10 ms·

If Gates had maintained a dictatorial death grip on his company like Steve Jobs has, MS probably could have made some decent products. It's one thing to yell a

• josefresco 16y ago
  You're right and the anonymous commenter on their site said it well: "The Steve Jobs version: "If the MovieMaker download site isn't working by tomorrow at 6 am I will come down there at 6:01 am an choke the living ___ out of all of you.""
  • mrshoe 16y ago
    Jobs may well provide more severe threats than Gates, but I still think there's an important distinction between firing/choking/maiming employees and refusing to ship (or canceling) a product.
    • zach 16y ago
      That's right, and the difference between those kinds of threats is personal confrontation. Some folks will rip apart shoddy work because they don't care if the creators get personally upset about it. They're not looking for a confrontation, but if there is one, they feel justified. Other people are bothered that the creators are not personally upset about how shoddy the work is and make quite sure that they are. It's a subtle but important difference.
      • stcredzero 16y ago
        Other people are bothered that the creators are not personally upset about how shoddy the work is and make quite sure that they are. There's also a subtle difference between the 1st part of this sentence alone and the entire sentence.
        • zach 16y ago
          Well, I'm saying that's what motivates some directors to rip into work; I admit it's not a common attitude. But I have seen the "How can you think this is acceptable?" attitude and it is hard to take for a lot of people.
          • stcredzero 16y ago
            Methinks you missed my point. I am not upset, however.
  • bad_user 16y ago
    Someone should tell the iTunes Connect team about it ... that web interface is really driving me crazy ;)
  • deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  • Marticus 16y ago
    Yup, now they just need to actually do that with quite a few of their own products and we'd have two happy, completely different corporations that don't release sh*tty software from time to time.
  • simplegeek 16y ago
    I guess only a non programmer can say that (though Steve Jobs is a personal hero) ;)
• njharman 16y ago
  Would also have a insignificant share of desktop and server market.
• ssp 16y ago
  Microsoft has made a bunch of very good products: - Windows 3.0 and 3.1 clearly hit exactly the sweet spot between DOS and OS/2 - Word and Excel were legitimately better than the competition (and still are, although there is not much competition left). - Internet Explorer 4 was so much better than Netscape 3 and 4 that it wasn't even funny - Windows 2000 and XP were very good operating systems
  • CWuestefeld 16y ago
    Mostly you're right, but I object to the claim about Excel being better. While Word was better than anything else I had found to use at the time (Word Perfect was a buggy mess). However, I claim that there were better spreadsheet products available. Certainly the one I used, Enable, was quite robust, and was more capable than Excel.
    • bad_user 16y ago
      Office 95 bundled Excel along with Word, Access and Powerpoint. When people make choices they also look at convenience and price ... having these products packaged and nicely integrated with each-other was genius.
      • stcredzero 16y ago
        There is a lesson here for language designers!
    • coin 16y ago
      Excel for Windows was much better than Lotus 123 for Windows. Lotus basically took the DOS version of 123 and added some menus for it. It never did feel like a fist class GUI app.
      • rbanffy 16y ago
        Lotus took Microsoft's word seriously when Gates proclaimed OS/2 was the future and Windows was an interim step. Lotus invested a lot in 123 for OS/2 (123/G, IIRC) and, when the IBM/Microsoft divorce made evident they chose the wrong side, they had to port it to Windows all over again (with lots of different and conflicting APIs). Microsoft had no such problem.
• acabal 16y ago
  To be fair, Windows and the Windows ecosystem is so huge that it would be almost impossible for one guy to sit down and say, OK, this is how Movie Maker is going to get installed, and this is how it should function, and this is how Windows Update Q52324 will get installed, and blah blah. My point is that it's easy to think Steve Jobs is in compete and total control of every pixel on an OSX screen and has intimate knowledge of the tiniest details about how every bundled app works, but the truth is probably closer to "Jobs hired a bunch of very smart people to do it for him, and managed them in a way that allowed them to function without the bureaucratic paralysis that plagues Microsoft." Which is a state very different from "dictatorial death grip." (Though I won't argue that Jobs is indeed a benevolent dictator, and a damned good one).
  • ricardo 16y ago
    I agree, but I believe it helps for Apple's employees to know they won't get away with a user experience like that under Jobs. They've got smart people, the ability to get things done, and they know what specific areas cannot be compromised.
  • sp332 16y ago
    You can still set rules. "All first-party Microsoft software will take 5 clicks to install. More than 5 and you need a sign-off from a VP." Palm had a rule that it should take 3 taps to get anywhere on the system. They had a guy whose full-time job was to count taps for various actions.
  • aboodman 16y ago
    A wise man once me taught me that this is the role of culture. You can't be there all the time, and don't want to be: Smart people need to be able to make their own decisions or they get bored and demotivated. A good culture helps them make the decision you would have made by propagating knowledge of which values are most important to the group.
  • sliverstorm 16y ago
    He can't be a benevolent dictator, and have a dictatorial death grip. Nobody rules with an iron fist, benevolently.
• White_N_Nerdy 16y ago
  Correction... Microsoft /has made/ some excellent products. Here are some more for the list: Xbox SharePoint Sql Server DirectX Visual Studio Expression Studio Team Foundation Team Viewer Windows Server
  • bni 16y ago
    Most of those are "mee too products". Not breaking new ground, and certainly not the best of options.
    • chc 16y ago
      Xbox was revolutionary. Online multiplayer on a console had been tried many times before — as far back as the Sega Genesis and as recently as the Xbox's rival, Playstation 2 — and failed miserably every time. Microsoft was the first company to make it work, and their current implementation is still probably the best. And I don't know any developer who would dismiss Visual Studio. In most regards, it's a best-of-breed IDE.
      • vetinari 16y ago
        > And I don't know any developer who would dismiss Visual Studio. You are new around here, right? Make yourself comfortable and you will know droves of them in no time. ;)
        • chc 16y ago
          I would be fascinated to hear from them. I know lots of developers don't use Visual Studio for some reason or another (I'm one of them), but I've never heard anyone call Visual Studio a poor IDE.
          • kabdib 16y ago
            I edit in Emacs, then build and debug in VS (when I can). It's a good combo and less clumsy than it sounds.
• kenjackson 16y ago
  The issue here though is that Bill was trying to download MovieMaker. I bet when Bill talked to the MovieMaker team he was given a demo of MovieMaker already installed on a computer. With that said, at Apple the website feels like an extension of the company. WIth Microsoft the website seems like a standard site for a corporation.
• tptacek 16y ago
  Utterly unfair comparison. The Apple and Microsoft business models are so unlike each other it's almost inaccurate to say they're in the same business. Apple can get product quality to the point they do because they laser focus on a few profitable segments. Microsoft's business model --- not "what Steve Ballmer thinks they should be doing this month" but their underlying business model --- involves them serving 80+% of the market. This is sort of like complaining that Safeway can't make ice cream as well as Ben and Jerry's.
  • rottencupcakes 16y ago
    Did you watch Futurama last night? I have trouble believing that two detracting comments about Safeway ice cream were spontaneously made a day apart. "What do you say we go get some sewer coffee, sewer cake, and Safeway Ice Cream?" - Futurama
    • mahmud 16y ago
      He is an avid Futurama fan. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1623530 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1623530
      • tptacek 16y ago
        Monkeys aren't donkeys! Stop messing with my head!
    • tptacek 16y ago
      Nope. I hate the new Futurama episodes.
    • dasil003 16y ago
      I assure you that more than one is made daily.
  • OpieCunningham 16y ago
    > This is sort of like complaining that Safeway can't make ice cream as well as Ben and Jerry's. And in fact, Safeway doesn't make ice cream as well as Ben and Jerry's. It's ice cream, not apples and oranges. Apple is in a few markets where they serve a large majority of the market (music players being the obvious). There is probably room for Apple to improve on those products, but I suspect most rational people would not claim Apples products in those markets are as poorly made as most of Microsofts products. Effectively, it is not the unfair comparison you claim.
• CamperBob 16y ago
  Both companies have their strong and weak points... including some in critical strategic areas. For instance, if Jobs wants to live up to his reputation as a dictatorial advocate for quality and engineering, why doesn't he force-choke the program manager for iTunes?
  • raganwald 16y ago
    I suspect that the iTunes UI Manager's job strongly resembles an Admiral's position. On a regular basis, I can see minions dragging the latest victim out of Steve's office while he intones, "Apology Accepted."
• whyenot 16y ago
  Look at what Gates has done since he loosened his grip at MS. The Gates foundation's global health and global development programs have done tremendously important work to reduce human suffering in the 3rd world. Nothing Gates could do at MS would come even close to what he is doing now to make the world a better place. Compare to Steve Jobs who knows how to make wonderful shiny devices that cost more than what many in the third world will make in a lifetime, but who has done very little when it comes to philanthropy.
  • dieterrams 16y ago
    This isn't about which CEO is the better human being. It's about which management style is more effective.
    • whyenot 16y ago
      I didn't claim that it was. I do think it is worth considering all the costs and benefits of Bill G staying at MS. The benefits might be a better Windows. The costs are all the work he wouldn't have time to do outside the technology sphere.
      • dieterrams 16y ago
        Ah. I don't believe mrshoe was talking about Bill Gates remaining CEO of MS. He was suggesting that Gates should have managed more like Jobs back when he was CEO.
  • angrycoder 16y ago
    This point seems to come up every time Bill's name is mentioned these days. It is really funny how he has gone from Darth Vader to Mother Theresa in a few short years. I mean its nice that he is giving all his money away and making a difference, but everyone seems to skip over the fact that his money was made by running an evil empire and being one of the most reviled figures in the computer world.
    • whyenot 16y ago
• gdltec 16y ago
  "MS probably could have made some decent products." Microsoft products are great, not all of them but most of their software products are, it is the reason they own the desktop market and have millions of users using many of their software products every day. I like Apple's products as well... but it is the hardware that I like... not so impressed with Apple's software such as Mail or Xcode.
• rapind 16y ago
  I can't shake the feeling that I've always been somehow out of touch, because I'm not really a fan of most apple software. First thing I do with osx is the same thing I always used to do with windows. Get rid of all the distracting annoying stuff (dock, dash, iEverything) then happily get down to business. I never did use vista but with all other windows versions I would always just remove a dozen or so things and happily move along with my work never to be annoyed by them again. The only thing that keeps me using my iPhone is safari and the screen. It's great. That's the killer feature to me. Yet it's annoying I can't turn images off without jailbreaking. I don't really think apple delivers software products that are much better than MS products. Hardware yes although the xbox line is pretty sharp. Or maybe I'm just getting old.
  • forensic 16y ago
    It's a lot easier to remove all the junk from OSX. It sounds like you haven't seen a brand new Windows machine in awhile. They are cluttered beyond belief. The OSX clutter, in comparison, is unnoticeable. The other nice thing about OSX though is that the migration tools have always been totally painless for me - when I get a new mac I DON'T have to go remove that stuff because it saves my settings automatically. I haven't had to remove the clutter since my first MacBook in like 2006 - the settings were carried over. In Windows this rarely works, and when it does it takes a lot of work and doesn't do a complete job.
    • potatolicious 16y ago
      To be fair, a clean retail Windows install is just as clean as OSX. The clutter comes from shitty bundleware. This is, IMHO, one of MS's greatest struggles - it is not enough for Microsoft to develop a culture of top notch user experiences, but also all third party OEMs. This is a problem that Apple does not contend with. We see this with Windows phone also - no amount of software and UI can save a device designed and manufactured with rock bottom quality.