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Gated Communication Although it's been a long time since I left the industry, I still keep tabs on it as best as I can. Past occupational hazard meant that I read this article and then verified that it was not a hoax. It does seem like one, doesn't it? Still, it makes interesting reading. Yes, I was once (OK, am still) a geek. From Todd Bishop's Microsoft Blog An epic Bill Gates e-mail rant Sometimes, software isn't so magical. Even for Bill Gates. For the opening piece in our series on Gates leaving daily life at Microsoft, one goal was to give a clear picture of the Microsoft co-founder's role inside the company, as a gauge of the impact his departure will have. As part of that, I went back through the internal e-mails turned over in the antitrust suits against the company, looking for new insights into his personality. Read on past the jump for one of the gems that turned up, showing Gates in the role of chief rabble-rouser. (Original document: PDF, 5 pages.) It shows that even the Microsoft co-founder -- who champions the "magic of software" -- isn't immune to the frustrations of everyday computer users. Keep in mind that this was more than five years ago, so it doesn't necessarily reflect the specific state of things now. At the bottom, see what Gates said when I asked him about the message last week. ---- Original Message ---- From: Bill Gates Sent: Wednesday, January 15, 2003 10:05 AM To: Jim Allchin Cc: Chris Jones (WINDOWS); Bharat Shah (NT); Joe Peterson; Will Poole; Brian Valentine; Anoop Gupta (RESEARCH) Subject: Windows Usability Systematic degradation flame I am quite disappointed at how Windows Usability has been going backwards and the program management groups don't drive usability issues. Let me give you my experience from yesterday. I decided to download (Moviemaker) and buy the Digital Plus pack ... so I went to Microsoft.com. They have a download place so I went there. The first 5 times I used the site it timed out while trying to bring up the download page. Then after an 8 second delay I got it to come up. This site is so slow it is unusable. It wasn't in the top 5 so I expanded the other 45. These 45 names are totally confusing. These names make stuff like: C:\Documents and Settings\billg\My Documents\My Pictures seem clear. They are not filtered by the system ... and so many of the things are strange. I tried scoping to Media stuff. Still no moviemaker. I typed in movie. Nothing. I typed in movie maker. Nothing. So I gave up and sent mail to Amir saying - where is this Moviemaker download? Does it exist? So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated. They told me to go to the main page search button and type movie maker (not moviemaker!). I tried that. The site was pathetically slow but after 6 seconds of waiting up it came. I thought for sure now I would see a button to just go do the download. In fact it is more like a puzzle that you get to solve. It told me to go to Windows Update and do a bunch of incantations. This struck me as completely odd. Why should I have to go somewhere else and do a scan to download moviemaker? So I went to Windows update. Windows Update decides I need to download a bunch of controls. (Not) just once but multiple times where I get to see weird dialog boxes. Doesn't Windows update know some key to talk to Windows? Then I did the scan. This took quite some time and I was told it was critical for me to download 17megs of stuff. This is after I was told we were doing delta patches to things but instead just to get 6 things that are labeled in the SCARIEST possible way I had to download 17meg. So I did the download. That part was fast. Then it wanted to do an install. This took 6 minutes and the machine was so slow I couldn't use it for anything else during this time. What the heck is going on during those 6 minutes? That is crazy. This is after the download was finished. Then it told me to reboot my machine. Why should I do that? I reboot every night -- why should I reboot at that time? So I did the reboot because it INSISTED on it. Of course that meant completely getting rid of all my Outlook state. So I got back up and running and went to Windows Update again. I forgot why I was in Windows Update at all since all I wanted was to get Moviemaker. So I went back to Microsoft.com.and looked at the instructions. I have to click on a folder called WindowsXP. Why should I do that? Windows Update knows I am on Windows XP. What does it mean to have to click on that folder? So I get a bunch of confusing stuff but sure enough one of them is Moviemaker. So I do the download. The download is fast but the Install takes many minutes. Amazing how slow this thing is. At some point I get told I need to go get Windows Media Series 9 to download. So I decide I will go do that. This time I get dialogs saying things like "Open" or "Save". No guidance in the instructions which to do. I have no clue which to do. The download is fast and the install takes 7 minutes for this thing. So now I think I am going to have Moviemaker. I go to my add/remove programs place to make sure it is there. It is not there. What is there? The following garbage is there. Microsoft Autoupdate Exclusive test package, Microsoft Autoupdate Reboot test package, Microsoft Autoupdate testpackage1. Microsoft AUtoupdate testpackage2, Microsoft Autoupdate Test package3. 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. Moviemaker is just not there at all. So I give up on Moviemaker and decide to download the Digital Plus Package. I get told I need to go enter a bunch of information about myself. I enter it all in and because it decides I have mistyped something I have to try again. Of course it has cleared out most of what I typed. I try (typing) the right stuff in 5 times and it just keeps clearing things out for me to type them in again. So after more than an hour of craziness and making my programs list garbage and being scared and seeing that Microsoft.com.is a terrible website I haven't run Moviemaker and I haven't got the plus package. The lack of attention to usability represented by these experiences blows my mind. I thought we had reached a low with Windows Network places or the messages I get when I try to use 802.11. (don't you just love that root certificate message?) When I really get to use the stuff I am sure I will have more feedback. When we were concluding our interview last week, I showed Gates a printout of the e-mail and asked if he ever got Movie Maker to work. Gates noted that Microsoft plans to include Movie Maker as part of Windows Live, so people will get the program when they download that online package. The company isn't confirming that officially yet, but's not a complete surprise. See this Wikipedia entry and this related post on LiveSide.net. (Site temporarily down as of Tuesday morning.) As for the message, Gates smiled and said, "There's not a day that I don't send a piece of e-mail ... like that piece of e-mail. That's my job." Update, Friday: During his farewell event at Microsoft this morning, Gates referred to this, and poked a little fun at us: "One of the newspapers had some e-mail that I sent about how maybe Windows could have been better at something, and they said, 'This is a shocking e-mail. Shocking!' And I said, 'What do you think I do all day? Sending an e-mail like that, that is my job. That's what it's all about. We're here to make things better."  In the immortal words from 6th Sense ... I see stupid people. |
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Hey, ST. You're welcomed. LOL, and we used to say CFO was Chief Feck Off and CIO was Chief Idiot Officer. Hell, I was THERE during the early days. Still remember sitting in the office and going, "Hey guys, did you notice this fella who came up with something that looks like ours?" Mate, I saw Compaq and DEC through 3 acquisitions and one major CEP arse-kicking. Things were so bad there were only 3 of us left on our floor as we watched our colleagues pack up and leave day after day for months. Those were the days. It's amazing I did not die form heart failure or an aneurism. Since you sound like an old-timer like me, you would have noticed everything works in a cycle. Nothing much surprises me anymore. Myopia? Maybe. Strategy? Definitely. In the immortal words from 6th Sense ... I see stupid people.
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Hello, I'm a Mac.  And after reading all this, I can't tell you how much I appreciate my little Mac laptop. From what I've read and heard about Vista, things at Microsoft haven't improved much. I do think they will. But who knows when? Interesting read. Though I prefer Macs, I do like and respect Bill Gates a lot. ~ Brian Vista is such a disaster I know of MS techs and CSPs who are using Linux at home till they sort it out. Which they know will be never. Bill Gates has earned his mark in history. Respect to the man even if I think he is pure evil.  In the immortal words from 6th Sense ... I see stupid people.
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We used to say all our tech jargon were invented so we can smoke you guys into thinking we are smarter and more important than we are. It's kinda like the Masons' secret handshake. We look silly and we ourselves do not know what the hell 80% of them mean but we do it so we can look superior.  In the immortal words from 6th Sense ... I see stupid people.
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He is very good at finding people who are good at protecting what he did. I am sure his charity activities will go well. They're tax deductible after all. In the immortal words from 6th Sense ... I see stupid people.
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LOL, yes, that's why they invented things like groupware and extranet. So they can remember the real-life meetings they do not want to attend. One of my mates likened it to the peeps who go on chat and online to find their life partners. He says it's so they can avoid meeting real people in real life. Yes, he is not married and in software.  Hiya from an old-timer from the hardware side. Oh wait, I was also with security and DR so I guess I was also software, then. Damn. In the immortal words from 6th Sense ... I see stupid people.
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Hey, ST. You're welcomed. LOL, and we used to say CFO was Chief Feck Off and CIO was Chief Idiot Officer. Hell, I was THERE during the early days. Still remember sitting in the office and going, "Hey guys, did you notice this fella who came up with something that looks like ours?" Mate, I saw Compaq and DEC through 3 acquisitions and one major CEP arse-kicking. Things were so bad there were only 3 of us left on our floor as we watched our colleagues pack up and leave day after day for months. Those were the days. It's amazing I did not die form heart failure or an aneurism. Since you sound like an old-timer like me, you would have noticed everything works in a cycle. Nothing much surprises me anymore. Myopia? Maybe. Strategy? Definitely. In the immortal words from 6th Sense ... I see stupid people.
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Animation products? Bloody fun! Oh, I am dying of envy, mate. I started first with gaming. Was one of the first females to test Lands of Lore in Asia. How the hell I ended up in hardware and security still remains an evil mystery to me. Investment wanking though ... I mean banking ... my sympathies ... Thanks. I was there during the 386 to PII days. You should have seen the first portable. The first Armada which I think is still in the museum on Houston. Was the size of a Wang machine. Remember Wang? Holy cow ... Essentially Compaq took the IBM route before IBM got a clue again. Which is funny as most of us were all ex-IBMers. Also, we had some real bright sparks working there like the executive who asked for the dimensions of TBA; and another who thought Workstation was a table. Not surprisingly, Compaq self-immolated in the end. I was just surprised it took so long. Hey, my first mobile was a Motorola brick. Bloody good self-defence tool. I once hurled it at a stalker and knocked him out completely. I swear it still works today if I can unearth it from the technology graveyard back at home. And I, again, was one the first females to test the Nokia 9000 Communicator in Asia. Darn thing reminded me of my ole Motorola and tricked me with the keyboard on the outside. Looked like a total tool when I tried to speak into it the wrong way round. Oh, this is bringing back memories. Great talking to you too and ta for the compliment. In the immortal words from 6th Sense ... I see stupid people.
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