Bill Gates Chews Out Microsoft 836
s31523 writes "All of us have one time or another been completely frustrated by certain Windows usability issues, and in many cases our experiences have driven us over to Linux, or kept us there. For anyone that has ever been frustrated, you will be happy to know you aren't the only one. After reading this leaked Microsoft memo from Bill Gates back in 2003, you will surely have more insight into why Vista is a complete disaster due to Microsoft not learning anything from their experiences from XP."
My God... (Score:5, Insightful)
That's such a loaded and flamebait-ridden summary it's not even funny. Linux has plenty of usability issues, just like Windows - the quirks are just in different places.
Still, assuming the email is real of course, it's always nice to see the boss appreciate the problems from the regular user's perspective.
Re:Then STOP releasing the product! (Score:5, Insightful)
Could be worse (Score:2, Insightful)
They seem to think that our main product is power point slides, which in the case of Mr (or is it Sir) Gates would probably be true.
Anyway good on him for paying attention to the job at hand.
Re:Then STOP releasing the product! (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe, but then again he still had to work there and keep the company working effectively. If this stuff had leaked out to everyone in the company, who knows what it would have done for morale? Keeping this kind of stuff in the family is often the best thing to do for the family.
Re:Then STOP releasing the product! (Score:5, Insightful)
Wait... is it really possible that we should give Gates some credit for acting responsibly?
I agree with you on the writing style, but you never know, since this was an internal document, and people use different writing styles for different purposes. I'd also note that when knowleadgeable people do usability testing, they normally feign ignorance -- they test as if they were a user with limited knowledge.
I'm not upper management, but I've sent (and seen) similar emails when a prject went FUBAR.
Re:Then STOP releasing the product! (Score:5, Insightful)
Reading the letter, it really doesn't sound like anything Gates would say. He's not an end user. As you said, he certainly should know why rebooting would be necessary when updating part of the OS.
That being said, Gates has nothing to worry about in regard to his personal reputation. There is no need for him to "talk himself up". Outside of the slashdot community and certain parts of the tech industry, he is highly regarded as a successful businessman and as a philanthropist.
website rant (Score:2, Insightful)
This is a rant about micrsoft.*com* - the website (and related update sites etc). It isn't about Microsoft itself, or its applications and operating systems. It's about the usability of the microsoft.com website and download services - which are probably largely outsourced to a few kids in India. It has nothing to do with "how bad Vista is" or lessons learned from XP.
Isn't a time to change M$ /. icon? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:My God... (Score:5, Insightful)
Still, assuming the email is real of course, it's always nice to see the boss appreciate the problems from the regular user's perspective.
I was thinking the same - posting this story on /. is calling for the usual Microsoft bashing, but if the mail's real we should congratulate Gates. We need more bosses putting themselves on the end user shoes.
Re:100% fake (Score:3, Insightful)
Let me make sure I have this right.. A respectable news outlet conducts an interview with Bill Gates [nwsource.com], asks him if it's genuine, and he explains that it's his job to make criticism of this nature [nwsource.com]. So, are we supposed to believe you - irrespective of your "100%" certainty that's based on nothing but speculation - or Bill Gates himself?
Maybe you think too much of the difficulties... (Score:5, Insightful)
First, I am not sure that email is really by Gates -- from reading his writing or listening to him in the past, it really does not sound like his style. Also, "I reboot my computer ... why should I have to reboot my computer?" I find it hard to realize that he wouldn't know the technical difficulties in replacing a dll while the system is running, and possible ways around this, and the current state of affairs. However, maybe I'm giving too much credit here.
What he is probably alluding to is the fact that every other operating system under the sun (Linux, Sun, SPARC, Mac OSX, BSD) can replace 95% of the OS without rebooting. Only windows requires you to reboot to do something stupid like replace a DLL. I can overwrite any .SO in my OS without rebooting - this is something the UNix world figured out a long time ago (deref the file pointer, write the new file. People using the old pointer can continue to do so, newly started apps use the new pointer. Once install of software is complete, restart software impacted).
The only thing that should require a reboot is replacing the kernel itself or a low-level IO driver.
Microsoft has company (Score:5, Insightful)
For God's sake...if I want to setup a printer, it should be the system's job to install ALL software needed to get it working. What is so difficult in that?
Let me remind the author of that line that we Linux users have still not made a dent on the desktop market. I can say, we are economically insignificant. This is despite perceived flaws in Windows. And by the way, Bill Gates was not frustrated over Windows in particular...he appears to have been frustrated by confusing names and un-necessary questions on the Windows website.
Re:Then STOP releasing the product! (Score:1, Insightful)
Wrong! You obviously have never worked with Joe Sixpack. Asking Joe to *type* is bad enough, expecting him to get it right is a whole new ballgame. The Joe and Jane Sixpacks of the world don't understand what 1 != l != i. They think it's "stupid" to have to get it right. Why do you think it took GUIs to get any serious home PC market going? After that pr0n just made it worth the time and money to everyone else.
And you guys who say that editing a couple of config files isn't a big deal have never seen the wreck that a common user can make of a text document. I recently had to deal with a college educated professional on the proper way to use the shift key, forgodssake. It's amazing how much concepts like this that are the norm to us seem "too technical" to most end users.
While most of us don't mind the Linux way of doing this you need to consider who the end user is and their inability to get their heads around the same basic concepts.
Re:Then STOP releasing the product! (Score:5, Insightful)
That's exactly what I said. Finding the product is the same on Windows and Linux, but at least Linux *has* the index and package manager right there, so it's no worse.
Assume it's real... so what? (Score:5, Insightful)
What we have here is the boss complaining about the design of their own product. How is this news?
Is it only news because the slashdot kiddies find any reason to laugh at MS? Or is is news because no other company CEO ever complains about any products their company produces?
I have a dirty secret to admit. I have received an email from the big boss in the past complaining about features implemented by a product we produce. I feel dirty, obviously I'm in the minority. If I submit it to Slashdot, do you think it will make the front page?
Re:Gates, you have to do this differently (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Then STOP releasing the product! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:website rant (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a rant about micrsoft.*com* - the website (and related update sites etc). It isn't about Microsoft itself, or its applications and operating systems. It's about the usability of the microsoft.com website and download services - which are probably largely outsourced to a few kids in India. It has nothing to do with "how bad Vista is" or lessons learned from XP.
So no, other than about half of the email, it has nothing to do with XP.
Re:Then STOP releasing the product! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Then STOP releasing the product! (Score:2, Insightful)
PC usability has a long way to go. Cause let's face it, the absolute easiest kind of software to install is Malware. If usability of PC's doesn't start to scale with functionality any time soon, we're going to see cell phones (with their ridiculous, invented on the spot surcharges) replace the desktop a whole lot sooner than you'd think.
Re:Then STOP releasing the product! (Score:5, Insightful)
How do you "know what you're looking for" without searching the web exactly?
It's worth noting that Microsoft would love nothing more than to bundle as many free utilities as they could, but their hands are tied thanks to those who whined to the DOJ.
Why is searching the web a problem? If I need to find an app in Linux that does whatever. Almost always searching: "Linux <whatever I want to do>" will give me at least 1 or 2 applications that do that. I could in fact replace Linux with KDE, Gnome or XFCE depending on which DE I'm using.
And to say the one shouldn't have to search for an application to run is absurd. No one is born knowing which applications do what in Windows, they learn either from searching or asking someone. Which is what they would do in Linux too.
Re:What am I doing wrong? (Score:5, Insightful)
My guess would be that your perspective is somehow twisted by a superior knowledge and/or appreciation for Windows.
For example:
Likewise, you may not have ever had occasion to experience some of the particularly common nasties:
You may have never lost a motherboard - otherwise you would have experienced the painful fight-the-bluescreen vs reinstall decision.
You may not have used IE 4 (or 5, or 6) as suggested by Windows - otherwise the pop-ups and spyware would have created a mess you would have had to clean up by now.
You may not have automatic updates turned on - otherwise you would have been forced to do an undesired reboot at least once by now.
You may have disabled UAC, or never used Vista at all - otherwise you would have been prompted as many as four times to approve the same action.
You may not ever Alt+Tab in Vista - otherwise you would have seen 'Explorer is not responding' at least once by now...
The list goes on and on and on...
Chances are, either your skills are high enough that none of the above is painful, or you just plain don't mind it - taking the good with the bad.
Others are in a totally different boat, my friend, I assure you.
Re:Then STOP releasing the product! (Score:1, Insightful)
"I want to install a media player. I don't know that I need to install mplayer, xine or totem. (What is a totem and WTF does it have to do with playing media? WTF is a xine anyhow?)"
Can we stop it with this already? WTF is an Excel, and how am I supposed to figure out that I can do spreadsheets with it? How about PowerPoint? WTF is a PowerPoint? Outlook for email? Is that obvious? I think not...
The bundle without a key (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, and they have also been known to try to generate income from those "free utilities" via indirect mechanisms (like IE directing you to MSN search in various situations, etc.), based on their control of your user experience.
Re:My God... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Then STOP releasing the product! (Score:3, Insightful)
Reading the letter, it really doesn't sound like anything Gates would say. He's not an end user. As you said, he certainly should know why rebooting would be necessary when updating part of the OS.
Keep in mind... (Score:5, Insightful)
...that the guy was pissed off, and trying to point out usability issues the average Joe would have. I'm sure he knows how to get his operating system and websites (well maybe not websites, MS sites are largely a mess in my experience) to do what he wants, but the vast majority of Windows users aren't experts and would get fed up very quickly at running the gamut of crap in the Windows Update process (and rightly so) or trying to trick an MS website into turning up the information they want (my approach is to use Google instead of the MS site search tool). In fact I would say his email, while perhaps poorly written (as most pissed-off emails are), is quite insightful in that sense. He picked out the things that would piss of Granny Web Surfer instead of suffering through it because he understood the complex things going on in the background. When WinUpdate basically forced him to restart, he didn't think "Well I guess this is reasonable, the new DLLs have to load on startup and the new applications are dependent on them," as most of us would, he thought "Who wants to restart in the middle of the update process!? This is a load of crap!"
Thinking like a common user makes user-friendly programs.
Re:Then STOP releasing the product! (Score:3, Insightful)
How is not knowing the name of the "right" application for the job any different in Linux than it is in Windows? Seriously, why would you think excel had anything to do with spreadsheets? I'll give you Word, but Powerpoint, how about Acrobat? Most application's names don't have much to do with what they actually accomplish.
You learn things in Linux the same way you do in Windows, by asking people who already know. The only reason it seems easy in Windows is because more people know and we've been "brought up" on it.
Re:Then STOP releasing the product! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Then STOP releasing the product! (Score:2, Insightful)
What's an AutoCAD?
Re:Then STOP releasing the product! (Score:4, Insightful)
Revisionism Ahoy! (Score:1, Insightful)
MS would love to bundle as many free utilities as they could to make their competition die off and then start charging for these utilities (or have people like yourself saying that these are why the OS is more expensive [even though they are "free". Go figure]). Or they'll (once they've killed the competition (a la Netscape) drop any support for the free utility (IE6) until some competition comes up again.
Re:Usability story (Score:3, Insightful)
Your wife is obviously not stupid. Lots of people are.
Or if I'm being realistic, it's not stupidity, it's fear. Computers are strange things to some people. Lots of people freeze up when confronted with something new.
Re:Then STOP releasing the product! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The bundle without a key (Score:3, Insightful)
Ooooh, solitaire and and wmplayer are going to "lock you into using Windows." I'd be doing maths in reverse polish notation were it not for calc.exe locking me into Microsoft's maths!
I might have believed iexplore and winword. Except that you have to buy Word, that Internet Explorer's homepage and search are changeable, and if you care, you can just use Firefox anyway.
The default Firefox homepage is Google, and the default Firefox search provider is Google, and Firefox does things like "directing me to Google search in various situations." Somehow, I'm not worried about the Mozilla Foundation (funded in part by Google) getting trying to "generate income from those 'free utilities' via indirect mechanisms."
Re:Then STOP releasing the product! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Then STOP releasing the product! (Score:5, Insightful)
But they don't know what those apps are for because of their name, they learned their function first, and then they learned their name. Ask somebody who doesn't know what Excel is what they think it does, and you won't get anything close to a spreadsheet.
A better example would be to ask 100 random people what Visio does, probably less than half could tell you.
Re:Then STOP releasing the product! (Score:3, Insightful)
The Joe and Jane Sixpacks of the world don't understand what 1 != l != i. They think it's "stupid" to have to get it right.
IMO Joe and Jane are correct. What's stupid is having a forty digit alphanumeric code you have to type in, with ls and 1s and 0s and Os and Is and any other alphanumeric characters that can be confused interspersed with each other!
Why do you think it took GUIs to get any serious home PC market going?
It didn't. It took apps that made a computer a useful addition to the average home, and PCs that were actually affordable. Normal people don't spend thousands of dollars (which a new PC cost in the '80s) for a home appliance. A good used car cost less than a computer before the GUI age.
And you guys who say that editing a couple of config files isn't a big deal have never seen the wreck that a common user can make of a text document.
I've used Linux since the early '00s (Mandrake, Mandriva, Suse) and never manually edited a config file. You Microsoft shills, Mr Anonymous, should stop with the inaccurate nonsense because people who actually USE Linux are going to call you on it.
I recently had to deal with a college educated professional on the proper way to use the shift key, forgodssake
Unless by "recently" you mean fifteen years ago and by "college educated" you mean "he got his BA in 1970" I'm sorry, but I simply don't believe you. Few of my offline friends are nerds; my friends include hookers, construction workers, bartenders, factory workers, etc. and I don't know a single one that can't use a "shift" key.
Which dividion of Microsoft do you work in, Mr anonymous coward?
Re:Assume it's real... so what? (Score:2, Insightful)
And yes, if your boss is the richest man on the planet and a household name that email he sent you will certainly make the front page.
Re:100% fake (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Then STOP releasing the product! (Score:3, Insightful)
Diversity is good. It stimulates the market into competing for user share. Even if you choose not to use a competitor's product, you still gain from the MS or whoever improving and updating their products to keep customers and attract new ones.
Proof positive.. Look at IE. Nothing for years after IE6, but then when Firefox and others started getting too big to ignore, IE7 arrives on the scene. Without any other browser existing, you would still be using IE6 for the next decade.
Re:Then STOP releasing the product! (Score:3, Insightful)
Except it's definitely not fake since Gates himself said he routinely writes internal messages like that, and it was entered as evidence in a recent court case. As far as not sounding like his usual style, of course it doesn't.
It was probably written as quickly as possible, and never edited. It doesn't make sense for the CEO to spend time editing when they can get the thoughts out faster and get on to the next big thing.
Re:Then STOP releasing the product! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Then STOP releasing the product! (Score:5, Insightful)
You do understand, of course, that KDE, Gnome, and XFCE are windows managers and not operating systems right?
He was trying to say, he can search for "Gnome " in a search engine just as easily. The difference being, if he finds something interesting, he can use a package manager to install it and get to work.
If he was using, say, Windows, he'd most likely download an install file, run it through a virus scanner, execute it, click 15 different buttons, have his personal information sent to some corporate server, get nagged to buy the upgraded version, download a crack, run it through a virus scanner, execute it, have a rootkit installed, have 10 different pieces of spyware installed, have his personal information sent to some criminals server, be bombarded with pornographic popups, throw his computer out the window, go outside for a cigarette with hands shaking in rage and smash his head off the nearest wall until the endorphins cause him to forget why he was so upset.
Re:Gates, you have to do this differently (Score:3, Insightful)
In the download section on that page, it reads:
Movie Maker 2.1 is available for download with Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2). You can download SP2, Movie Maker 2.1, and all future critical updates automatically by turning on the Automatic Updates feature in Windows XP.
You can also download SP2 and Movie Maker 2.1 from Microsoft Update. If you cannot use Automatic Updates or download SP2 via Windows Update, order a CD.
Movie Maker 2.1 is available for download with Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2).
You can download SP2 and all future critical updates automatically by turning on the Automatic Updates feature in Windows XP.
You can also download SP2 and Movie Maker 2.1 from Microsoft Update.
Updated: August 25, 2004
Re:Then STOP releasing the product! (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm pretty sure that very, very few people have ever used Add/Remove Programs in Windows to add a program, since the people who would need that kind of assistance would have Autorun turned on anyway, so the install program would launch when they put the CD in, long before the Add/Remove Programs dialog finishes loading.
Hence, Add/Remove Programs in Windows is really just Remove Programs. And considering that 3rd party tools (e.g., Revo Uninstaller, etc.) do a better job of actually completely removing programs, it really doesn't even do that very well.
Re:Then STOP releasing the product! (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is precisely why so many people end up pirating software like that. Sadly, it's much quicker and more convenient to just download the first crippled software that does what you want, then find a key to un-cripple it than it is to actually keep looking for a free one. And you know there's no way in hell the average geek (or most other people for that matter) is going to pay $50 for some small program he might never use more than once.
Re:Then STOP releasing the product! (Score:3, Insightful)
If this stuff had leaked out to everyone in the company, who knows what it would have done for morale?
Nevermind that -- would would it have done to his own net worth!
Public admission that Microsoft is failing to meet quality expectations = drop in MSFT stock price = Gates' massive stock holdings lose value.
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Then STOP releasing the product! (Score:3, Insightful)
"love nothing more than to bundle as many free utilities as they could"
Based on their history, I doubt that.
Why aren't all these amazing utilities available fro free download from their site?
Compared to Every other system, they have always been stingy with the 'free' utilities and apps.
MS got bitched slapped because of their bad behavior, don't push that off on other people, it's MSs fault.
Re:Then STOP releasing the product! (Score:5, Insightful)
OK, every once in a while I see these kinds of posts. I really don't know what to say.
I've been using Linux for more then 10 years. I've installed it on pc's from 386's to modern multicore servers with 4x cpus. I've got an office full of workstations running Kubuntu that are used every day, some 24x7x365. In all these years, and the hundreds of pc's I've installed some version of Linux on, I have NEVER, EVER seen ANYTHING like what this and some other posts mention. I've seen the install crap out in the middle due to a bad cd burn. I've seen incompatible hardware. I've seen qwerks with some chipsets that required a custom boot parameter to work. But this wholesale failure I have never seen. Ever.
Re:Then STOP releasing the product! (Score:3, Insightful)
"What does hardware that doesn't support Linux have to do with installing software that is supported?"
Because users don't care whether it's a hardware problem or a software problem: it's a problem, and they want the problem to go away.
Re:Then STOP releasing the product! (Score:3, Insightful)
Windows doesn't come with a lot of crap, new PCs come with a lot of crap. That will change as linux moves into the desktop.
People complained when Microsoft started shipping a browser, media player, etc in windows, and now it's a standard thing to do in most operating systems. Now people are using it in favor of linux? You also have the problem of people liking different software. OSS gives you a lot of choice, and in turn what do you ship? User A likes Firefox, and user B likes konquerer, and then user C has a slow PC and wants to use Opera 9.2.x. That's just browser software. Some of us only use things like lynx or links.
I find it difficult to actually choose what to bundle with MidnightBSD. No matter what I pick, I lose someone who hates "bloat". If I don't ship any browser, I get pissed off users who don't want to spend five minutes downloading packages.
Re:Then STOP releasing the product! (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem isn't the "free bundle". The problem is the product's price. Microsoft asks you to pay $300 because they ARE a monopoly. Fortunately, we now have alternatives like Openoffice.org. 7 years ago Openoffice was a crashing hell. Today I use it regularly, and altho it still has glitches (like floating toolbar residues stamped in the document) and usability issues (like the "center" button disappearing from the toolbar whenever i click on an inline image), i'm glad I can export my documents into PDF without having to pay four hundred freaking dollars to Microsoft and Adobe for that.
The $300 dollars you complain about isn't the DOJ's fault. It's the companies' fault. They keep overpricing their infinite goods. Just like the RIAA.
Re:Then STOP releasing the product! (Score:5, Insightful)
- OpenOffice
- GIMP
- Movie Player (admittedly you have to install a couple of packages to full-format support, but then you play virtually anything. it's also easy to install VLC).
- Evolution
- K3B
- F-Spot
- CD-extractor
- CD creator
- Trnasmission
And so many others are *directly installable* under Applications-Add/Remove. Not so easy to miss.
So do you compare those with what? Paint and WordPad? The only Windows pre-installed software worth something is Media Player. And Internet Explorer (to download firefox).
PS. This is about Windows XP. I have no experience of Vista.
Re:Then STOP releasing the product! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Then STOP releasing the product! (Score:2, Insightful)
The application determines the software choice!
Linux makes an excellent LAMP platform, it's an excellent server but I have 15,000 or more windows boxes, I'm not about to sell my clients a "Samba" based PDC setup.
The difference between Linux and windows is simple One works well on the desktop and the other requires extensive support, and works well in other areas.
Redhat ceased supporting their desktop line for a reason, Corel sold it's desktop version after a bribe from Microsoft; or how about the fact that this man quit designing linux patches for the desktop completely even though he is an adept and talented programmer?
Funny how good developers quit developing for linux" [apcmag.com]
Politics are involved in all desktop decisions, and I can't get a good visio clone in Linux, nor can I have an good enterprise level of CAD without having to use an unsupported intermediary (wine).
That does not mean I don't use Gentoo, or build application specific firewalls in OpenBSD, or use it where appropirate.
Linux Zelotry is why people don't like it, the arrogence associated with the "Well it needs to work this way"...and all the diffrering opinions and infighting in the Open Source Development Community are what keep windows around, not the fact that windows is a bad product.
Those that sign the purchase orders want somthing a little more secure than "The community may release a fix if and when supported". Then there are business model issues as well, but I digrees.
The fact that this message will be posted as "Flamebait" is the perfect example of why linux fails at the desktop, because you the community are quick to judge and flame.
those that just want a product to work get fed up and leave for OS-X, BSD, and Yes even Microsoft.
Re:Then STOP releasing the product! (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes, but within reasonable limits. If I have to install the whole KDE just to have a decent CD-burning GUI program, we're far off those reasonable limits.
And the end result is that I use `cdrecord` from the command line.
Re:Then STOP releasing the product! (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't have to do it, apt does it for you :-)
Seriously, why do you care?
apt-get install k3b, and it just works!