The title should probably say the year at which this happened. 2003. aka. not new.
Flame from Bill Gates Re: Windows Usability
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Re: Flame from Bill Gates Re: Windows Usability
#12The responses were exactly what I would have expected to see: so many conflicting priorities and groups that nobody can actually solve the problem. This is a standard problem at large companies and one of the reasons they are able to be disrupted by technology and market changes.
There was a lot of jot potato in the thread, but I don't think it signifies anything negative about the people trying to solve the problem. If you don't worry about e "right" way to deal with cross-team issues, your life span at beaurocratic institutions will be very short (spoken from experience :).
However, one huge problem that was identified is that delivering bits isn't seen as part of the "product". Product managers (program managers at MS) need to view getting the bits the same way they would view getting shelf space at a big box retailer. If you don't make sure it is done right, your product will have problems no matter how good it is. If PMs aren't empowered to ensure that process is good, you are in trouble.
Re: Flame from Bill Gates Re: Windows Usability
#13Reading the last email was gratifying and cathartic. I used to have experiences like this on Windows all of the time. There's some savage pleasure in knowing that Bill Gates had to put up with stuff like this too.
Re: Flame from Bill Gates Re: Windows Usability
#14My favorite part is where they think they can solve the problem by solving the problems.
Re: Flame from Bill Gates Re: Windows Usability
#15Urgh, there is so much corporate styled lingo and behavior going on here that I feel like they forgot how to concern themselves with actual problems. It seems like at some point sounding "professional" became more important to their career than actual communication. I mean, a lot of those replies are so high level you can't even see the original problem from that height.
Instead of concerning themselves with better search results and better download links/navigation they somehow arrive at needing to "promote" some downloads because they're "cool"? How is showing crap you THINK a user is interested in going to solve the problem of them not being able to get what they actually want? You can almost actually see the original message degrade and lose meaning with each new email that gets sent out.
Re: Flame from Bill Gates Re: Windows Usability
#16[deleted]
Re: Flame from Bill Gates Re: Windows Usability
#17The responses were exactly what I would have expected to see: so many conflicting priorities and groups that nobody can actually solve the problem. This is a standard problem at large companies and one of the reasons they are able to be disrupted by technology and market changes. There was a lot of jot potato in the thread, but I don't think it signifies anything negative about the people trying to solve the problem.…
And this is why Apple's software and devices are more usable than Microsoft's: one very powerful person at the top, Steve Jobs, dictates what he wants, precisely. No inter-group fighting, or conflicting priorities.
Re: Flame from Bill Gates Re: Windows Usability
#182 days between the first and last email. No real decisions made in this time.
Re: Flame from Bill Gates Re: Windows Usability
#19Oh boy. If this happened recently, after Bill downloaded Moviemarker, he'd be terribly angry that some genius decided Moviemaker no longer needs a TIMELINE because apparently it's a feature that no one used.
Re: Flame from Bill Gates Re: Windows Usability
#20Bill's email is at the bottom. Hooray for top-posting!
That's just standard Outlook email behavior. It works pretty well for corporate email