mean like Windows?

  • Anonymous

    Ahhh to late Woz, the truth came out earlier :)

  • Anonymous

    Wow, people get really butt hurt when Woz explains what was really said. This happened awhile back with Woz being misquoted as well and He actually posted something to Gizmodo correcting it. Woz uses just about every piece of new tech that comes out. Since most of us use one or the other of whatever, I will just assume Woz has a little more insight then we do. That and Woz is actually a genius and has contributed to the human race in a way that none of us ever will.

    Quit being upset by this. It is a zero sum game. One has to be #1 and one has to be #2. Damn Android(ees) just be happy that your OS of choice isn’t built with help from Nokia or Microsoft. Things could always be worse.

    • GrammarPolice

      *than we do
      Not to be a d!ck but I appreciate when people correct my common mistakes so I can write better in the future.

    • Anonymous

      I remember he had nothing but good things to say about the Nexus. He was quoted as saying he carried both an iPhone and Nexus around at all times.

    • http://twitter.com/livingbasehead Shelton

      ” That and Woz is actually a genius and has contributed to the human race in a way that none of us ever will.”

      So true! he invented Segway Polo!

  • Booboolala2000

    Well, apple did lead in smartphone OS with a crappy OS, so he does know what he is talking about. C’mon Woz, let’s do another US Festival. With an Apple stage and an Android stage. Lol

  • VirginMerry

    iOS rules!!!!!

    I’ve had Blackberry, Andoid and iOS…….there’s no comparison – iOS rules!

    • http://www.facebook.com/sonar.chris Chris Johnson

      As long as you don’t really want to multi-task or use widgets.

      • http://theiloop.com/ Zaib Ali

        It can multi-task!

  • VladimirPootin85

    Is that Bam margera father sitting down?

  • Alex

    Totally agree. Android may be gaining market share fast, but IOS is still the better OS, period. Many developers and programmers have been saying that over and over again. Android is basically the cheaper alternative for the masses. It does not have that exclusivity that makes the iphone special.

  • Anonymous

    And vice versa

  • http://twitter.com/ronhamelin Ron Hamelin

    Hasn’t anyone seen the “Five ways Android beats iOS” video on CNET? You can’t deny those points. PLUS, “10 ways Android is better than iOS” on Fortune Magazine. Come on, folks. When you’ve got the big guns like CNET making a video like that, you’ve got to take notice that something has changed in the mobile arena.

  • Anonymous

    What do you think a major stock owner in Apple would say about one of his biggest selling products??? It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that out. The fanboys over at engadget take this imfo and are runiing with it. IMHO I would rather have my Nexus One over I-Phone.

    • http://www.google.com/profiles/Ambrous.0 Aerilus

      Somehow I doubt that is a prime motivating force for the Woz after all we are talking about a man who engages in public segway races and is proud of his cathod ray tube watch

  • http://twitter.com/livingbasehead Shelton

    Actually I dont… I want to know someones calling me when Im listening to my ipod… I want my musically organized both on my computer and phone itunes. I want to text people.. mabye play sonic at a boring meeting at work. Widgets what the hell do I care about widgets…

  • Bringit

    the debate will never end – and who really cares? why are people so insecure that they have to debate online that their phone is the BEST? There are some amazing phones out there now. And they get better every year. If you are happy with your phone, great. Besides that – no one cares.

  • Len

    Thank you for clearing this up Woz, you had millions of iPhone faithful ready to break down and cry.. You have restored their self esteem and their egos are as healthy as ever now. You’re my hero.
    /sarcasm

  • Matt

    Irrelevant has been is irrelevant.

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