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Full text: An epic Bill Gates e-mail rant
- raganwald 18y ago"they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." And rightly so. Anyone who tries to use the download page to download something will give up and never try it again, so after a while everyone will ignore it!
- RobertL 18y agoYour logic is stunning raganwald... stunning.. I'm rolling on the floor...
- mattmaroon 18y agoHow do you type while doing that?
- LogicHoleFlaw 18y agoVoice recognition?
- jcl 18y agoFull-body keyboard.
- jrockway 18y agoWhy is this surprising? Bill Gates doesn't need to fanboi Microsoft internally; it's his company. He needs to be as critical as possible so the outside world gets a good product. It's his company that looks bad when things like this happen, so of course he is going to "rant" about it. It's his job.
- thinkcomp 18y agoIt's surprising because you might think Bill Gates would have some pull at his own company. Most of these issues he raises have been problems for years, and have gotten even worse in some cases!
- jrockway 18y agoThat's a good point; he shouldn't have to point things like this out. It should be obvious that you shouldn't clutter add/remove programs with "tests" and so on. (etc.)
- markbao 18y agoMany of these problems are still prevalent in Microsoft. Confusing processes and the like. So, it's not Gates. Gates is a good guy and he sounds like he gets it. Is it the corporate structure then?
- jrockway 18y ago> Is it the corporate structure then? Yeah, probably. However, it's hard to keep a big company like Microsoft under one person's control. Look at Apple's success; they have a tiny product line (compared to Microsoft), and so Jobs can make sure everything is good.
- hugh 18y agoReally? I've got no interest in counting them all up, but I thought Apple would have more products than Microsoft.
- dcurtis 18y agoWell, think about... Windows Vista. Ultimate, Home Premium, Home Basic, Business, Enterprise, Lite. Microsoft Office. Microsoft Office Professional, Microsoft Office Standard, Office Small Business, Office Ultimate, Office Enterprise, Office Professional Plus. Microsoft Mouse, Microsoft Intellimouse, Microsoft intellimouse Explorer, Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer Bluetooth, Microsoft Intellimouse Presenter. Windows Media Player, Windows Media Player Ultimate Pack... Compared to: Mac OS X iWork Mighty Mouse iTunes I think the lesson here is obvious.
- dhotson 18y agoThis reminds me of the bug report Linus Torvalds submitted when he couldn't figure out how to get youtube to work on linux. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=439858 https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=439858
- staunch 18y agoAnd that's how a guy with "no taste" critiques. Imagine Steve Jobs' emails!
- mechanical_fish 18y agoI'm not sure Steve Jobs uses email. I think he uses ninjas.
- neilc 18y agoSteve Jobs said Microsoft has no taste, not Bill Gates. I think that if you're a good software developer (and BillG certainly qualifies), you need to at least have some degree of taste.
- jey 18y agoIt's pretty clear that BillG has business, management, and technical acumen, but I'm not so sure that he has taste in the aesthetic sense. If he does have good aesthetic taste, he hasn't done a very good job of implementing it.
- DaniFong 18y agoActually I consider some of the new Microsoft designs to be pretty nice: XBox 360, Silverlight, Live Maps, even Vista, are at least comparably pretty to the competition, and some would vie, even prettier.
- raganwald 18y agoWith respect, I do hope you realize that "taste" and "design" are about an awful lot more than "pretty." I would say that MSFT products being "pretty" demonstrates how little they get it. They think that making something "designed" means smearing pretty on it after you're done, as if you can design a web application by building something randomly then hiring a graphic designer to make the page slook nice just before you go live.
- st3fan 18y ago"""Then it told me to reboot my machine. Why should I do that? I reboot every night -- why should I reboot at that time?""" Haha % uname -a Darwin Galactica.local 9.3.0 Darwin Kernel Version 9.3.0: Fri May 23 00:49:16 PDT 2008; root:xnu-1228.5.18~1/RELEASE_I386 i386 % uptime 19:08 up 23 days, 6 mins, 2 users, load averages: 0.87 1.02 1.07
- mhartl 18y agoI had the same thought when I read this. I used to turn off my computer every night, until I switched from Windows (98) to Linux. In grad school, my roommate and I had uptime contests with our Linux boxes, which he won with something like 6 months of uptime. The most common causes of lost uptime were electrical power outages and moving apartments. Now, like you, I mainly run OS X, but it's on a laptop, which wreaks havoc with my uptime. Ah, well. I guess you can't have it all.
- jauco 18y agoI'm always amazed by this. Why would you keep your computer running if you're not using it? just for comparing lengths?
- axod 18y agoIf you're running a server on it, or just want it ready to use whenever you need? There's always sleep/power saving modes anyway.
- pavelludiq 18y agoI generate a lot of torrent traffic on my machine. Im seeding something like 50-60 torrents.
- st3fan 18y agoI let my computers sleep. But that still counts as uptime ;)
- mrtron 18y agoLaptop: 10:56 up 83 days, 1:50, 7 users, load averages: 1.05 1.32 1.12 I don't reboot - but I do close the lid to let it sleep. My main reason for not rebooting is I generally have 100 things open at any time and that 'state' is important.
- daveambrose 18y agoMy favorite lines: "Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable? The file system is no longer usable. The registry is not usable. This program listing was one sane place but now it is all crapped up. But that is just the start of the crap. Later I have listed things like Windows XP Hotfix see Q329048 for more information. What is Q329048? Why are these series of patches listed here? Some of the patches just things like Q810655 instead of saying see Q329048 for more information. What an absolute mess."
- coffeeaddicted 18y agoI also liked that one. But it also reminded me that I often use synaptic on Debian when I am looking for applications on my system which is rather similar to the "add/remove software" on Windows. The only place where I can do a sane search (including searching summaries what the applications actually do) and get an additional good categorization of the software. Funny how the package manager on both sytems seems to have better information about your applications than for example the typical startup menu (which is usually a mess after a few months - also on both systems).
- GrandMasterBirt 18y agoIts good that these sort of issues are exposed, even if by Bill. The scary thing is that MS QA does not pick this stuff up. As more of this stuff gets exposed this will hopefully make MS work harder. And as Apple is becoming a REAL contender, hopefully MS will pull their head out of their ass.
- RobertL 18y agoain't gonna happen GMB.. ain't gonna happen. I do agree with your observation though..... I'm just not as optimistic in regard to the outcome.
- holygoat 18y agoMS's QA is oriented towards making sure that individual pieces function, not that the right thing happens. Their aim is 100% automated unit testing... but nobody ever tests that doing something is intuitive. The UX folks do, but that doesn't mean they get their way.
- GrandMasterBirt 18y agoMS having unusable products is like Exxon not selling fuel. Very quickly users will abandon windows in favor of Apple if it gets too bad.
- markbao 18y agoLooks like Bill Gates knows how to communicate his thoughts easily for the reader. Neither I nor the recipient of the email would have read that entire thing if it was in a large paragraph block.
- s3graham 18y agoI agree, it was a nice user story. But, I'm damn sure that all the recipients would have carefully read every word of that email, even if it had been written in one large leetspeek paragraph.
- RobertL 18y agoWell... BG isn't the only one who get's frustrated with windows. I gave up on that crap environment a long time ago and started using Mac's...... the only way to go. Definitely worth the extra money.
- xlnt 18y agoEquivalent macs don't really cost extra money.
- rms 18y agoBecause of the extra value of the system just working?
- xlnt 18y agono, they just plain don't. they all come with isights and firewire and DVD burners and such. comparisons i've seen with equivalent PCs are roughly equal. if you want lots of RAM or a larger harddrive, you probably have to buy that separately to not get overcharged, though.
- rms 18y agoOK -- I spec'd a Dell XPS M150 just now to be equivalent to the $2500 Macbook Pro. I got a better than equivalent config for $1678 -- it has 4GB of RAM, would be $1578 with 2GB of RAM. It comes with a built-in 2MP webcam and bluetooth and N-wireless. It has HDMI rather than DVI out. A bluray burner is an option, as is a 1920x1080 screen. The only thing it is missing is firewire and I don't think anyone can argue that Firefire is worth $900, except people that need Firewire. The backlit keyboard is nice and generally indicative of the Apple touch, I guess, but that adds $900. At one point, it was definitely true that you couldn't get a laptop with all the extras in a Mac. But this Dell Computer really seems equivalent. Perhaps not in build quality.
- xlnt 18y agoI guess it varies by when and what you compare. e.g. http://www.macworld.com/article/49403/2006/02/pricecomparison2.html http://www.macworld.com/article/49403/2006/02/pricecompariso... has the macbook pro doing well. or this http://kb.wisc.edu/showroom/page.php?id=3045 http://kb.wisc.edu/showroom/page.php?id=3045 has 150 more for macbook (not pro). they seem to have firewire and isight missing on the pc, and a modem missing on the mac. ------- i just did a comparison of imac vs dell all-in-one. imac = 1300 (add 1gig of ram) the dell is 1300, but i need to change stuff like including a video card, which it doesn't look like i can do (dell's customization page sucks). anyway, apple seems to win. the macbook pro isn't really for price-sensitive people, anyway. it's the imac, macbook, or maybe mini that i'd expect to price compare OK or well.
- mynameishere 18y agoDuh, Bill: http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=download+moviemaker http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=download+moviemaker I thought I'd try to install it to see if they streamlined it, but it turns out it was part of SP2. I guess I never needed to know about it...
- joshwa 18y agotoo many cooks in the kitchen. MS needs a strong product management voice ala Jobs/Schiller to cut through the crap and insist on a coherent, consistent, and comprehensible product vision and user experience.
- JesseAldridge 18y agoSometimes I can't help but wonder if Gates saw the writing on the wall and jumped ship to preserve his legacy.
- anirbas 18y agoIf he did, it's surprising he didn't go years before this.
- ComputerGuru 18y agoerrr... he did - he's been stepping out since 2001.
- pchristensen 18y agoExactly, you can't just jet at the end of a day if you want your 20% of the company to be worth something when you're gone.
- ComputerGuru 18y agoI don't think he gives a damn about his 20% of the company as far as cash is concerned. It's more of a legacy thing. He created Microsoft - it's his legacy, it's what he'll be remembered by, and he really cares for it.... it's a part of him.
- bprater 18y agoIt makes me nervous that I didn't see it as a rant as all. Am I that callous? To me, it looks like something constructive that every CEO should do -- spend time dealing with their product like their customers do, and make sure the troops know when it isn't up to standards.
- ardit33 18y agoIt is kind of suprising how much disconnected he is with the flagship product of his company. He should have been able to be a lot more specific and detalied about what was going on, and not complain in generic terms "downloaded more stuff, this popup here, that thing there". It seems that back then he was not involved at all with the development of windows. It feels like comming from somebody that just started using it, and not somebody that build it (or gave guidance on building it). And this was in 2003, so Windows XP had been out for about two years.
- jm4 18y agoI'm not so sure the level of detail is an indication that he's disconnected with his own company's products. The vibe I got was that he was trying to describe to the people who build this stuff what it's actually like to be an end user. I think the whole point is that they're the ones who are disconnected and completely out of touch. I seriously doubt that Bill Gates _needs_ to download and buy Movie Maker from microsoft.com like a customer would. Even if he is the one who is totally disconnected I thought all of his points were excellent and a perfectly accurate illustration of how Windows has gone wrong. What I'm left wondering is what's been going on there the past several years. If these critiques by Gates are something new it's a real shame for Microsoft that he didn't start sooner. If his statement that it's his job to do this every day is accurate then I'd say they have even bigger problems.
- ComputerGuru 18y agoYou can't deny that this is someone who gets software and knows how things are supposed to be. Now whether Microsoft gets software or not is debatable, but BillG most certainly does. Anyone that's spoken to him in real-life (even some of the most fanboyish Apple users) has confirmed this fact time and time again - it's a real shame for the software industry he "decided" to pull back from his company in 2001.
- tlrobinson 18y agoThe difference between Apple and Microsoft is that this rant would come from Steve Jobs long before the products were actually shipped.