
Full text: An epic Bill Gates e-mail rant - nickb
http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/archives/141821.asp
======
jrockway
Why is this surprising? Bill Gates doesn't need to fanboi Microsoft
internally; it's _his_ company. He needs to be as critical as possible so the
outside world gets a good product. It's _his_ company that looks bad when
things like this happen, so of course he is going to "rant" about it. It's his
job.

~~~
thinkcomp
It's surprising because you might think Bill Gates would have some pull at his
own company. Most of these issues he raises have been problems for years, and
have gotten even worse in some cases!

~~~
markbao
Many of these problems are still prevalent in Microsoft. Confusing processes
and the like.

So, it's not Gates. Gates is a good guy and he sounds like he gets it. Is it
the corporate structure then?

~~~
ricardo
When Microsoft started out it operated under a pretty flat organizational
structure, similar to how Google is run. They've gotten fat in the middle
(management) over the years and it's stifled any chance they've had of getting
anything done.

See this blog post from a former MS employee about the year it took to design
the shutdown menu in Vista:
[http://moishelettvin.blogspot.com/2006/11/windows-
shutdown-c...](http://moishelettvin.blogspot.com/2006/11/windows-shutdown-
crapfest.html)

~~~
swdesignguy
Interesting read.

------
dhotson
This reminds me of the bug report Linus Torvalds submitted when he couldn't
figure out how to get youtube to work on linux.

<https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=439858>

------
bprater
It makes me nervous that I didn't see it as a rant as all. Am I that callous?

To me, it looks like something constructive that every CEO should do -- spend
time dealing with their product like their customers do, and make sure the
troops know when it isn't up to standards.

------
daveambrose
My favorite lines:

"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."

~~~
coffeeaddicted
I also liked that one. But it also reminded me that I often use synaptic on
Debian when I am looking for applications on my system which is rather similar
to the "add/remove software" on Windows. The only place where I can do a sane
search (including searching summaries what the applications actually do) and
get an additional good categorization of the software. Funny how the package
manager on both sytems seems to have better information about your
applications than for example the typical startup menu (which is usually a
mess after a few months - also on both systems).

------
raganwald
"they told me that using the download page to download something was not
something they anticipated."

And rightly so. Anyone who tries to use the download page to download
something will give up and never try it again, so after a while everyone will
ignore it!

~~~
RobertL
Your logic is stunning raganwald... stunning..

I'm rolling on the floor...

~~~
mattmaroon
How do you type while doing that?

~~~
LogicHoleFlaw
Voice recognition?

~~~
jcl
Full-body keyboard.

------
markbao
Looks like Bill Gates knows how to communicate his thoughts easily for the
reader.

Neither I _nor_ the recipient of the email would have read that entire thing
if it was in a large paragraph block.

~~~
s3graham
I agree, it was a nice user story.

But, I'm damn sure that all the recipients would have carefully read every
word of that email, even if it had been written in one large leetspeek
paragraph.

------
staunch
And that's how a guy with "no taste" critiques. Imagine Steve Jobs' emails!

~~~
neilc
Steve Jobs said _Microsoft_ has no taste, not Bill Gates. I think that if
you're a good software developer (and BillG certainly qualifies), you need to
at least have some degree of taste.

~~~
jey
It's pretty clear that BillG has business, management, and technical acumen,
but I'm not so sure that he has taste in the aesthetic sense. If he does have
good aesthetic taste, he hasn't done a very good job of implementing it.

~~~
DaniFong
Actually I consider some of the new Microsoft designs to be pretty nice:

XBox 360, Silverlight, Live Maps, even Vista, are at least comparably pretty
to the competition, and some would vie, even prettier.

~~~
raganwald
With respect, I do hope you realize that "taste" and "design" are about an
awful lot more than "pretty."

I would say that MSFT products being "pretty" demonstrates how little they get
it. They think that making something "designed" means smearing pretty on it
after you're done, as if you can design a web application by building
something randomly then hiring a graphic designer to make the page slook nice
just before you go live.

~~~
DaniFong
Okay. But throwing out Vista and Silverlight, I contend that the XBox 360,
Live Maps are both highly usable, well designed products that people want.
This may be true of Silverlight too, if they ever wake up and realize that
good webapp, flash and UI designers/developers tend away from Windows.

~~~
LogicHoleFlaw
I found the Xbox360 UI to be atrocious, actually. Why does the green X button
turn the system on and off? Why are there 6 different versions of the
Marketplace, none of them consistent? Why are there ads _everywhere_?

I enjoy the games themselves but the design seems extremely ad-hoc.

------
tlrobinson
The difference between Apple and Microsoft is that this rant would come from
Steve Jobs _long_ before the products were actually shipped.

------
JesseAldridge
Sometimes I can't help but wonder if Gates saw the writing on the wall and
jumped ship to preserve his legacy.

~~~
anirbas
If he did, it's surprising he didn't go years before this.

~~~
ComputerGuru
errr... he did - he's been stepping out since 2001.

~~~
pchristensen
Exactly, you can't just jet at the end of a day if you want your 20% of the
company to be worth something when you're gone.

~~~
ComputerGuru
I don't think he gives a damn about his 20% of the company as far as cash is
concerned. It's more of a legacy thing. He created Microsoft - it's his
legacy, it's what he'll be remembered by, and he really cares for it.... it's
a part of him.

------
joshwa
too many cooks in the kitchen. MS needs a strong product management voice ala
Jobs/Schiller to cut through the crap and insist on a coherent, consistent,
and comprehensible product vision and user experience.

------
ardit33
It is kind of suprising how much disconnected he is with the flagship product
of his company.

He should have been able to be a lot more specific and detalied about what was
going on, and not complain in generic terms "downloaded more stuff, this popup
here, that thing there".

It seems that back then he was not involved at all with the development of
windows. It feels like comming from somebody that just started using it, and
not somebody that build it (or gave guidance on building it). And this was in
2003, so Windows XP had been out for about two years.

~~~
jm4
I'm not so sure the level of detail is an indication that he's disconnected
with his own company's products. The vibe I got was that he was trying to
describe to the people who build this stuff what it's actually like to be an
end user. I think the whole point is that they're the ones who are
disconnected and completely out of touch. I seriously doubt that Bill Gates
_needs_ to download and buy Movie Maker from microsoft.com like a customer
would.

Even if he is the one who is totally disconnected I thought all of his points
were excellent and a perfectly accurate illustration of how Windows has gone
wrong. What I'm left wondering is what's been going on there the past several
years. If these critiques by Gates are something new it's a real shame for
Microsoft that he didn't start sooner. If his statement that it's his job to
do this every day is accurate then I'd say they have even bigger problems.

------
ComputerGuru
You can't deny that this is someone who _gets_ software and knows how things
are supposed to be. Now whether _Microsoft_ gets software or not is debatable,
but BillG most certainly does. Anyone that's spoken to him in real-life (even
some of the most fanboyish Apple users) has confirmed this fact time and time
again - it's a real shame for the software industry he "decided" to pull back
from his company in 2001.

------
mynameishere
Duh, Bill:

<http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=download+moviemaker>

I thought I'd try to install it to see if they streamlined it, but it turns
out it was part of SP2. I guess I never needed to know about it...

------
st3fan
"""Then it told me to reboot my machine. Why should I do that? I reboot every
night -- why should I reboot at that time?"""

Haha

% uname -a

Darwin Galactica.local 9.3.0 Darwin Kernel Version 9.3.0: Fri May 23 00:49:16
PDT 2008; root:xnu-1228.5.18~1/RELEASE_I386 i386

% uptime

19:08 up 23 days, 6 mins, 2 users, load averages: 0.87 1.02 1.07

~~~
mhartl
I had the same thought when I read this. I used to turn off my computer every
night, until I switched from Windows (98) to Linux. In grad school, my
roommate and I had uptime contests with our Linux boxes, which he won with
something like 6 months of uptime. The most common causes of lost uptime were
electrical power outages and moving apartments.

Now, like you, I mainly run OS X, but it's on a laptop, which wreaks havoc
with my uptime. Ah, well. I guess you can't have it all.

~~~
jauco
I'm always amazed by this. Why would you keep your computer running if you're
not using it? just for comparing lengths?

~~~
mrtron
Laptop:

10:56 up 83 days, 1:50, 7 users, load averages: 1.05 1.32 1.12

I don't reboot - but I do close the lid to let it sleep. My main reason for
not rebooting is I generally have 100 things open at any time and that 'state'
is important.

~~~
LogicHoleFlaw
As memory and bulk storage become faster and faster and gain more and more
capacity I think that the idea of losing application state just because your
PC shut off will become a horror story to tell our children. Eventually it
will become one large memory space backed by a variety of local and network
stores.

------
GrandMasterBirt
Its good that these sort of issues are exposed, even if by Bill. The scary
thing is that MS QA does not pick this stuff up.

As more of this stuff gets exposed this will hopefully make MS work harder.
And as Apple is becoming a REAL contender, hopefully MS will pull their head
out of their ass.

~~~
holygoat
MS's QA is oriented towards making sure that individual pieces function, not
that the right thing happens. Their aim is 100% automated unit testing... but
nobody ever _tests_ that doing something is intuitive.

The UX folks do, but that doesn't mean they get their way.

~~~
GrandMasterBirt
MS having unusable products is like Exxon not selling fuel. Very quickly users
will abandon windows in favor of Apple if it gets too bad.

------
RobertL
Well... BG isn't the only one who get's frustrated with windows.

I gave up on that crap environment a long time ago and started using
Mac's...... the only way to go. Definitely worth the extra money.

~~~
xlnt
Equivalent macs don't really cost extra money.

~~~
rms
Because of the extra value of the system just working?

~~~
xlnt
no, they just plain don't. they all come with isights and firewire and DVD
burners and such. comparisons i've seen with _equivalent_ PCs are roughly
equal.

if you want lots of RAM or a larger harddrive, you probably have to buy that
separately to not get overcharged, though.

~~~
rms
OK -- I spec'd a Dell XPS M150 just now to be equivalent to the $2500 Macbook
Pro. I got a better than equivalent config for $1678 -- it has 4GB of RAM,
would be $1578 with 2GB of RAM.

It comes with a built-in 2MP webcam and bluetooth and N-wireless. It has HDMI
rather than DVI out. A bluray burner is an option, as is a 1920x1080 screen.
The only thing it is missing is firewire and I don't think anyone can argue
that Firefire is worth $900, except people that need Firewire. The backlit
keyboard is nice and generally indicative of the Apple touch, I guess, but
that adds $900.

At one point, it was definitely true that you couldn't get a laptop with all
the extras in a Mac. But this Dell Computer really seems equivalent. Perhaps
not in build quality.

~~~
xlnt
I guess it varies by when and what you compare. e.g.

[http://www.macworld.com/article/49403/2006/02/pricecompariso...](http://www.macworld.com/article/49403/2006/02/pricecomparison2.html)

has the macbook pro doing well.

or this

<http://kb.wisc.edu/showroom/page.php?id=3045>

has 150 more for macbook (not pro). they seem to have firewire and isight
missing on the pc, and a modem missing on the mac.

\-------

i just did a comparison of imac vs dell all-in-one.

imac = 1300 (add 1gig of ram)

the dell is 1300, but i need to change stuff like including a video card,
which it doesn't look like i can do (dell's customization page sucks). anyway,
apple seems to win.

the macbook pro isn't really for price-sensitive people, anyway. it's the
imac, macbook, or maybe mini that i'd expect to price compare OK or well.

~~~
mattmaroon
The biggest problem with Apple's lineup is for people who already have a
monitor they like. Your options are the mini, or a ridiculously expensive Mac
Pro. There's no middle ground.

Also, I don't think the mini is really price competitive even on the low end.
I can get the same hardware specs for considerably cheaper elsewhere, though,
of course, not with the awesome form factor/design.

I really like the mini in terms of hardware, but it's not a bargain.

~~~
markbao
MacBook or MacBook Pro in clamshell (closed-lid) mode.

~~~
boredguy8
Why is Mac's answer always to buy more? I want my monitor, so I should buy a
laptop at a premium and -then- I can use my monitor? Never you mind that, of
course, the Macbook & Macbook Pro have no docking station, so that's a minimum
of manual connections every time I disconnect/reconnect. If I never use the
laptop as a laptop, I've way overspent.

I had a similar conversation at WWDC about the 'no docking station' issue.
Apple's response: buy everyone a laptop AND a desktop, and use roaming
profiles.

Yeah.

