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Bill Gates tries to install MovieMaker (2003)

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Re: Bill Gates tries to install MovieMaker (2003)

#91

Post by jameshart »

wjnc wrote: post #84
jameshart wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This email was literally BillG sending an email to the people he holds accountable for this, pointing out to them that he believes his experience resulted from a systematic lack of attention to end to end user experience. I’m not sure why you see this as evidence BillG didn’t understand that to be his job.

Sorry, but board room or top-50 professional discussions are ment to be a lot more meta. Bill using 500-1000 words to voice his concrete experience in downloading an app, with his directors immediately chiming in for fixes misses the forest for the trees. And Bill starts the quest for the one tree in his choice of words. It was disalignment in his organizational model and the CEO is on the line for that alignment. Th…

Most of the thread is lower level staff specifically trying to address the raised issues. We have no idea what conversations this triggered among the exec team about the broader strategic issues Bill raised.

Re: Bill Gates tries to install MovieMaker (2003)

#92

Post by herodotus »

knollimar wrote: post #77
herodotus wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good. One of the things I loved about my years working at Apple is that everyone I had dealings with really cared about the user experience.

Was the animation objectively bad? like was it bad for the user and he was right or were you wronged?

Sorry - it was so long ago I really do not remember that particular feature.

Re: Bill Gates tries to install MovieMaker (2003)

#93

Post by MBCook »

saaaaaam wrote: post #57
sajithdilshan wrote: post #27

Read the whole thing and all I saw was zero accountability, zero ownership and zero consequences. That’s how great products die or become a nightmare. Every team keeps on passing the ball to other team and nothing gets fixed or done or improved.

But it didn’t. And Microsoft is worth $3.5 trillion. So maybe actually everyone should take a leaf out of the Microsoft book. When something is on fire, pass the buck to other people and stand around saying “that thing is on fire… wouldn’t it be great if someone called the fire brigade? I have the number here. One of you guys, give them a call.”

It’s the only OS available for most computers. Sort no one cares about Linux or a BSD. Normal people only know Linux and Mac and you can’t get MacOS with your non-Mac.

And we all know Microsoft caters hard to enterprise and Apple almost seems to give them the middle finger on purpose. So all those big companies only buy MS.

Add in the giant base of existing software, especially line of business/custom stuff, and MS is safe for a long time, no matter how bad they are.

Re: Bill Gates tries to install MovieMaker (2003)

#95

Post by gizajob »

dbtc wrote: post #68
WalterBright wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As for Jobs, I bought a Mac Mini last summer. I wanted to use iMovie to clip the edges off of a movie file. I clipped the edges, but was unable to discover how to save the resulting file, and gave up. Microsoft's Movie Maker has a menu item to save a file. I use the Mini every day, but only via a tty window.

I've used QuickTime for that, which has the expected menu items.

yeah it's like one shortcut and a trim bar in QuickTime so that's the right tool for the job. iMovie isn't much harder but is a palaver with its whole pre-rendering thing just to export what should be a trivial edit.

Re: Bill Gates tries to install MovieMaker (2003)

#96

Post by MBCook »

ebcode wrote: post #65

Culture flows from the top. Bill doesn’t take responsibility in his email, so he’s teaching everyone downstream to pass the buck like he does.

That was one thing I noticed.

Once they started passing the blame, almost immediately, I would expect the first thing to be a new email from Gates saying “Bob, you’re doing this, Frank, you’re doing that, no excuses, get it done.”

Nope. Nothing like that.

Re: Bill Gates tries to install MovieMaker (2003)

#97

Post by MBCook »

rawgabbit wrote: post #61
techteach00 wrote: post #17

This is a good and bit surprising one. I have a hard time believing the CEO of Palantir has this many generational points I agree with, Zuck too, but I do. https://www.techemails.com/p/mark-zuckerberg-peter-thiel-mil...

For all the pontificating, Zuckerberg is disliked more than Musk. According to this 2025 survey: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/02/19/how-ameri...

Musk has ingratiated himself with parts of the political spectrum, or at least had since he later alienated them. I have no idea what his current standing is.

So for everything wrong with Musk there are at least some people who like him, amazingly.

Zuck has no one.

Re: Bill Gates tries to install MovieMaker (2003)

#98

Post by wjnc »

jameshart wrote: post #91
wjnc wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but board room or top-50 professional discussions are ment to be a lot more meta. Bill using 500-1000 words to voice his concrete experience in downloading an app, with his directors immediately chiming in for fixes misses the forest for the trees. And Bill starts the quest for the one tree in his choice of words. It was disalignment in his organizational model and the CEO is on the line for that alignment. Th…

Most of the thread is lower level staff specifically trying to address the raised issues. We have no idea what conversations this triggered among the exec team about the broader strategic issues Bill raised.

Every single recipient on the thread was a Vice President, Corporate Vice President, or Senior/Group Vice President. Gates intentionally bypassed lower-level product managers and emailed the executive tier directly to demand accountability for platform-wide usability regressions.

If you think this is not missing the forest for the trees, please explain.

Re: Bill Gates tries to install MovieMaker (2003)

#99

Post by MBCook »

trencedamp wrote: post #50

This happens when you have people at the top of the chain who don't use the product and people at the bottom who are afraid to speak up, or use it so much they can't see the problems.

I suspect plenty spoke up. But once filtered through 35 layers of management “this is terrible and our users will hate us” becomes “best thing we’ve ever done, users love us”.

Re: Bill Gates tries to install MovieMaker (2003)

#100

Post by wqtz »

I feel like if he said, I feel like firing someone immediately for this issue would have sprouted a surprising level ownership to find the people or team (or teams) to be blamed.

At the top level most people are not designed to get shit done. They are accountable for only reporting. So, even if you want to get things done finding the team or person from that point high is impossible as they are not designed for that.

But as I write this I realized that even that wouldn’t work...as they will create a committee and hire an consulting agency whose exec was in the same sorority as them. And the consulting agency will recommend teams to be laid off. And then the same exec will come in pitching the board to buy a startup which has a great team and apparently was invested by a VC who went to same class of Wharton of that exec.

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