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Bill Gates Chews Out Microsoft
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."
Interestingly enough, Gates could have really improved his image during his tenure at Microsoft if he let emails like that "leak" out prior to stepping down. Instead, he gives keynotes about Microsoft and its "innovation."
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.
Secondly, *if you can't do anything about this crap, then stop releasing it on time and FIX THE ISSUES* instead of releasing it to the world for millions of users to suffer under your monopoly. If your software sucks, fix the problems instead of using oppressive business practices to make *everybody* suffer.
Next, people complain about Linux usability? apt-get install mplayer k3b, etc? It is not harder, just different. In fact, having all of the software most people need in one place makes Linux easier for most people in many ways, specifically the way that possible-Bill rants about here.
Whenever I have listen to Gates talk or talked to him (many, many years ago now, in the late 90's) he seems more than aware of problems with his product, and I always get this vibe "I'm doing it because I can and it is really, really, really good for business and nobody is stopping me." If any of you were following the USDOJ against Microsoft way back before the Bush-era forgiveness, Microsoft was going to be split into three companies. When Bill was on the stand, he basically went "I don't remember" to every possibly incriminating statement, but was clearly aware of the bad ethics of what he was doing -- again, reading between the lines I always got the vibe of the triumphant geek saying "I'm not going to stop until you guys get your act together and make me stop."
He's not a stupid guy that way, and anybody that respects billionaires must ask themselves if they would do the same things with a company to maintain market share... Personally, I like to think I wouldn't, but that's why I am not a CEO.
Slashdotter, ID #101. UIDs are in binary, right?
At the end of the piece, it says,
When Seattle Pi recently asked Gates about the email, he replied, "There's not a day that I don't send a piece of e-mailMaybe the competent MS employees have long ago committed harakiri in shame, and whoever's left Just Don't Care...
The originial article: http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/archives/141821.asp
Here are the responses from within Microsoft: http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/library/2003Jangatesmoviemaker.pdf
Sure looks like a DoJ-entered piece of evidence.
Easy there, there's no need to attack my English because I interpret the incomplete statement differently to you. Fake or not, it was used as empiric evidence in a trial, which really suggests I'm not the only one who thinks that, yes, it really could be real.
Sam ty sig.
Reading this reminds me of how AWESOME using Synaptic and apt-get really can be. In a single place you can find updates, new packages, and alternatives to the packages you already have. It resolves dependencies and deletes unused stuff.
Compared to Mr Gates's experience, this really is a marvelous thing.
I haven't done the Googling to determine who should get this praise, but thank you anyway, whomever you are!
People tend not to stick to their usual style when they're angry, and after the installation nightmare described in the memo, anyone would be pissed.
As far as Gates referring to the microsoft.com web site team as "they" is concerned: I work for a large company (100,000+ employees) and nobody uses "we" vs. "they" consistently. "We" can mean "our team", "our division", "the company" -- but at the same time "they" can refer to any subset of those people as well: "our servers are really slow today... I wish the admins would figure it out already. They need to get their act together."
Most GNU/Linux distributions solved this problem years ago and they did it much better than Windows ever will.
GNU/Linux distribution menus are arranged by function and task. The KDE menu, for example, has "Science and Math", "Office", "Internet" and other things any computer user would recognize. The sub menus have a name and description, KWord is a Word Processor, so is OO.org Writer.
You can compare that to the hodge podge of Vendor solutions and permutate those through the mindless changes M$ made to their defaults over several versions of Windoze. What you see is menus arranged by Vendor. The user is supposed to just know what Adobe, Correl, Novel and others can do for them. Programs that do the same thing never end up in the same place where the user might - gasp - compare them or find them easily. The only thing worse is DRM. When you combine that with all of the different default locations for finding programs or saving files, you end up what Bill Gates described.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Now, you can say it's unfair that they bundled their own apps with Windows, but that makes them no different that any other OS (including IBM, Apple, and pretty much every Linux distro).
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Actually, with IBM, I was referring to OS/2 Warp, which was available stand-alone just the same as Windows was (you didn't have to buy IBM hardware to get it). And it came with plenty of apps too (I used in myself back in 1994, and it was better than the crappy Win 3.1 that came with my system).
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
OK, personally I believe your post deserves a reply (as opposed to the negative mod you got).
1) Any application which you have to learn to use has a degree of lock-in, which is the cost of learning to use a different application to gain the same functionality. This point holds in varying degrees for 3 out of the 4 applications which you list: wmplayer, iexplore, and winword. Mostly for winword, but as you correctly point out, it doesn't come bundled free with Windows. So I will stop worrying about winword...
2) Any application which manipulates or displays documents in proprietary formats has a degree of lock-in; either in your information getting stuck in those formats, or in your not being able to access information sent to you in those formats. Again, this point holds in varying degrees for 2 out of the 3 free applications which you list: wmplayer and iexplore.
3) As you astutely point out, many companies, not just MS, generate income indirectly from free products. It doesn't bother me that MS does this, my reply was more to set things straight than to complain. The poster I replied to implied that MS was dying, out of the goodness of their hearts, to supply these "free utilities" and the evil DOJ was preventing them from being so altruistically helpful. My post was attempting to put that in a more realistic light.