“After alerting his Twitter followers that he was intent on securing one of Nokia’s new Lumia 900 smartphones, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has revealed what he thinks of the company’s new handset and the Windows Phone platform as a whole — and it’s overwhelmingly positive,” Matt Brian reports for TNW.
“In a recent podcast call with aNewDomain.net’s Dan Patterson, Todd Moore and Gina Smith, Wozniak spoke about how Microsoft had made its platform intuitive, easy to use and most significantly ‘beautiful,’ adding that ‘compared to Android, there’s no contest,'” Brian reports. “While Apple’s iPhone still appears to be his favorite device, mainly due to the wealth of apps available on the App Store, the former Apple executive has noting but nice things to say about his new Microsoft-powered device.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As we wrote last October:
Windows Phone will be popular. Over time, it’ll eat the lunch of the increasingly fragmented, increasingly insecure, and increasingly costly Android (losing patent infringement lawsuits and dropping features/paying royalties to multiple IP owners will do that to you).
The not-iPhone world will begin to dump Android and move to Microsoft’s mobile OS offering because it will eventually cost less, work better, and come with far fewer legal issues. In the iPhone wannabe market, it’s already happening (Nokia, for example). We expect the same to happen in the iPad wannabe market, too. Google and Microsoft will long battle each other for the non-Apple markets and that’s a much better scenario for everyone than having a single ripoff artist flood the market with fragmented, insecure, beta-esque, mediocre-at-best products. Google’s attempt to be the next Microsoft is doomed.
This, of course, will also impact Google’s search business. Apple’s Siri will increasingly deliver info to users sans Google and Microsoft will, naturally, use Bing for their search. As we’ve said many times in the past: Google will rue the day they got greedy by deciding to try to work against Apple instead of with them.
The bottom line: We’d rather see a company trying unique ideas, even if – shockingly – it’s Microsoft, than the wholesale theft of Apple innovations that we’ve been seeing for over four years now. Don’t steal IP. Even worse, don’t steal IP and “claim to be innovators.” We have no problem with any companies that attempt to compete with Apple using their own unique ideas and strategies.
MacDailyNews Note: Below the original article on another site that TNW’s Brian referenced is a comment purporting to be a followup from “Woz.” We are checking with Woz to make sure it’s legitimately from him before reporting it as such.
Related articles:
Google’s Android is losing momentum – March 29, 2012
ZDNet Senior Tech Editor: ‘I’m sick to death of Android’ – March 29, 2012
Nielsen: Apple’s U.S. iPhone market share surges as Android stalls – March 29, 2012
Apple’s thermonuclear war on Android – March 29, 2012
2011 best-selling smartphones in USA: Apple iPhone models take top 3 spots – February 23, 2012
Aftershocks from Android market share dive rumble through mobile market – January 31, 2012
Legendary judge hands Apple key patent interpretation victory against Android – January 30, 2012
ABI: Apple iPhone tops smartphone market as Android suffers its first decline in share – January 27, 2012
Apple overtakes Samsung to take world’s largest smartphone vendor crown – January 27, 2012
These charts will make the Fandroids want to puke – January 26, 2012
AT&T sold 7.6 million iPhones and fewer than 1.8 million Android phones in Q411 – January 26, 2012
Apple’s iOS passes Google’s Android to take U.S. smartphone market share crown – January 25, 2012
Analyst: Verizon’s record iPhone sales signal waning demand for Google Android phones – January 24, 2012
Woz has said a lot of stupid things over the years.
We love him though.
Woz is like the crazy uncle in the basement. Is he right here?
Well the WP is better then android. But all the rest of the praise is hyperbole IMO. and prob a result of Woz’s habitual need for attention, and the fact that the iPhone is so far ahead of the rest that “second place” looks “pretty good”.
Read the reviews, once people start using it, the result overall is better then android, but the blemishes come out. Slow scrolling, laggy touch.
These are all the things that the “spirit” of Apple would never allow.
Back to the basement Woz, until your next grab at attention…
Have you ever even picked up a windows phone? Vecause the one that i owned did not lag one bit and was way more intuitive then the iphone, the way all apps have the same basic design language, and metro really is beatifull, ive owned the iphone 4 htc trophy abd currently to galaxy nexus, and i have to say the iphone was my least favorite, even android 4.0 is becoming mire intuitive and in my opinion more beautiful theb the iphone
I have. And it did.
And the non retina screen did not help things at all. Blurry to bad text antialiasing is another unpolished “feature” of the phone.
Glad you love the WP. Someone has to or tens of thousands of Microsoft and Nokia employees will be out of work in the next few years.
don’t feed the troll
You can’t spell, though, and your spell-check blows goats.
I played with one… Intuitive and beautiful, are two words I’d never use to describe it.
Metro….. Worthless IMO.
I will agree with you about WP7. I do like my HTC Titan.
But not as much as my iPhone.
Oh, and to say that Ice Cream Sandwich is more intuitive kind of eats at your credibility. It is horrible! I also have a Galaxy Nexus and I hate the damned thing. Menus are not in the same places, it looks like crap. I won’t bring up the fragmentation thing because it is right there in your face, but ICS intuitive?
No way.
“…and was way more intuitive then the iPhone…”
You lost me right there. I’ll give MS credit, it isn’t bad at all. But the Metro UI is FAR from intuitive. You are the first person I have ever seen call it intuitive, and certainly the first to ever say it was more so than the iPhone.
No one ever accused Woz of having design skills or being articulate.
Awwww, let the big lug keep drinking whatever Kool-Aid he’s been sipping on. He’s harmless…
This commentary on Winphones is excellent, it will further steer those on android, who refuse to buy an iPhone, towards the microsoft line up of phones. Never would I have dreamed I’d be cheering for Microsoft. “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
I have an iPhone 4S and a Lumia 900. I got the Nokia for $49 from Amazon to replace an extra phone on my AT&T Family Plan. AT&T credited $100 to everyone who bought one before April 21. So I got paid $50 for the Lumia.
Once you take a day to get the idea of the interface, it really is okay. I don’t like the flatness of the “live tiles,” and I would like to customize each tile with the color I want, and I do have a few other small complaints (the biggest overall complaint is the desktop web interface for Windows Live; Microsoft, why can’t my Windows Live account integrate better with Outlook 2011?). But the People hub is cool; you get Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn updates on the contact card for each person.
I don’t like the Twitter client, it’s slow and ugly; that will probably get fixed. The NYT app doesn’t totally connect with my (PAID!) account. FAIL. The Windows Phone 7 Connector app is ugly and barely usable, but it works. Music and photos go over with no problem. SkyDrive is ugly and Windows-like (sometimes I have to delete files and re-add them for them to sync okay).
But the Windows Phone interface on the Lumia 900 is fast and fluid. The size is awkward for a day, but now I like it better than the iPhone, which seems small in my hand. (And I’m a huge iPhone fan.) The live tile and “hub” interface is definitely cool, and does make the tile icons on the iPhone seem a little old.
If you have the chance, try one for a day. It’s good to have someone pushing Apple a little, and this does that.
Too bad it won’t take the Windows 8 interface when it ships.
No upgrades for you!
I’ve seen it reported that Windows Phone 8 won’t work on the Lumia 900. When that happens, we’ll know for sure. I don’t really care, since I don’t upgrade and keep using even iOS devices. I get the new one.
If I really want a new phone with Windows Phone 8, then I may have to replace another phone on my Family Plan. I’ll be sure to let you know.
They paid me $50 to take this phone. So I don’t care.
Woz is a gadget junkie- a kid in a toy shop. He loves all his gadgets. Instant gratification. Apple has no competition when it comes to creating the best products, or the most excitement. The excitement junkies grab what they can, then move on to the next fix.
So microsoft paid to Nokia to use windows OS on their phones, later, they paid AT&T to recommend the windows phones over iPhones, now, did they just paid The Woz to recommend that piece of crap?
He is right in part, anything is better than android, and if Microsoft is better than you in something, you are in big trouble.
There he goes again. 😉
Yes, even Gruber considers WinPhone nicer than Android, but Woz was never known for good taste, so whether he considers WinPhone “beautiful” means little.
The MDN writer has a short memory. Microsoft has been copying Apple’s ideas for many years, even before many people knew Google.
About WinPhones’ appearance, the user interface looks like one big Start button. And confusing at that. What’s the meaning of a green square? Anyone?
it’s impossible to criticize Woz without getting flamed: as he was the co founder of Apple etc and looks like a lovable bear.
but seriously, my two cents: Woz is acting strange.
For example he acted in Google publicity photo shoot in front of the Google building recieving one of the first new Nexus phones etc.
http://www.slashgear.com/steve-wozniak-poses-with-his-new-galaxy-nexus-at-google-building-44-18196648/
Now this WP stuff …
no matter what Woz says, WP has to suck as IT’S NOT SELLING (and its not lack of publicity as Msft spent half a billion $ i.e equal to apple’s entire 2009 ad budget to launch it) Microsoft phone sales are sinking way below Windows Mobile levels and Nokia marketshare is bleeding like a stuck pig .
I suspect that Woz is pissed off with current Apple management as he has publicly stated he wants to have an active role in apple again and they have brushed him off.
Woz was great as a ‘garage’ genius but personally I think he’s way outclassed by the current generation of geniuses like Ive, Forstall , Cook and other apple guys.
Woz is like one of those airplane pioneers who glued together their own aircraft with cloth and wire, but others are building supersonic jets now …
Google is burning up that photo of Woz in front of the Android mascot even as I type! Snickers…