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Come on now. > products that bring intense pain to it users I'm a Mac user and I love Office (over OO and iWork). > as frustrated as anyone else about the pr

by Maro 15y ago

Come on now. > products that bring intense pain to it users I'm a Mac user and I love Office (over OO and iWork). > as frustrated as anyone else about the problem It's not "a" problem. It's a large organization with tons of products, and some are more sucky then the rest. > is completely powerless to stop it He wasn't the CEO anymore when he wrote this. Also, even if he were the CEO, he can't go in and fix every annoyance himself. He's a leader, he needs people underneath him to do a good job. When they're not, he needs to remind them, that's what this email is. > is drowning in money coming from his mistakes If it weren't for Bill Gates, we might not be having this conversation... > Microsoft has been a slow-motion train wreck for 15 years Have you looked at Win7? It's pretty good. C# 4.0 is much better than Java. Visual Studio kills anything else on the IDE market. Xbox rocks. A friend just got a Win7 phone, and the UI/UX seems to work very well, better than Android, about as good as iOS.

megablast 15y ago
I do not think anyone is suggesting that he goes in and fixed it himself, but it is up to him to ensure there are processes in place to make sure this does not happen.
emilsedgh 15y ago
"If it weren't for Bill Gates, we might not be having this conversation..." I hate it when people give Bill Gates and Microsoft credit for whole computer and IT advancements. We are having this conversation because many many people worked hard on these technologies. Microsoft and Bill Gates are only one of them. Of course, DOS and Windows accerelated wider adoption of personal computers, but even if they havent, someone other company would've done so.
- sankara 15y ago
  >>but even if they havent, someone other company would've done so. This is a hypothetical statement and there are n different ways our world could have diverged. Better not to speculate on how things could have moved forward. In any case, it didn't look it was a natural progression of technology before Windows became popular as the preferred OS for a personal computer.
  - jackpirate 15y ago
    >>> If it weren't for Bill Gates, we might not be having this conversation... >> but even if they havent, someone other company would've done so. > Better not to speculate on how things could have moved forward. It is impossible not to speculate. The GGP is just speculating in the opposite direction as the GP. We simply must back our speculation with reasons. Personally, I like the GP's reasoning.
- billmcneale 15y ago
  > I hate it when people give Bill Gates and Microsoft credit for whole computer and IT advancements. Or maybe the original poster was saying this because he was typing his response on a Windows computer.
- yarian 15y ago
  It's easy to make claims about branches of history that never occurred. It seems like an absurd scenario where computers weren't widely adopted, but it's not really so absurd if you think about it.
podperson 15y ago
Clicked you up but: 1. Seriously, try iWork ;-). Not only does Pages kick Word's butt, it can sit in the middle of a Word-based workflow (e.g. preserving change tracking). 2. Visual Studio doesn't kill Realbasic (from a tiny developer) or Xcode. Xcode has a different level of abstraction, but the result is that Xcode devs consistently produce far more polished apps than Visual Studio devs. But yes, it's pretty darn good. 3. Win7 is a tactical success but a strategic failure. If you want an end-to-end picture of just how big a hole Microsoft finds itself in, go to http://microsoftstore.com http://microsoftstore.com 1. Their back-to-school incentive is a free XBox with each PC sold. Aside from just how big a loss this must represent (given the XBox 360 is, itself, a loss-leader) parents are going to LOVE this. Here's $25k college tuition and you want a computer with a free game console? 2. Because they're selling a weird hodgepodge of third-party products they need to provide things like a "recommend a PC for me given I am this kind of person" tool, and it makes no sense (e.g. I picked "develop with power" and got no results). 3. The chief selling point of the PCs they're selling is "no crapware". 4. Try to figure out their Win7 phone comparison tool. And this is what happens when Microsoft goes out and deliberately tries to build an imitation Apple Store.
- rbanffy 15y ago
  > the result is that Xcode devs consistently produce far more polished apps than Visual Studio devs. There may be some sort of selection bias here: Mac users are much more sensitive to polish than Windows (or Linux) devs - they have chosen a Mac over a Dell and paid more for it. I am happy with console apps, as long as they do what I need them to, and my Atom-based Acer netbook supplies about 99% of my computing needs.
- nxn 15y ago
  > Xcode has a different level of abstraction, but the result is that Xcode devs consistently produce far more polished apps than Visual Studio devs. But yes, it's pretty darn good. Don't you feel like you're ignoring some very important variables by saying that? For example: Cocoa vs Windows Forms, Cocoa vs WPF, etc?
  - podperson 15y ago
tjogin 15y ago
Bill Gates very much was CEO when the registry and the filesystem were "crapped up" and made "unusable".
bitwize 15y ago
The Xbox is a piece of shite from a hardware standpoint. It comes with an insanely huge power brick that could be a medium-power game console in its own right given its size and weight; the hard disk clip doesn't work and of course there's Mr. RROD. Why did it win? The same reason why anything from Microsoft wins: Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers!

by Maro 15y ago

megablast 15y ago

I do not think anyone is suggesting that he goes in and fixed it himself, but it is up to him to ensure there are processes in place to make sure this does not happen.

emilsedgh 15y ago

"If it weren't for Bill Gates, we might not be having this conversation..." I hate it when people give Bill Gates and Microsoft credit for whole computer and IT advancements. We are having this conversation because many many people worked hard on these technologies. Microsoft and Bill Gates are only one of them. Of course, DOS and Windows accerelated wider adoption of personal computers, but even if they havent, someone other company would've done so.

sankara 15y ago
>>but even if they havent, someone other company would've done so. This is a hypothetical statement and there are n different ways our world could have diverged. Better not to speculate on how things could have moved forward. In any case, it didn't look it was a natural progression of technology before Windows became popular as the preferred OS for a personal computer.
- jackpirate 15y ago
  >>> If it weren't for Bill Gates, we might not be having this conversation... >> but even if they havent, someone other company would've done so. > Better not to speculate on how things could have moved forward. It is impossible not to speculate. The GGP is just speculating in the opposite direction as the GP. We simply must back our speculation with reasons. Personally, I like the GP's reasoning.
billmcneale 15y ago
> I hate it when people give Bill Gates and Microsoft credit for whole computer and IT advancements. Or maybe the original poster was saying this because he was typing his response on a Windows computer.
yarian 15y ago
It's easy to make claims about branches of history that never occurred. It seems like an absurd scenario where computers weren't widely adopted, but it's not really so absurd if you think about it.

podperson 15y ago

Clicked you up but: 1. Seriously, try iWork ;-). Not only does Pages kick Word's butt, it can sit in the middle of a Word-based workflow (e.g. preserving change tracking). 2. Visual Studio doesn't kill Realbasic (from a tiny developer) or Xcode. Xcode has a different level of abstraction, but the result is that Xcode devs consistently produce far more polished apps than Visual Studio devs. But yes, it's pretty darn good. 3. Win7 is a tactical success but a strategic failure. If you want an end-to-end picture of just how big a hole Microsoft finds itself in, go to http://microsoftstore.com http://microsoftstore.com 1. Their back-to-school incentive is a free XBox with each PC sold. Aside from just how big a loss this must represent (given the XBox 360 is, itself, a loss-leader) parents are going to LOVE this. Here's $25k college tuition and you want a computer with a free game console? 2. Because they're selling a weird hodgepodge of third-party products they need to provide things like a "recommend a PC for me given I am this kind of person" tool, and it makes no sense (e.g. I picked "develop with power" and got no results). 3. The chief selling point of the PCs they're selling is "no crapware". 4. Try to figure out their Win7 phone comparison tool. And this is what happens when Microsoft goes out and deliberately tries to build an imitation Apple Store.

rbanffy 15y ago
> the result is that Xcode devs consistently produce far more polished apps than Visual Studio devs. There may be some sort of selection bias here: Mac users are much more sensitive to polish than Windows (or Linux) devs - they have chosen a Mac over a Dell and paid more for it. I am happy with console apps, as long as they do what I need them to, and my Atom-based Acer netbook supplies about 99% of my computing needs.
nxn 15y ago
> Xcode has a different level of abstraction, but the result is that Xcode devs consistently produce far more polished apps than Visual Studio devs. But yes, it's pretty darn good. Don't you feel like you're ignoring some very important variables by saying that? For example: Cocoa vs Windows Forms, Cocoa vs WPF, etc?
- podperson 15y ago

tjogin 15y ago

Bill Gates very much was CEO when the registry and the filesystem were "crapped up" and made "unusable".

bitwize 15y ago

The Xbox is a piece of shite from a hardware standpoint. It comes with an insanely huge power brick that could be a medium-power game console in its own right given its size and weight; the hard disk clip doesn't work and of course there's Mr. RROD. Why did it win? The same reason why anything from Microsoft wins: Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers!