5 ms·

They think it's 'some issues' :) :) :) It's a fundamental, cultural and systemic lack of concern for those issues. An 'afterthought' that should be 'integral'

They think it's 'some issues' :) :) :) It's a fundamental, cultural and systemic lack of concern for those issues. An 'afterthought' that should be 'integral'. That Gates did not realize that means it's 100% on him. 1000% actually. He was struggling with the language of design and usability in 2003, not even realizing even the implications of what he was seeing (because it would require total rethink). Like a cars coming out of the factory with missing parts ... blame it on the guy on the line? No. Something is deeply wrong. I really like Gates - but it's beyond shocking how these cultures work and how myopic they are. I worked for a Fortune 50 - and it's pretty amazing to watch how an army of actually smart people with 'one eye' can be so competent many ways, but blind in others. I don't like to put Jobs on a pedestal but obviously this is something he understood (even then with gaping holes).

WalterBright 1mo ago
As for Jobs, I bought a Mac Mini last summer. I wanted to use iMovie to clip the edges off of a movie file. I clipped the edges, but was unable to discover how to save the resulting file, and gave up. Microsoft's Movie Maker has a menu item to save a file. I use the Mini every day, but only via a tty window.
- dbtc 1mo ago
  I've used QuickTime for that, which has the expected menu items.
  - gizajob 1mo ago
    yeah it's like one shortcut and a trim bar in QuickTime so that's the right tool for the job. iMovie isn't much harder but is a palaver with its whole pre-rendering thing just to export what should be a trivial edit.
  - basisword 1mo ago
    The Photos app (on Mac/iOS) has the same trim interface as QT too.
- bluegatty 1mo ago
  Yes - this is a mind boggling design conceit of Apple that goes back almost 50 years. They made certain design decisions a long time ago around a lot of things and that's one of them. They 'conscientiously' designed the UX - which is great - it generally makes it better, but the problem is, when you make a mistake, the mistake is more ingrained. We all know of 'Arrogant Engineers' thinking their 'Algorithm is more important than anything' - that 'save' thing is a design conceit, heavily instituted into the culture. The designers would look at you like an infidel for suggesting you know something they don't back in the day. Or even today. I'm basically certain that Jobs himself will have defended that feature 1000 times over the years. It's probably kept up like a religious ritual, a point of 'differentiation' and 'we're better here'. Which is very different than a lack of operational rigour, it's where part of the system is overbearing. "It's just the way we do it here" will be the justification for the next 100 years on that. And changing things that are ingrained is also very heard and risky. It's like changing the constitution, it's pulling a thread on the sweater. There are quite a lot of weird 'Apple Way' things, most good, many bad.
- MBCook 1mo ago
  Jobs has been dead for a long time. And it shows. He had bad ideas too but was much better at holding the line on good UI (unless the bad idea was his). We haven’t had that in a long time.
- TrainedMonkey 1mo ago
  Apple used to have principled UX before designers got to innovation. There might be an argument that new UIs are better for people with no prior experience... if they did not completely change them once a decade or so.
- basisword 1mo ago
  There's a menu item. I believe it's File > Share > then you choose how (save to disk, email, export to photos app etc). File > Save doesn't make sense because you would be saving your iMovie project. You're trying to export the final video from the project, not save it. The problem was using a far too complex tool to do a simple job (and not understanding how the tool works). You can trim a video in Quicktime or Photos which directly manipulates the file.
  - Sharlin 1mo ago
    There's no File > Export?!
    - basisword 1mo ago
      File > Share is the same, just more user friendly language. I get it's a bit confusing if you've been using computers for a long time (it's certainly caught me out), but 'Share' makes much more sense. Especially because export/save to disk is only one of the multiple 'Share' options available.
      - airstrike 1mo ago
        "Share" really means send to someone else "Export" means "save this working file in one of many formats, including possibly other formats that are first-class in third-party apps but not this app"
      - Sharlin 1mo ago
        Share doesn't really make any sense. And other macOS applications have an Export menu all right.
      - BlobberSnobber 1mo ago
        Yes! It makes total sense to share with myself a Pages document as PDF! I‘ll promptly think of sharing if all I want to do is save/export a file in a different format. I think we can extend that helpful language to the entire OS! No need for a “copy” or “download” button, it’s all sharing, one way or another! Share share share!
jameshart 1mo ago
This email was literally BillG sending an email to the people he holds accountable for this, pointing out to them that he believes his experience resulted from a systematic lack of attention to end to end user experience. I’m not sure why you see this as evidence BillG didn’t understand that to be his job.
- detourdog 1mo ago
  Becuase it was a typical MS user experience. MS was shipping their software on 25+ install floppies. Having an install fail on floppy 19 was a nightmare. Getting a fax modem that shipped with the PC to function could also be a problem MS would blame the vendor and the vendor blamed MS. It’s not like his moviemaker experience was a rare occurrence.
  - xtracto 1mo ago
    People forget the "if Microsoft invented the iPod" parody video." https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yvh5k1RWER4 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yvh5k1RWER4 It describes the culture of both companies at that time very clearly. I think the difference between Apple and Microsoft is that Steve was a "product" CEO. He would bot only send that email, but in addition he would somehow oversee/sypervise those changes ALL the way until he was satisfied.
- wjnc 1mo ago
  Sorry, but board room or top-50 professional discussions are ment to be a lot more meta. Bill using 500-1000 words to voice his concrete experience in downloading an app, with his directors immediately chiming in for fixes misses the forest for the trees. And Bill starts the quest for the one tree in his choice of words. It was disalignment in his organizational model and the CEO is on the line for that alignment. The happy install flow for moviemaker.exe - who cares… Just look at that thread! Response 3 is already “that’s not my turf”-ing. I’m not saying it’s easy to create a shift in a company of that size, it’s that they weren’t trying when the problem was yelling in their face. (Typing this with a hot lap thanks to Windows update. The agony. Debian solved that 20-30 years ago.)
weitendorf 1mo ago
How exactly do you think Bill Gates at peak Microsoft is going to fix this given "it's 100% on him?" And do you think the guys on the line are the ones on this email thread? This is immensely more "ownership"/initiative than the vast majority of middle managers at any tech company would willingly take to solve a minor UX/CUJ failure, that's surely literally why he started the email thread and including the ones he did, to model that behavior for the the other middle management bozos and to try to instill a culture of caring about their work/whether it actually accomplishes the intended goals.
- bluegatty 1mo ago
  "eak Microsoft is going to fix this given "it's 100% on him?" A" ? The CEO doesn't do the work, they assume and allocate responsibility. It's 100% 'on Gates' because he failed to engender the right culture and process for creating the necessary outcomes. "And do you think the guys on the line are the ones on this email thread?" Yes, the execs on this thread should be (and probably are) 'on the line' - that's how that works, and it's why they are so reactive .. and finger-pointing. The fact they are all finger pointing is a really bad sign.
deleted 1mo ago
[deleted]
u1hcw9nx 1mo ago
Bill Gates was horrible CEO in current standard. He was distant and not reachable. He berated and bullied people. (+sexually harassed women). His personality personified Microsoft. But he was very effective CEO because he knew technology, but business competition was more important to him. He was brutal against competition using all dirty tricks you could come out with.

WalterBright 1mo ago

As for Jobs, I bought a Mac Mini last summer. I wanted to use iMovie to clip the edges off of a movie file. I clipped the edges, but was unable to discover how to save the resulting file, and gave up. Microsoft's Movie Maker has a menu item to save a file. I use the Mini every day, but only via a tty window.

dbtc 1mo ago
I've used QuickTime for that, which has the expected menu items.
- gizajob 1mo ago
  yeah it's like one shortcut and a trim bar in QuickTime so that's the right tool for the job. iMovie isn't much harder but is a palaver with its whole pre-rendering thing just to export what should be a trivial edit.
- basisword 1mo ago
  The Photos app (on Mac/iOS) has the same trim interface as QT too.
bluegatty 1mo ago
Yes - this is a mind boggling design conceit of Apple that goes back almost 50 years. They made certain design decisions a long time ago around a lot of things and that's one of them. They 'conscientiously' designed the UX - which is great - it generally makes it better, but the problem is, when you make a mistake, the mistake is more ingrained. We all know of 'Arrogant Engineers' thinking their 'Algorithm is more important than anything' - that 'save' thing is a design conceit, heavily instituted into the culture. The designers would look at you like an infidel for suggesting you know something they don't back in the day. Or even today. I'm basically certain that Jobs himself will have defended that feature 1000 times over the years. It's probably kept up like a religious ritual, a point of 'differentiation' and 'we're better here'. Which is very different than a lack of operational rigour, it's where part of the system is overbearing. "It's just the way we do it here" will be the justification for the next 100 years on that. And changing things that are ingrained is also very heard and risky. It's like changing the constitution, it's pulling a thread on the sweater. There are quite a lot of weird 'Apple Way' things, most good, many bad.
MBCook 1mo ago
Jobs has been dead for a long time. And it shows. He had bad ideas too but was much better at holding the line on good UI (unless the bad idea was his). We haven’t had that in a long time.
TrainedMonkey 1mo ago
Apple used to have principled UX before designers got to innovation. There might be an argument that new UIs are better for people with no prior experience... if they did not completely change them once a decade or so.
basisword 1mo ago
There's a menu item. I believe it's File > Share > then you choose how (save to disk, email, export to photos app etc). File > Save doesn't make sense because you would be saving your iMovie project. You're trying to export the final video from the project, not save it. The problem was using a far too complex tool to do a simple job (and not understanding how the tool works). You can trim a video in Quicktime or Photos which directly manipulates the file.
- Sharlin 1mo ago
  There's no File > Export?!
  - basisword 1mo ago
    File > Share is the same, just more user friendly language. I get it's a bit confusing if you've been using computers for a long time (it's certainly caught me out), but 'Share' makes much more sense. Especially because export/save to disk is only one of the multiple 'Share' options available.
    - airstrike 1mo ago
      "Share" really means send to someone else "Export" means "save this working file in one of many formats, including possibly other formats that are first-class in third-party apps but not this app"
    - Sharlin 1mo ago
      Share doesn't really make any sense. And other macOS applications have an Export menu all right.
    - BlobberSnobber 1mo ago
      Yes! It makes total sense to share with myself a Pages document as PDF! I‘ll promptly think of sharing if all I want to do is save/export a file in a different format. I think we can extend that helpful language to the entire OS! No need for a “copy” or “download” button, it’s all sharing, one way or another! Share share share!

jameshart 1mo ago

This email was literally BillG sending an email to the people he holds accountable for this, pointing out to them that he believes his experience resulted from a systematic lack of attention to end to end user experience. I’m not sure why you see this as evidence BillG didn’t understand that to be his job.

detourdog 1mo ago
Becuase it was a typical MS user experience. MS was shipping their software on 25+ install floppies. Having an install fail on floppy 19 was a nightmare. Getting a fax modem that shipped with the PC to function could also be a problem MS would blame the vendor and the vendor blamed MS. It’s not like his moviemaker experience was a rare occurrence.
- xtracto 1mo ago
  People forget the "if Microsoft invented the iPod" parody video." https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yvh5k1RWER4 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yvh5k1RWER4 It describes the culture of both companies at that time very clearly. I think the difference between Apple and Microsoft is that Steve was a "product" CEO. He would bot only send that email, but in addition he would somehow oversee/sypervise those changes ALL the way until he was satisfied.
wjnc 1mo ago
Sorry, but board room or top-50 professional discussions are ment to be a lot more meta. Bill using 500-1000 words to voice his concrete experience in downloading an app, with his directors immediately chiming in for fixes misses the forest for the trees. And Bill starts the quest for the one tree in his choice of words. It was disalignment in his organizational model and the CEO is on the line for that alignment. The happy install flow for moviemaker.exe - who cares… Just look at that thread! Response 3 is already “that’s not my turf”-ing. I’m not saying it’s easy to create a shift in a company of that size, it’s that they weren’t trying when the problem was yelling in their face. (Typing this with a hot lap thanks to Windows update. The agony. Debian solved that 20-30 years ago.)

weitendorf 1mo ago

How exactly do you think Bill Gates at peak Microsoft is going to fix this given "it's 100% on him?" And do you think the guys on the line are the ones on this email thread? This is immensely more "ownership"/initiative than the vast majority of middle managers at any tech company would willingly take to solve a minor UX/CUJ failure, that's surely literally why he started the email thread and including the ones he did, to model that behavior for the the other middle management bozos and to try to instill a culture of caring about their work/whether it actually accomplishes the intended goals.

bluegatty 1mo ago
"eak Microsoft is going to fix this given "it's 100% on him?" A" ? The CEO doesn't do the work, they assume and allocate responsibility. It's 100% 'on Gates' because he failed to engender the right culture and process for creating the necessary outcomes. "And do you think the guys on the line are the ones on this email thread?" Yes, the execs on this thread should be (and probably are) 'on the line' - that's how that works, and it's why they are so reactive .. and finger-pointing. The fact they are all finger pointing is a really bad sign.

deleted 1mo ago

[deleted]

u1hcw9nx 1mo ago

Bill Gates was horrible CEO in current standard. He was distant and not reachable. He berated and bullied people. (+sexually harassed women). His personality personified Microsoft. But he was very effective CEO because he knew technology, but business competition was more important to him. He was brutal against competition using all dirty tricks you could come out with.