Steve Wozniak: Windows Phone is “intuitive and beautiful”

Steve Wozniak Apple Co-Founder | "I just really like the experience and will be carrying the Windows Phone everywhere"

Cast your mind back a couple of weeks, and you may recall the slightly surprising news that Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak appeared to be considering the purchase of a Nokia Lumia 900. Although his purchase of the Windows Phone wasn’t immediately confirmed, Nokia CEO Stephen Elop nonetheless sent him a tweet to welcome him “to the #Nokia Lumia 900 family”. Since then, things have been a bit quiet.

But confirmation that he did indeed buy the handset has come in the form of a podcast from aNewDomain.net, in which Wozniak spoke with the site’s Dan Patterson, Gina Smith and Todd Moore on his thoughts about the Lumia 900 and the Windows Phone OS.

The Nokia Lumia 900 with Microsoft® Windows Phone® | Canada Web Developer

Woz revealed how he considered the platform to be easy-to-use, and complimented how apps look “more beautiful than on Android or iPhone”. In fact, he had a great deal of praise for Windows Phone, and WPCentral highlighted a few of his most positive comments:

• “Compared to Android, there’s no comparison”
• “Intuitive and beautiful”
• “Just for looks and beauty, I definitely favour the Windows Phone over Android”
• “I’m just shocked; I haven’t seen anything yet that isn’t more beautiful than the other platforms”
• “It makes me feel ‘Oh my gosh, I’m with a friend, not a tool’” (referring to UI interactions and graphics)
• “I just really like the experience and will be carrying the Windows Phone everywhere”

The Next Web noted that Wozniak later added to his comments:

I did give my opinion that the Windows Phone had superior visual appearance and operation cues that were also more attractive. In my opinion, it sets the mark for user interface.

…I surmise that Microsoft hired someone from Apple and put money into having a role in the UI and appearance of some key apps. I also surmised that Steve Jobs might have been reincarnated at MS due to a lot of what I see and feel with this phone making me think of a lot of great Apple things.”

Overwhelmingly positive praise there, particularly in his suggestion that much of what is so good about Windows Phone is evocative of some of the best that Apple has to offer.

Woz did mention a couple of downsides to the Windows Phone experience though – he noted that there were some limitations in the ubiquity of the speech-to-text features, and that the OS lacks an integrated Siri-style digital assistant.

He also noted that his iPhone remains his preferred device overall – largely down to the greater variety of apps – and while he plans to carry both his iPhone and Lumia 900 around with him, it seems that his Android handsets will now be staying at home.