17 ms·

Flame from Bill Gates Re: Windows Usability

195 points by snikeris 15y ago

snikeris 15y ago
Bill's email is at the bottom. Hooray for top-posting!
- sriramk 15y ago
  That's just standard Outlook email behavior. It works pretty well for corporate email
  - dredmorbius 15y ago
    No, it doesn't. It's used frequently in corporate mail systems. This doesn't mean it works well. Threaded mail clients FTW.
    - sriramk 15y ago
      Stuff gets forwarded around, attached to various systems, etc. Having the entire thread, unmodified, has been a lifesaver for me more times than I can remember.
      - dredmorbius 15y ago
        Having the entire thread is also a major PITA most of the time it's included. With a threaded mail client, if it's necessary to send the entire thread to someone, I can select "Attach mail" -> Tag the entire thread -> and forward it as a MIME-attached mbox. If the recipient has, say, a powerful, thread-capable mail client, they can open the mbox, read it, filter it, search it, expand it, and collapse it in ways that aren't possible with the horribly lossy Microsoft Outlook format. As I said: it's used extensively. This doesn't mean it works.
        muppetman 15y ago
        Yea, you do. Sadly you've just gone 6 levels over the head of Sandy the PR person. And that's why it's still the default, because it works for everyone.
        dredmorbius 15y ago
        Don't you dare start putting reality in the way of my geek fantasy! You've got a point, and throwing mutt at your typical office worker might not go far. Then again, my (very technophobic) father was dealing with mainframe-based "business productivity tools" in the 1980s. Including some (by current standards) very, very clunky email tools. I'd throw the problem at Apple. I think you'd find that they'd figure out a way to sort out when it made sense for someone to forward an entire thread to someone and handle it that way. Probably, these days, within a Web interface, though possibly through a mail client / app.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
samyzee 15y ago
lol thanks for that...m sure bill knows that this is mostly due to that retard steve ballmer who hasnt written a line of code in his life!
zmonkeyz 15y ago
For me the real meat is how the situation is handled after Bill G's email. Lots of hot potato going on. :)
- watmough 15y ago
  Yes, this is the proverbial 'possum under the floor' problem. No one really has the power to change any of this stuff, without buy-in, and relinquishment of power across a shitload of teams. Ergo, it can't be done unless BillG or SteveB personally knocks a lot of heads together.
sriramk 15y ago
Bill actually mentioned this in in another interview (can't find that now, I think it was around the time of his retirement from MSFT - it could have been at an internal event). He basically said something like - I don't know why people think that the email is something weird or unique. This is my job and I do it all the time. My personal take - I actually blame Bill for this. The real cause of the situation is how things had been allowed to drift to this stage over several years and Windows versions. I'd put the responsibility on Bill, as CSA and ex-CEO, to have stopped this, rather than send flame mail one late night. Also, if you see the follow-up email threads, none of the VPs or GMs were empowered to make end to end changes either
- fraserharris 15y ago
  Usability is hard. This superficially simple example crosses many products / teams (being Microsoft, we are talking about 100s of people involved). A small startup has the same challenges because your engineers build features, not user experiences. It takes a great product manager to advocate effectively for the user.
  - JeffffreyF 15y ago
    It's not at all hard, it's a philosophical problem. They simply believe their concerns are more important than the users. It's not hard or complicated, they're just philosophicaly fools because they believe what they want matters. It doesn't, and they can't wrap their heads around that. It doesn't at all when customers suffer because all they get depends on customers getting what they need. It's a simple concept that they don't understand because they are deluded into thinking they are worth more, by virtue of their status and positions. A delusion that they spend most of their energy defending. You simply cannot serve two masters, and this is Capitalism at it's finest.
    - watmough 15y ago
      I don't think you can blame capitalism for this. Apple does this stuff right, and they make money. [aside: I paid $15 for iMovie 11 the other day, and I think I entered my App store password to confirm purchase, iMovie dropped into my dock, done.] Continuing, it's more likely that MS execs, managers, just have the wrong incentives. I have never worked at MS, but I'd imagine you get promoted for having people under you, for shipping software, for meeting deadlines. None of these things directly address user experience. Is there even a high level user experience person at Microsoft, outside of say, XBox, which obviously does have some serious UX work in it? edit: for q mark.
tzs 15y ago
Is there a better link for that document? Slated.org blocks large swathes of the internet from accessing them. If they think your ISP uses something called "phorm" you get blocked and told to find a better ISP. Unfortunately, their block is not well done. For instance, Sprint the ISP apparently used "phorm" and was blocked. However, the block also caught anyone whose packets ended up getting routed over Sprint the major backbone. (I can get to slated so don't need an alternate link. Just suggesting one for people who may be blocked). edit: there's a copy of Gates' message in this thread: http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=119340 http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=119340 edit2: and here's the same file as at slated.org, but without the blocks: http://edge-op.org/iowa/www.iowaconsumercase.org/011607/7000/PX07199.pdf http://edge-op.org/iowa/www.iowaconsumercase.org/011607/7000... and if you go up one level, you can get the rest of the "comes" files.
- sorbus 15y ago
  Does the link to scribd not work (such links are inserted in brackets whenever HN detects a story going to a pdf)? It doesn't give you the pdf, so you have to read it in the browser, but it seems perfectly functional otherwise.
  - tzs 15y ago
    I hadn't noticed that those [scribd] things were links! I thought it just meant that the link was to a PDF.
  - JamesBlair 15y ago
    Not for me: http://i.imgur.com/Cw8Rx.jpg http://i.imgur.com/Cw8Rx.jpg
    - sorbus 15y ago
      That's odd. It's not as readable as the PDF for me (under Chrome 12 and Windows 7), but it's still legible. Maybe you should send a bug report to the people at scribd? Or at least tell them that some files are unreadable in your browser/os combination.
drivebyacct2 15y ago
Things are better, but yes, Windows would benefit (and possibly will with rumors regarding Windows 8) from real package management.
nhebb 15y ago
Dear Bing, I went to microsoft.com and entered "moviemaker" (one word, just like Gates) in the search box. The top site search result - powered by Bing - is an XP downloads page, which of course didn't have a Movie Maker download. I tried a Google site search with "site:microsoft.com moviemaker", and and the top result was the (correct) Movie Maker 2011 page. I also searched google.com for "moviemaker", and again the top result was the Movie Maker 2011 page. Doing the same on bing.com, the page is the 3rd result. That, is why Google is eating your lunch (but I do like your pictures).
- Hov 15y ago
  Is there any reason why you feel typing "moviemaker" into a search engine SHOULD bring up Microsofts software as the first hit?
- Michiel 15y ago
  I tried finding software on OS X, and I could find many pieces of software by searching for them in the App Store application. Also, the app store seems to combine download and install with marketing, as it was heavily promoting OS X Lion at the time of my visit. I also learned that OS X Lion solves the problem where after a reboot your program state is gone, something that Bill Gates was also complaining about. OS X Lion costs 24 euros and that, among other things, is why Apple is eating their lunch (but I do like Visual Studio and .NET).
  - aristidb 15y ago
    The price of a Lion upgrade is pretty much immaterial, as the relevant price of OS X is really bundled into the price of the hardware. You cannot buy a Lion DVD and install it on a non-Mac PC.
    - w1ntermute 15y ago
      Of course, that doesn't mean that running Lion on a PC is out of the question: http://lifehacker.com/5823837/how-do-i-upgrade-my-hackintosh-to-mac-os-x-lion http://lifehacker.com/5823837/how-do-i-upgrade-my-hackintosh...
keyle 15y ago
The title should probably say the year at which this happened. 2003. aka. not new.
SoftwareMaven 15y ago
The responses were exactly what I would have expected to see: so many conflicting priorities and groups that nobody can actually solve the problem. This is a standard problem at large companies and one of the reasons they are able to be disrupted by technology and market changes. There was a lot of jot potato in the thread, but I don't think it signifies anything negative about the people trying to solve the problem. If you don't worry about e "right" way to deal with cross-team issues, your life span at beaurocratic institutions will be very short (spoken from experience :). However, one huge problem that was identified is that delivering bits isn't seen as part of the "product". Product managers (program managers at MS) need to view getting the bits the same way they would view getting shelf space at a big box retailer. If you don't make sure it is done right, your product will have problems no matter how good it is. If PMs aren't empowered to ensure that process is good, you are in trouble.
- mrb 15y ago
  And this is why Apple's software and devices are more usable than Microsoft's: one very powerful person at the top, Steve Jobs, dictates what he wants, precisely. No inter-group fighting, or conflicting priorities.
  - cubicle67 15y ago
    No inter-group fighting, or conflicting priorities. I'd put good money on the opposite being the case. I get the impression there's a lot of passionate people working at apple, and passion doesn't yield lightly
    - zyphlar 15y ago
      Absolutely. Have you seen some of the "off the cuff" town hall style meetings he's had? The one before the release of OSX was telling, he repeatedly said that if he were making the decisions, he'd do X, but he's not. It was very eye opening that sometimes it isn't all Steve's fault (of course it isn't.) Likewise, it's amazing to see that it isn't all Bill's fault. Here he is advocating passionately for a huge change in usability and getting nowhere. Lots of these problems still haven't been solved as of Windows XP (Vista/7 have fixed a lot of update quirks by virtue of being a native app.)
vedantk 15y ago
Reading the last email was gratifying and cathartic. I used to have experiences like this on Windows all of the time. There's some savage pleasure in knowing that Bill Gates had to put up with stuff like this too.
indrax 15y ago
My favorite part is where they think they can solve the problem by solving the problems.
nxn 15y ago
Urgh, there is so much corporate styled lingo and behavior going on here that I feel like they forgot how to concern themselves with actual problems. It seems like at some point sounding "professional" became more important to their career than actual communication. I mean, a lot of those replies are so high level you can't even see the original problem from that height. Instead of concerning themselves with better search results and better download links/navigation they somehow arrive at needing to "promote" some downloads because they're "cool"? How is showing crap you THINK a user is interested in going to solve the problem of them not being able to get what they actually want? You can almost actually see the original message degrade and lose meaning with each new email that gets sent out.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
bluesmoon 15y ago
2 days between the first and last email. No real decisions made in this time.
Shenglong 15y ago
Oh boy. If this happened recently, after Bill downloaded Moviemarker, he'd be terribly angry that some genius decided Moviemaker no longer needs a TIMELINE because apparently it's a feature that no one used.
nkp007 15y ago
Poor Dave...
res0nat0r 15y ago
Can we blame Microsoft for starting the trend of top replying to emails? Since I had to scroll to the bottom of this pdf to read the original message from Bill Gates I'm going to say yes. That is a terrible usability issue I've have to deal with every day for years which I hate. I'd love to go back to the days of plain text and > indented replies.
- Steko 15y ago
  There's pluses and minuses to any implementation. I'd guess new emails on top has won out because it makes previews more useful. Dozens of times a day when I get an email I'm able to digest the entire new content of an email from a 2 line preview that fades in and out of excel. Or when I look through my client I can see the first couple lines of each email and quickly find what I'm looking for.
acabal 15y ago
A perennial classic. While I would say that Windows usability has improved significantly since 2004 (when the mail was written) it's shocking see how the big kanuna's own company became too mired in politics and bureaucracy for even a fire lit directly by Bill under his underling's asses to take 5 years to make a difference. That's one of the advantages of a distro like Ubuntu: while you may disagree with Shuttleworth's decisions, and while the quality of early releases of supposedly stable software is questionable at best, at least the man can make a decision and see it become reality in 6 months.
iradik 15y ago
Bill should have put his vps in line: http://nullisnull.blogspot.com/2011/07/how-to-work-with-me.html http://nullisnull.blogspot.com/2011/07/how-to-work-with-me.h...
throwmeahway 15y ago
My dear Bill, how have you been this century? Please consider making a true light and modular Windows OS. I cannot do simple things like Alt-Tab on Windows 7. I beg you, create a streamlined Windows XP-like OS that allows full functionality based on a modular approach. I'd also like to know what all the programs and services are running (am I running adware/malware/virus or is this vital etc). And not Windows 7 starter. Something like XPLite but created by Microsoft! Mr. Throwaway, your most obedient.
- beernutz 15y ago
  What the hell are you talking about? Alt-tab works just like it always has. the task manager works better than it ever has. Ohhhhh..... I see. Obvious troll is just being obvious.
babel17 15y ago
I have seen that before here on hacker news; something should be done to supress old stories, or at least to show them only to newbies ...
geon 15y ago
My question is: Didn't anyone at some point say "Hey, this UX sucks. I'd be embarrased to ship this."? I know from experience how certain people can be completely unconcerned with quality, only qorking for a salary without any pride of their craft. But a whole company like that? It blows my mind.
mtkd 15y ago
This is a now legendary email thread. You can build some great software and leverage the revenue to acquire and expand further - but if you lose sight of the big picture then stagnation, disfunction and decay is not far away. When I first saw Google+, my first reaction was that Google has risen to this challenge that Microsoft faltered on - and may have just bought themselves another decade of stellar growth.
kia 15y ago
Previous discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=227045 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=227045
brudgers 15y ago
Microsoft's website is still a mess - or rather their 100's of websites are. Typing a term into the search box from an Microsoft blog might give you top results from a social forum, typing it from the main page at Microsoft.com will take you someplace else, from MSDN documentation another place still. It's a constant case of, I know I saw it somewhere, but I can't find it again right now. On the other hand, they encourage everyone to put their work up on the web. And there is an insane amount of helpful information from really smart people who know what they are talking about - even if it isn't well indexed and cross referenced at least it is there.
jpdoctor 15y ago
My favorite part from Bill: > So I did the reboot because it INSISTED on it. Of course that meant completely getting rid of all my Outlook state. The fact that you can lose Outlook state by a reboot doesn't seem to bother anyone. It doesn't seem to have dawned on MS or Bill that maybe saving the state as you go might be a useful thing.

195 points by snikeris 15y ago

snikeris 15y ago

Bill's email is at the bottom. Hooray for top-posting!

sriramk 15y ago
That's just standard Outlook email behavior. It works pretty well for corporate email
- dredmorbius 15y ago
  No, it doesn't. It's used frequently in corporate mail systems. This doesn't mean it works well. Threaded mail clients FTW.
  - sriramk 15y ago
    Stuff gets forwarded around, attached to various systems, etc. Having the entire thread, unmodified, has been a lifesaver for me more times than I can remember.
    - dredmorbius 15y ago
      Having the entire thread is also a major PITA most of the time it's included. With a threaded mail client, if it's necessary to send the entire thread to someone, I can select "Attach mail" -> Tag the entire thread -> and forward it as a MIME-attached mbox. If the recipient has, say, a powerful, thread-capable mail client, they can open the mbox, read it, filter it, search it, expand it, and collapse it in ways that aren't possible with the horribly lossy Microsoft Outlook format. As I said: it's used extensively. This doesn't mean it works.
      - muppetman 15y ago
        Yea, you do. Sadly you've just gone 6 levels over the head of Sandy the PR person. And that's why it's still the default, because it works for everyone.
        dredmorbius 15y ago
        Don't you dare start putting reality in the way of my geek fantasy! You've got a point, and throwing mutt at your typical office worker might not go far. Then again, my (very technophobic) father was dealing with mainframe-based "business productivity tools" in the 1980s. Including some (by current standards) very, very clunky email tools. I'd throw the problem at Apple. I think you'd find that they'd figure out a way to sort out when it made sense for someone to forward an entire thread to someone and handle it that way. Probably, these days, within a Web interface, though possibly through a mail client / app.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

samyzee 15y ago

lol thanks for that...m sure bill knows that this is mostly due to that retard steve ballmer who hasnt written a line of code in his life!

zmonkeyz 15y ago

For me the real meat is how the situation is handled after Bill G's email. Lots of hot potato going on. :)

watmough 15y ago
Yes, this is the proverbial 'possum under the floor' problem. No one really has the power to change any of this stuff, without buy-in, and relinquishment of power across a shitload of teams. Ergo, it can't be done unless BillG or SteveB personally knocks a lot of heads together.

sriramk 15y ago

Bill actually mentioned this in in another interview (can't find that now, I think it was around the time of his retirement from MSFT - it could have been at an internal event). He basically said something like - I don't know why people think that the email is something weird or unique. This is my job and I do it all the time. My personal take - I actually blame Bill for this. The real cause of the situation is how things had been allowed to drift to this stage over several years and Windows versions. I'd put the responsibility on Bill, as CSA and ex-CEO, to have stopped this, rather than send flame mail one late night. Also, if you see the follow-up email threads, none of the VPs or GMs were empowered to make end to end changes either

fraserharris 15y ago
Usability is hard. This superficially simple example crosses many products / teams (being Microsoft, we are talking about 100s of people involved). A small startup has the same challenges because your engineers build features, not user experiences. It takes a great product manager to advocate effectively for the user.
- JeffffreyF 15y ago
  It's not at all hard, it's a philosophical problem. They simply believe their concerns are more important than the users. It's not hard or complicated, they're just philosophicaly fools because they believe what they want matters. It doesn't, and they can't wrap their heads around that. It doesn't at all when customers suffer because all they get depends on customers getting what they need. It's a simple concept that they don't understand because they are deluded into thinking they are worth more, by virtue of their status and positions. A delusion that they spend most of their energy defending. You simply cannot serve two masters, and this is Capitalism at it's finest.
  - watmough 15y ago
    I don't think you can blame capitalism for this. Apple does this stuff right, and they make money. [aside: I paid $15 for iMovie 11 the other day, and I think I entered my App store password to confirm purchase, iMovie dropped into my dock, done.] Continuing, it's more likely that MS execs, managers, just have the wrong incentives. I have never worked at MS, but I'd imagine you get promoted for having people under you, for shipping software, for meeting deadlines. None of these things directly address user experience. Is there even a high level user experience person at Microsoft, outside of say, XBox, which obviously does have some serious UX work in it? edit: for q mark.

tzs 15y ago

Is there a better link for that document? Slated.org blocks large swathes of the internet from accessing them. If they think your ISP uses something called "phorm" you get blocked and told to find a better ISP. Unfortunately, their block is not well done. For instance, Sprint the ISP apparently used "phorm" and was blocked. However, the block also caught anyone whose packets ended up getting routed over Sprint the major backbone. (I can get to slated so don't need an alternate link. Just suggesting one for people who may be blocked). edit: there's a copy of Gates' message in this thread: http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=119340 http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=119340 edit2: and here's the same file as at slated.org, but without the blocks: http://edge-op.org/iowa/www.iowaconsumercase.org/011607/7000/PX07199.pdf http://edge-op.org/iowa/www.iowaconsumercase.org/011607/7000... and if you go up one level, you can get the rest of the "comes" files.

sorbus 15y ago
Does the link to scribd not work (such links are inserted in brackets whenever HN detects a story going to a pdf)? It doesn't give you the pdf, so you have to read it in the browser, but it seems perfectly functional otherwise.
- tzs 15y ago
  I hadn't noticed that those [scribd] things were links! I thought it just meant that the link was to a PDF.
- JamesBlair 15y ago
  Not for me: http://i.imgur.com/Cw8Rx.jpg http://i.imgur.com/Cw8Rx.jpg
  - sorbus 15y ago
    That's odd. It's not as readable as the PDF for me (under Chrome 12 and Windows 7), but it's still legible. Maybe you should send a bug report to the people at scribd? Or at least tell them that some files are unreadable in your browser/os combination.

drivebyacct2 15y ago

Things are better, but yes, Windows would benefit (and possibly will with rumors regarding Windows 8) from real package management.

nhebb 15y ago

Dear Bing, I went to microsoft.com and entered "moviemaker" (one word, just like Gates) in the search box. The top site search result - powered by Bing - is an XP downloads page, which of course didn't have a Movie Maker download. I tried a Google site search with "site:microsoft.com moviemaker", and and the top result was the (correct) Movie Maker 2011 page. I also searched google.com for "moviemaker", and again the top result was the Movie Maker 2011 page. Doing the same on bing.com, the page is the 3rd result. That, is why Google is eating your lunch (but I do like your pictures).

Hov 15y ago
Is there any reason why you feel typing "moviemaker" into a search engine SHOULD bring up Microsofts software as the first hit?
Michiel 15y ago
I tried finding software on OS X, and I could find many pieces of software by searching for them in the App Store application. Also, the app store seems to combine download and install with marketing, as it was heavily promoting OS X Lion at the time of my visit. I also learned that OS X Lion solves the problem where after a reboot your program state is gone, something that Bill Gates was also complaining about. OS X Lion costs 24 euros and that, among other things, is why Apple is eating their lunch (but I do like Visual Studio and .NET).
- aristidb 15y ago
  The price of a Lion upgrade is pretty much immaterial, as the relevant price of OS X is really bundled into the price of the hardware. You cannot buy a Lion DVD and install it on a non-Mac PC.
  - w1ntermute 15y ago
    Of course, that doesn't mean that running Lion on a PC is out of the question: http://lifehacker.com/5823837/how-do-i-upgrade-my-hackintosh-to-mac-os-x-lion http://lifehacker.com/5823837/how-do-i-upgrade-my-hackintosh...

keyle 15y ago

The title should probably say the year at which this happened. 2003. aka. not new.

SoftwareMaven 15y ago

The responses were exactly what I would have expected to see: so many conflicting priorities and groups that nobody can actually solve the problem. This is a standard problem at large companies and one of the reasons they are able to be disrupted by technology and market changes. There was a lot of jot potato in the thread, but I don't think it signifies anything negative about the people trying to solve the problem. If you don't worry about e "right" way to deal with cross-team issues, your life span at beaurocratic institutions will be very short (spoken from experience :). However, one huge problem that was identified is that delivering bits isn't seen as part of the "product". Product managers (program managers at MS) need to view getting the bits the same way they would view getting shelf space at a big box retailer. If you don't make sure it is done right, your product will have problems no matter how good it is. If PMs aren't empowered to ensure that process is good, you are in trouble.

mrb 15y ago
And this is why Apple's software and devices are more usable than Microsoft's: one very powerful person at the top, Steve Jobs, dictates what he wants, precisely. No inter-group fighting, or conflicting priorities.
- cubicle67 15y ago
  No inter-group fighting, or conflicting priorities. I'd put good money on the opposite being the case. I get the impression there's a lot of passionate people working at apple, and passion doesn't yield lightly
  - zyphlar 15y ago
    Absolutely. Have you seen some of the "off the cuff" town hall style meetings he's had? The one before the release of OSX was telling, he repeatedly said that if he were making the decisions, he'd do X, but he's not. It was very eye opening that sometimes it isn't all Steve's fault (of course it isn't.) Likewise, it's amazing to see that it isn't all Bill's fault. Here he is advocating passionately for a huge change in usability and getting nowhere. Lots of these problems still haven't been solved as of Windows XP (Vista/7 have fixed a lot of update quirks by virtue of being a native app.)

vedantk 15y ago

Reading the last email was gratifying and cathartic. I used to have experiences like this on Windows all of the time. There's some savage pleasure in knowing that Bill Gates had to put up with stuff like this too.

indrax 15y ago

My favorite part is where they think they can solve the problem by solving the problems.

nxn 15y ago

Urgh, there is so much corporate styled lingo and behavior going on here that I feel like they forgot how to concern themselves with actual problems. It seems like at some point sounding "professional" became more important to their career than actual communication. I mean, a lot of those replies are so high level you can't even see the original problem from that height. Instead of concerning themselves with better search results and better download links/navigation they somehow arrive at needing to "promote" some downloads because they're "cool"? How is showing crap you THINK a user is interested in going to solve the problem of them not being able to get what they actually want? You can almost actually see the original message degrade and lose meaning with each new email that gets sent out.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

bluesmoon 15y ago

2 days between the first and last email. No real decisions made in this time.

Shenglong 15y ago

Oh boy. If this happened recently, after Bill downloaded Moviemarker, he'd be terribly angry that some genius decided Moviemaker no longer needs a TIMELINE because apparently it's a feature that no one used.

nkp007 15y ago

Poor Dave...

res0nat0r 15y ago

Can we blame Microsoft for starting the trend of top replying to emails? Since I had to scroll to the bottom of this pdf to read the original message from Bill Gates I'm going to say yes. That is a terrible usability issue I've have to deal with every day for years which I hate. I'd love to go back to the days of plain text and > indented replies.

Steko 15y ago
There's pluses and minuses to any implementation. I'd guess new emails on top has won out because it makes previews more useful. Dozens of times a day when I get an email I'm able to digest the entire new content of an email from a 2 line preview that fades in and out of excel. Or when I look through my client I can see the first couple lines of each email and quickly find what I'm looking for.

acabal 15y ago

A perennial classic. While I would say that Windows usability has improved significantly since 2004 (when the mail was written) it's shocking see how the big kanuna's own company became too mired in politics and bureaucracy for even a fire lit directly by Bill under his underling's asses to take 5 years to make a difference. That's one of the advantages of a distro like Ubuntu: while you may disagree with Shuttleworth's decisions, and while the quality of early releases of supposedly stable software is questionable at best, at least the man can make a decision and see it become reality in 6 months.

iradik 15y ago

Bill should have put his vps in line: http://nullisnull.blogspot.com/2011/07/how-to-work-with-me.html http://nullisnull.blogspot.com/2011/07/how-to-work-with-me.h...

throwmeahway 15y ago

My dear Bill, how have you been this century? Please consider making a true light and modular Windows OS. I cannot do simple things like Alt-Tab on Windows 7. I beg you, create a streamlined Windows XP-like OS that allows full functionality based on a modular approach. I'd also like to know what all the programs and services are running (am I running adware/malware/virus or is this vital etc). And not Windows 7 starter. Something like XPLite but created by Microsoft! Mr. Throwaway, your most obedient.

beernutz 15y ago
What the hell are you talking about? Alt-tab works just like it always has. the task manager works better than it ever has. Ohhhhh..... I see. Obvious troll is just being obvious.

babel17 15y ago

I have seen that before here on hacker news; something should be done to supress old stories, or at least to show them only to newbies ...

geon 15y ago

My question is: Didn't anyone at some point say "Hey, this UX sucks. I'd be embarrased to ship this."? I know from experience how certain people can be completely unconcerned with quality, only qorking for a salary without any pride of their craft. But a whole company like that? It blows my mind.

mtkd 15y ago

This is a now legendary email thread. You can build some great software and leverage the revenue to acquire and expand further - but if you lose sight of the big picture then stagnation, disfunction and decay is not far away. When I first saw Google+, my first reaction was that Google has risen to this challenge that Microsoft faltered on - and may have just bought themselves another decade of stellar growth.

kia 15y ago

Previous discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=227045 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=227045

brudgers 15y ago

Microsoft's website is still a mess - or rather their 100's of websites are. Typing a term into the search box from an Microsoft blog might give you top results from a social forum, typing it from the main page at Microsoft.com will take you someplace else, from MSDN documentation another place still. It's a constant case of, I know I saw it somewhere, but I can't find it again right now. On the other hand, they encourage everyone to put their work up on the web. And there is an insane amount of helpful information from really smart people who know what they are talking about - even if it isn't well indexed and cross referenced at least it is there.

jpdoctor 15y ago

My favorite part from Bill: > So I did the reboot because it INSISTED on it. Of course that meant completely getting rid of all my Outlook state. The fact that you can lose Outlook state by a reboot doesn't seem to bother anyone. It doesn't seem to have dawned on MS or Bill that maybe saving the state as you go might be a useful thing.