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Flame from Bill Gates Re: Windows Usability

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Re: Flame from Bill Gates Re: Windows Usability

#31

Post by acabal »

A perennial classic. While I would say that Windows usability has improved significantly since 2004 (when the mail was written) it's shocking see how the big kanuna's own company became too mired in politics and bureaucracy for even a fire lit directly by Bill under his underling's asses to take 5 years to make a difference.

That's one of the advantages of a distro like Ubuntu: while you may disagree with Shuttleworth's decisions, and while the quality of early releases of supposedly stable software is questionable at best, at least the man can make a decision and see it become reality in 6 months.

Re: Flame from Bill Gates Re: Windows Usability

#32

Post by zyphlar »

cubicle67 wrote: post #21
mrb wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No inter-group fighting, or conflicting priorities. I'd put good money on the opposite being the case. I get the impression there's a lot of passionate people working at apple, and passion doesn't yield lightly

Absolutely. Have you seen some of the "off the cuff" town hall style meetings he's had? The one before the release of OSX was telling, he repeatedly said that if he were making the decisions, he'd do X, but he's not. It was very eye opening that sometimes it isn't all Steve's fault (of course it isn't.)

Likewise, it's amazing to see that it isn't all Bill's fault. Here he is advocating passionately for a huge change in usability and getting nowhere. Lots of these problems still haven't been solved as of Windows XP (Vista/7 have fixed a lot of update quirks by virtue of being a native app.)

Re: Flame from Bill Gates Re: Windows Usability

#33

Post by Maro »

lurker14 wrote: post #23
sriramk wrote: post #6

Bill actually mentioned this in in another interview (can't find that now, I think it was around the time of his retirement from MSFT - it could have been at an internal event). He basically said something like - I don't know why people think that the email is something weird or unique. This is my job and I do it all the time. My personal take - I actually blame Bill for this. The real cause of the situation is how t…

People think the email is weird or unique because they are surprised that Bill Gates made 40 Billion dollars by running a company that builds products that bring intense pain to it users, and he appears to as frustrated as anyone else about the problem, and yet is completely powerless to stop it, even though he is in charge of everyone involved. It's bizarre to see someone who knows he is doing everything wrong and i…

Come on now.

> products that bring intense pain to it users

I'm a Mac user and I love Office (over OO and iWork).

> as frustrated as anyone else about the problem

It's not "a" problem. It's a large organization with tons of products, and some are more sucky then the rest.

> is completely powerless to stop it

He wasn't the CEO anymore when he wrote this. Also, even if he were the CEO, he can't go in and fix every annoyance himself. He's a leader, he needs people underneath him to do a good job. When they're not, he needs to remind them, that's what this email is.

> is drowning in money coming from his mistakes

If it weren't for Bill Gates, we might not be having this conversation...

> Microsoft has been a slow-motion train wreck for 15 years

Have you looked at Win7? It's pretty good. C# 4.0 is much better than Java. Visual Studio kills anything else on the IDE market. Xbox rocks. A friend just got a Win7 phone, and the UI/UX seems to work very well, better than Android, about as good as iOS.

Re: Flame from Bill Gates Re: Windows Usability

#34

Post by dredmorbius »

sriramk wrote: post #20
snikeris wrote: post #2

Bill's email is at the bottom. Hooray for top-posting!

That's just standard Outlook email behavior. It works pretty well for corporate email

No, it doesn't.

It's used frequently in corporate mail systems. This doesn't mean it works well.

Threaded mail clients FTW.

Re: Flame from Bill Gates Re: Windows Usability

#35

Post by jcc80 »

lurker14 wrote: post #23
sriramk wrote: post #6

Bill actually mentioned this in in another interview (can't find that now, I think it was around the time of his retirement from MSFT - it could have been at an internal event). He basically said something like - I don't know why people think that the email is something weird or unique. This is my job and I do it all the time. My personal take - I actually blame Bill for this. The real cause of the situation is how t…

People think the email is weird or unique because they are surprised that Bill Gates made 40 Billion dollars by running a company that builds products that bring intense pain to it users, and he appears to as frustrated as anyone else about the problem, and yet is completely powerless to stop it, even though he is in charge of everyone involved. It's bizarre to see someone who knows he is doing everything wrong and i…

"intense pain to its users" "completely powerless" "flailing about" "drowning in money coming from his mistakes" "slow-motion train wreck"

You my friend, have a way with words. Comments like this make me sad that a "lol" response is not an option.

Re: Flame from Bill Gates Re: Windows Usability

#36

Post by archangel_one »

watmough wrote: post #29
JeffffreyF wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not at all hard, it's a philosophical problem. They simply believe their concerns are more important than the users. It's not hard or complicated, they're just philosophicaly fools because they believe what they want matters. It doesn't, and they can't wrap their heads around that. It doesn't at all when customers suffer because all they get depends on customers getting what they need. It's a simple concept that…

I don't think you can blame capitalism for this. Apple does this stuff right, and they make money. [aside: I paid $15 for iMovie 11 the other day, and I think I entered my App store password to confirm purchase, iMovie dropped into my dock, done.] Continuing, it's more likely that MS execs, managers, just have the wrong incentives. I have never worked at MS, but I'd imagine you get promoted for having people under yo…

Surely the fundamental problem here is more that Microsoft have never had to learn how to keep users happy. They had their monopoly handed to them on a silver platter and their technology was only good enough that users didn't abandon them (not that they had a lot of other practical options).

Apple had to do this stuff right, because if they don't a Mac would be just like Windows with a different logo and nobody would bother. The necessity of having a better UX was baked into the company ten years ago. Microsoft seem to be doing better with Win7, but I'm not sure they've really learnt that lesson yet.

Re: Flame from Bill Gates Re: Windows Usability

#37

Post by JeffffreyF »

watmough wrote: post #29
JeffffreyF wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not at all hard, it's a philosophical problem. They simply believe their concerns are more important than the users. It's not hard or complicated, they're just philosophicaly fools because they believe what they want matters. It doesn't, and they can't wrap their heads around that. It doesn't at all when customers suffer because all they get depends on customers getting what they need. It's a simple concept that…

I don't think you can blame capitalism for this. Apple does this stuff right, and they make money. [aside: I paid $15 for iMovie 11 the other day, and I think I entered my App store password to confirm purchase, iMovie dropped into my dock, done.] Continuing, it's more likely that MS execs, managers, just have the wrong incentives. I have never worked at MS, but I'd imagine you get promoted for having people under yo…

Philosophically, you can blame Capitalism, at least in the abstract. Every man for himself is why they have these problems, and that is the heart of Capitalism. Because they don't think of society and really only their own rewards, they are oblivious to the experience of their users. Yes, Capitalism is the very essence of the problem, at least our current version of it, which is why the groups with the greatest amount of capital are generally the worst at concern for customers.

Re: Flame from Bill Gates Re: Windows Usability

#38

Post by Natsu »

wisty wrote: post #25
fraserharris wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usability is hard. This superficially simple example crosses many products / teams (being Microsoft, we are talking about 100s of people involved). A small startup has the same challenges because your engineers build features, not user experiences. It takes a great product manager to advocate effectively for the user.

I know usability is hard, but this is just an install. It's not like he's actually up to making a movie, yet. The user "stories" (are these even stories?) should be: 1 - Bill types "movie maker" or "moviemaker" into a search box (any search box) in the Microsoft website. 2 - A button / link that says "Download Microsoft Movie Maker!" appears on the first page (preferably the first link). 3 - Bill clicks the link. 4 -…

Nope, actually, it should present you with a choice between a normal install and a customized install, so that people who don't want to make any fiddly little choices about links and start menu crap just have the thing install itself and then run the program, getting you down to about 4 steps.

Re: Flame from Bill Gates Re: Windows Usability

#40

Post by megablast »

Maro wrote: post #33
lurker14 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People think the email is weird or unique because they are surprised that Bill Gates made 40 Billion dollars by running a company that builds products that bring intense pain to it users, and he appears to as frustrated as anyone else about the problem, and yet is completely powerless to stop it, even though he is in charge of everyone involved. It's bizarre to see someone who knows he is doing everything wrong and i…

Come on now. > products that bring intense pain to it users I'm a Mac user and I love Office (over OO and iWork). > as frustrated as anyone else about the problem It's not "a" problem. It's a large organization with tons of products, and some are more sucky then the rest. > is completely powerless to stop it He wasn't the CEO anymore when he wrote this. Also, even if he were the CEO, he can't go in and fix every anno…

I do not think anyone is suggesting that he goes in and fixed it himself, but it is up to him to ensure there are processes in place to make sure this does not happen.
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