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A Real Bill Gates Rant
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Mon Feb 23, 2009 10:08 AM
from the well-that's-not-so-bad dept.
from the well-that's-not-so-bad dept.
lou ibmix XI submitted an
email written by Bill Gates a few years ago and turned over to the feds as part of the government's antitrust case. Great quotes like 'Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable?' and 'The lack of attention to usability represented by these experiences blows my mind.' We like to think of him as an abstract, but I think this is interesting stuff. Also, this might seem familiar. Oops.
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Technology: Bill Gates Chews Out Microsoft 836 comments
s31523 writes "All of us have one time or another been completely frustrated by certain Windows usability issues, and in many cases our experiences have driven us over to Linux, or kept us there. For anyone that has ever been frustrated, you will be happy to know you aren't the only one. After reading this leaked Microsoft memo from Bill Gates back in 2003, you will surely have more insight into why Vista is a complete disaster due to Microsoft not learning anything from their experiences from XP."
Firehose:When Bill Gates isn't able to use WINDOWS by Anonymous Coward
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Massive Dupe (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Massive Dupe (Score:5, Insightful)
It's been 6 years, and he still can't install it? Maybe he should install Wubi, and try apt-get, that usually works.
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Re:Massive Dupe (Score:5, Funny)
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I know it's a dupe, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
I know it's a dupe, but I still love to see Gates say: "But that is just the start of the crap..."
It says it all right there. At least Microsoft knows about the problems with Windows. It is said that realizing there is an issue is the first step to resolving it :)
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I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't understand all the hate for Bill. Unless if this e-mail was nothing more than a publicity stunt to make him look less evil, it shows that he wasn't happy with the way things were going. He clearly saw the direction the ship was going and he couldn't turn it in time.
Despite what you say about Microsoft now, Ballmer will always be funny to read about and watch on youtube.
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Funny)
I don't understand all the hate for Bill.
Stay off my lawn.
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Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't understand all the hate for Bill.
Bill's the guy that's responsible for creating this monster. Obviously he didn't do it all by himself, but he's ultimately the captain of the ship.
He clearly saw the direction the ship was going and he couldn't turn it in time.
I actually don't really hate Bill (though I understand why some do). Even though I saw this email about a year ago I'm still greatly amused by it. It shows that even Bill Gates can't control the monster he's created. It's very interesting and amusing that Bill Gates, largest owner of Microsoft and (then) the person with the greatest control over it, reboots his computer nightly. That explains so much.
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Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
It's the law of unintended consequences. The vision at Microsoft has always been to try and reduce complexity. Whenever there has been a tradeoff between control and simplicity, Microsoft has chosen simplicity. Unfortunately some things are inherently complex, and as you try to wrap them behind simplistic abstractions there comes a point where you simply can achieve what you want. Suddenly you, and your current task is one of the things that the designers abstracted away. The quote about "we didn't realise people would try and download it from the downloads page" is a classic example.
Which of course was exactly the point that Neal Stephenson made in the essay In the beginning was the command line [cryptonomicon.com].
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Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Funny)
The vision at Microsoft has always been to try and reduce complexity.
Surely you jest.
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Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Funny)
The vision at Microsoft has always been to try and reduce complexity.
Surely you jest.
I am quite serious, and stop calling me Shirley.
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Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
> It's the law of unintended consequences. The vision at Microsoft has always been to try and reduce complexity. Whenever there has been a tradeoff between control and simplicity.
Have you ever actually compared Windows to MacOS? Microsoft most definitely did NOT choose simplicity, rather they have always chosen flexibility - the ability to configure and reconfigure the system to run on different hardware and to do different things.
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Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm keeping a copy of this and some other beauties. Anytime anyone wants to know why I think they should switch to Linux of OSX, I just show them the emails. Even Bill G is tired of Windows and how it works, why shouldn't joe the pc user be?
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Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
From the perspective of developers once it builds and there aren't any showstopper bugs, everything is fine.
Usability is likely one of the hardest things to get right because it forces (anyone really) to look outside of their own perspective. I don't see this as a disease of just software developers, but everyone. Different users want different things out of the software, and sometimes those ends are at cross purposes. I won't defend developers as a whole class here, because I've seen some (and worse) of what you're describing. I will point out that it's a grand generalization though.
The problems Bill describes seem pretty inexcusable. It seems more a systemic problem than a particular one.
The point of Bill's email is that he tries new products and tries to make these 'dumb user' type critiques of it.
Heh. Dumb is an odd description for it. We've all experienced these same frustrations with using Microsoft software. Go to the horrible MS website, spend a lot of time looking for the DL, hopefully find it, wait wait wait while it DLs, machine locks up to being un-usable, finally install it.. but wait.. reboot! (assuming you survive the reboot).. now hope it works. No? Go to step 1.
If I had to identify the single biggest underlying problem here.. it'd be that the user doesn't have a single place to go to install new software that just handles it all for you (and doesn't make you reboot) like say..... a package manager under Linux ;).
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Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't understand all the hate for Bill.
You may hand in your geek card at the door.
If BillG's actions as the head of Microsoft we're enough for you, then surely his new mission of spreading IP law across the third world should get your attention? The Gates foundation makes for-profit investments that are killing people they claim to be trying to save [latimes.com]. Bill is personally heavily invested in big pharma [theregister.co.uk] and Gates supports strong IP law [newmediaexplorer.org] in order to protect his profits.
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Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Interesting)
Bill Gates is the one who, with Steve Balmer, created a Microsoft where it is more important to win by leveraging Windows than competing on quality. He's also overseen them target one software technology after another which were cross platform and therefore threats and had to be eliminated.
What was once a tiny software company who made a Basic interpreter became a monster threatening anyone and everyone if they did not do things One Microsoft Way. This is Bill Gates' fault as much as it is Steve Balmer. Just look at the Bill and Malinda Gates Foundation for more proof. From what I've heard, if any school or library takes funds from them, they are not allowed to use open source software. They just constantly limit choice and that has been Microsoft's business method for over 20 years. IMO
LoB
Parent
its easy (Score:5, Informative)
In some of those published emails, you can see Bill Gates:
-Asking to add Windows-specific quirks to the ACPI "standard" [slated.org], just to make Linux more dificult. "It seems unfortunate if we do this work and get our partners to do the work and the result is that Linux works great without having to do the work [...] Maybe there is no way to avoid this problem but it does bother me. Maybe we could define the APIs so that they work well with NT and not the others even if they are open. Or maybe we could patent something related to this
-Asking their teams to add IE-specific crap in the HTML code generated by Office [slated.org], just to make harder for other browsers to display things: One thing we have got to change in our strategy - allowing Office documents to be rendered well by others people browser is one of the most destructive things we could do to the company. We have to stop putting any effort into this and make sure that Office documents very well depends on PROPIETARY IE capabilities" (emphasis by gates, not mine)
-Lobbying Intel to get them to do all their design work in Windows desktops, not in Linux.
-A lot of other "fun" stuff.
And you wonder why people hates Gates? ;)
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Since CEO performance is in the news... (Score:5, Insightful)
"'This is a shocking e-mail. Shocking!' And I said, 'What do you think I do all day? Sending an e-mail like that, that is my job. That's what it's all about. We're here to make things better.""
Apparently he either really sucked at his job, or it was the job of the people who worked for him to completely ignore what he said.
it's actually a fantasy game! (Score:5, Funny)
FTA: "In fact it is more like a puzzle that you get to solve. It told me to go to Windows Update and do a bunch of incantations."
Finally, someone at Microsoft admits that you have to use magic to make Windows work right... I would comment more, but I am on my way to my daily Ballmer goat and bull sacrifice.
Re:it's actually a fantasy game! (Score:5, Funny)
FTA: I would comment more, but I am on my way to my daily Ballmer goat and bull sacrifice.
Ah yes, where you let a live goat or bull into the Ballmer enclosure at feeding time.
Because Ballmer doesn't want to be fed... he wants to hunt!
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Carter Pewterschmidt (Score:5, Funny)
Usability and the Bottom Line are Incongruent (Score:5, Insightful)
even more ironic, he praises add/remove (Score:5, Interesting)
It's funny that he praises the add/remove programs control panel. Try opening it up when you have a file system mounted that contains a whole lot of files. Apparently this control panel, even though it has a cache of installed programs in some subdirectory, plus roughly the same info in a registry subtree, this sterling piece of software goes off and looks at every file on every device. That's the only explanation I can think of why the disks whir for like two hours before this control panel lists anything.
And even then all that work was for naught, because the items listed have not been even slightly vetted for correctness. You click on some of them and get an immediate "no uninstaller found" or even more cryptic messages, and no way to remove these useless entries. This control panel is a classic fail, with it doing slow and useless work several times over and still missing the whole point of what it should be doing.
Bill, you got real problems when you think this really crapalicious control panel is a shining star.
Re:thanks but I need more than a lower case j (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, great. So you're reproducing.
Thanks.
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Re:Abstract (Score:5, Funny)
You know, composed of a lot of straight lines and sharp angles, both eyes on the same side of his head, lots of colors everywhere, that sort of thing.
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Re:That's one way KDE/GNOME should emulate Windows (Score:5, Insightful)
The idea that different software suits different people is lost on those with this mentality.
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