Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has been singing the praises of Microsoft Windows Phone 7.5 Mango in a new podcast interview. During the podcast, on ANewDomain.net, Woz repeatedly praised the attractiveness of the WP 7.5 OS and its intuitive operation. He was quick to describe its advantages over Android but seemed deliberate in keeping iPhone iOS out of the chat most of the time. However he said one definite win over iOS was the beauty of the WP Mango interface and apps.
HEXUS readers will know Woz as the techy half of the Jobs/Wozniak Apple founding partnership. On the day of the interview he was carrying around four different smartphones, he has about a dozen smartphones on rotation duty depending on the day. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder but his experience in using the Mango OS made him feel that the developers have tied the whole system together better in that they seem to know what tasks a user will want to do “they’ve thought out what you might want to do next” he observed. In competing against Android he said “there is no contest”. He said with his Mango phone he feels like “I’m more with a friend than with a tool”.
Interview starts after 1min 30s
Reasons for the great look and feel of the Mango apps were put forward; Woz suggested Microsoft developers were “in the loop” when a lot of the big name apps were put together.
Woz might have liked his Nokia Lumia even more if he had known some of the voice features he was looking for in Mango, but didn’t find, are actually built into the OS! Voice commands and searches can be instigated by holding the Windows button, the messaging app can take dictation and also incoming messages can be read to you. Thus text conversations can take place without even looking at the phone.
Finally Woz confirmed “my main phone is still an iPhone” citing the main reason as; a lot of apps he uses daily “that are part of my life” are not yet in the Windows Marketplace. Actually Woz said he carries around two iPhones all the time so he can properly multitask! It wasn’t very long ago that there was news about the Woz preferring Android, I wouldn’t want to predict his preference a year from now…
